I'm Howard Song

I struggle to express my thoughts and opinions in a large group settings. I remember sitting in a company meeting with more than 50 people, and the meeting organizer asked if anyone had any feedback on their new initiatives.

I had a few questions, along with some feedback that I wanted to share. But being timid, I held my tongue and just sat there quietly. I didn't want to appear stupid for asking stuff that everybody else knew.

That's when I thought it would be great if there was a way I could deliver my feedback to the management without the pressure of being judged or being put on a spotlight. This inspired me to create TruVoice, a tool that companies can utilize to receive anonymous feedback from their employees.

I made a community website for Koreans living in, or visiting, Las Vegas. These sort of 'community websites' are pretty common in the U.S. Korean communities. Discontent with the existing community site, I wanted to make my own.

My goal with the site was to digitally capture all information related to Las Vegas, for Korean locals and visitors alike. Information, such as things to do, things to see, where to go eat, list of sought-out businesses are all captured through the website.

The site is generating monthly revenue from sponsors who advertise through the website.

This is my first software project that actually made me money. Not a lot, but enough to get me into application development.

I got connected with a tour company that needed a custom content management system to manage their bookings and tours. They were using good-ole pen & paper, aided by Excel, and had trouble automating some of their processes. So I made a custom web application for them.

Little did I know then that when I would go on to start a web development agency later (Design Box), other tour businesses would approach me and ask for the same thing. And that's when Tour Booking App was born.

Many immigrants come to the U.S. to achieve their American Dream. However, filling out immigration forms is hard. While the forms are freely available from the USCIS website, the filing process is very confusing and difficult. So they often dole out thousands of dollars to lawyers to prepare their green card applications.

Having professional laywers is absolutely necessary when their cases require a legal advice. But often times, they just need assistance with form preparation and they are just looking for specific filing information that is customized to their immigration case.

So I created a software that help people file green card applications easily. Through a series of questions and pre-built decision trees, they are able to answer: "What forms and supporting documents do I need to submit for my immigration case?"

The idea is very similar to TurboTax, but it's for immigration filing.

I noticed that many people in my community were looking for a career change into the world of programming. There are many free courses available on Youtube, but they all lack personal guidance from an expert. Bootcamps, on the other hand, cost $8K or more to go through. I wanted to create an affordable code school for people to pursue their learning for programming without breaking bank. Through a series of survey, I determined that they would be enough demand for an affordable programming school.

This was one of the projects that I was able to fail quickly. Ultimately, I decided to pull the plug because I realized that I'd be offering a service (not a product) and it wasn't ever going to scale. While I made no money, I learned many valuable lessons.

I started this project while trying to marry three of my biggest passions: code, data, and basketball. I wanted to create a prediction algorithm that can reliably predict game outcomes and possibly even the betting spreads.

While in search for that “magical” algorithm, I performed various preliminary/explanatory analyses. In doing so, I found some interesting things, as shown by the data. I wanted to publish these findings and share them via a blog. And hence, Basketball 4 Nerds was born.