I’m back from my business trip over to the MaineTechWeek.com to give my keynote speech. It was awesome!

^^

Here’s my pictures…

 

 

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1S4tkq8fMT5q6KeKF6P-rsPZVACW5bajLDpt-aX-Vqvw/edit?usp=sharing

 

//—

My keynote speech…

`The Hypocrite’s Exit: Why Tech Ambition Means Nothing If Your Hardware Melts Down

Event: Maine Tech Week 2026

Session: Closing Keynote with Richard Min (11:45 AM – 12:30 PM)

Stage: AURA — Main Stage

Target Duration: 45 Minutes

//——

Slide 1: Intersections & The Hypocrisy Hook

(Walk slowly to center stage, positioning yourself at the left podium facing the audience. Stand completely upright. Smile faintly. Let three full seconds of quiet settle before speaking.)

Look around this room.

[BEAT]

Maine Tech Week is built on the theme of Intersections.

You are founders, builders, and operators. You obsess over scale, traction, burn rates, and exits. AI intersecting with SaaS. Software intersecting with hardware. Venture capital intersecting with global scale.

[BEAT]

I just flew 19 hours across the Pacific Ocean from Seoul, South Korea to stand right here on this AURA stage with you.

Flying constantly between Seoul and Silicon Valley, and now, Maine!

It is an absolute honor to stand before you as your closing keynote speaker.

My body is running on pure grit.

[BEAT]

It also feels like coming home. I am a proud Bowdoin College alum. Maine holds a special place in my heart, and I am looking to invest in this community and put down new roots right here.

[BEAT]

In tech, we love talking about what builds momentum.

Do you know what really kills momentum?

Dead founders.

Founders who break down, burn out, and collapse before they ever see their vision through.

[BEAT]

So today, I’m not here to be polite. I’m here to tell you the truth:

Most of you in this room are running on pure hypocrisy.

[BEAT]

And don’t think I’m pointing fingers from an ivory tower—pre-stroke, I was the biggest hypocrite in the room.

[LONG PAUSE]

Think about how you build your product.

You would never ship buggy code.

You would never run mission-critical servers on dirty electricity.

You demand 99.99% uptime.

[BEAT]

So why do you run your biological hardware on garbage?

You hold your software to world-class standards.

But you hold your own biology to zero standards.

You pitch radical innovation.

You optimize every single line of code.

You talk about sustainability and disruptive thinking.

And then you sit down at lunch and destroy your internal hardware with the standard American meat-and-dairy suicide diet.

[BEAT]

You are the primary startup.

And scaling a company while destroying your vessel is the ultimate hypocrisy.

[BEAT]

I am not standing here today just to talk about animal cruelty. I am talking about cold, hard biological execution.

[BEAT]

If you stay on that diet, reaching 100+ years old is a fantasy. You are cruising straight toward the American average of 78. And what does 78 look like on that fuel? Spending your sixties managing Type 2 diabetes, managing pill bottles, and relying on caregivers.

[BEAT]

Seventy-eight? That is pathetic! That’s sad!

Only 78 years in the richest nation on earth?

Why settle for 78 when Whole Food Plant-Based nutrition unlocks 100+ and 150+ years old with clean blood vessels and zero chronic disease?

We have got to raise the baseline!

[LONG PAUSE]

I am not an influencer pitching fads. I am an operator who crashed his own hardware, dug into the data, and survived to tell you the truth.

[BEAT]

Before we talk about technology, let’s do an honest poll in this room.

Raise your hand if you are building your company for a massive exit. An M&A. An IPO. Generational wealth.

Keep those hands up for a moment. Look around at your peers.

Now put them down.

And answer this question honestly:

What happens to your body the day after the money hits your bank account?

[LONG PAUSE]

Too many founders sprint for ten or fifteen years. You sacrifice sleep. You sacrifice your family. You destroy your biology. And you reach the exit—only to discover you traded your physical life for a wire transfer.

Today, we are talking about the only intersection that actually decides your future: The intersection of startup ambition, physical reality, and biological survival.

//—-

Slide 2: Hardware Meltdown

You hear how I speak.

My cadence is deliberate. Sometimes words take an extra second to load into my mouth.

[BEAT]

I have aphasia.

Aphasia is a neurological condition caused by brain trauma—my stroke (I’m getting better, but frustratingly, slowly). It impairs the machine that produces language.

Let me be completely blunt with you: This is a disability. I am standing here handicapped in front of you.

[BEAT]

My brain took a catastrophic hit. The hardware crashed.

Some people hear someone speak slowly and assume: “His words are slow, so his intellect must be slow.”

[BEAT]

Wrong.

That is dead wrong.

That’s like looking at a dented car bumper and failing to realize there is a high-performance Ferrari engine purring under the hood.

[BEAT]

Here is the truth: For years, I was just like you.

I was the ultimate startup man. I had 4 exits and the entire seasoned startup life and the entire ecosystem in Korea. Venture capital. Top accelerators, and the first Asian accelerator funded by Google. An ex-wife who was a K-pop singer. I had it all.

[BEAT]

Let me put it simply:

I ruined it all because of what was on my plate.

[LONG PAUSE]

Flying constantly between Seoul and Silicon Valley. Pushing 80-hour weeks. Running my body completely into the ground while convincing myself I had infinite energy.

And like 99% of the tech world, I lived on the standard omnivore diet. Steaks. Burgers. Heavy takeout. Animal protein at every single meal.

I told myself the exact same cultural lie every person in this room tells themselves: “I need meat for fuel. I need animal protein for strength and performance.”

[BEAT]

That is a lie.

“Need” and “want” are two completely different things. You might want that steak, but your biology does not need animal protein to thrive.

As Dr. T. Colin Campbell, professor emeritus at Cornell University, creator of eCornell’s Plant-Based Nutrition program, and the ultimate pioneer of nutrition science, stated:

“The only diet that really works—totalistically and completely—across different age groups, across different societies, for the most number of years is an eating on the whole food plant-based diet. Period.”

[BEAT]

In his nineties, he is still publishing, still researching, and still leading the science.

He is the bedrock of Whole Food Plant-Based nutrition.

And he is someone I trust completely with the science of human biology.

[LONG PAUSE]

Then my system crashed.

A massive, devastating stroke. Two weeks in a coma. And right around that exact same time, my mother passed away from pancreatic cancer.

[BEAT]

Everything wiped out to zero. I lost speech. I lost mobility. I was trapped inside my own skull.

When I woke up in recovery, a doctor handed me a stack of prescriptions and said: “You will have to take these medications for the rest of your life. There is no other option.”

I looked at him through the fog, and I silently said:

“I don’t think so.”

//—

Slide 3: The Internal Crash

(Step toward the front edge of the stage. Point directly to yourself, then pause.)

Look at me.

[BEAT]

Do not be like me.

[BEAT]

Now, when I say that, some of you are looking at my physical appearance. You see the deliberate cadence. You see the external handicap.

That is the wrong place to look.

[LONG PAUSE]

What you see on the outside is just the aftermath.

[BEAT]

I’ve spent the last ten years—every single day from my stroke until standing right here on this stage—clawing my physical and mental health back. It is brutally hard. And the truth is, I’m still fighting that battle right now.

[LONG PAUSE]

The real failure didn’t start with my speech or my stride. It started on the inside.

[BEAT]

It started inside my bloodstream. Inside the walls of my blood vessels. Inside the silent, microscopic plaque building up across twenty years of steaks, burgers, animal fats, and takeout while I was grinding away building startups.

My internal biological engine was rotting while I thought I was invincible. And that silent, internal decay is what produced the external disability standing before you today at Maine Tech Week.

[LONG PAUSE]

Most of you in this audience look sharp on the outside. You wear the fleece, you carry the laptop, you pitch the investors, and you think your hardware is fine because you look fine in the mirror.

Do not be fooled by your external appearance.

If you are running on an omnivore diet, your internal pipes are taking the hit right now. Don’t wait for your internal crisis to break through to your outside life.

[BEAT]

You do not need to change your vision.

You do not need to change your startup business.

Change your diet!

[BEAT]

You want maximum performance? Fix the fuel. It will upgrade the output of your company, and it will rewrite the output of your life.

//—

Slide 4: Root-Cause Analysis, The Data & The Nutrient Illusion

(Slide Graphic: “ROOT-CAUSE ANALYSIS: THE MACRONUTRIENT MYTH”)

In engineering, when your servers melt down, you don’t slap duct tape over the motherboard and walk away.

You run a root-cause analysis. You examine the logs.

Why did my brain bleed? What caused the hardware to fail?

[BEAT]

For the last ten years, I spent one to five hours every single day digging through clinical trials, peer-reviewed medical journals, biochemical studies, and videos.

And what I found hit me harder than the stroke itself:

My crash was driven overwhelmingly by my omnivore diet.

[LONG PAUSE]

And here is the blind spot nobody in this audience realizes:

America has a complete, backwards obsession with protein.

Every food label screams: “High Protein!”

Every fitness podcast tells you to eat more meat and drink whey shakes.

[BEAT]

Here is what the medical data actually shows: Almost nobody in America is protein deficient.

In fact, those of us who study nutritional biochemistry know the truth:

Most people are consuming far too much animal protein!

Excess animal protein stresses the kidneys, drives up IGF-1 cancer pathways, and overloads your metabolic engine.

[LONG PAUSE]

Do you know what Americans are actually starving for?

Fiber.

Less than 5% of Americans get the bare minimum daily requirement of dietary fiber!

Ninety-five percent of the country is fiber deficient!

Where is fiber found?

Only in whole plant foods.

There is zero fiber in beef. Zero in chicken. Zero in fish. Zero in dairy. Zero in eggs.

Fiber is what feeds your microbiome, clears cholesterol, balances blood sugar, and shields your blood vessels from strokes and heart attacks.

We are overdosing on animal protein, and starving our bodies of life-saving plant fiber!

[LONG PAUSE]

Let me state this clearly:

I am a fanatical, obsessed nutritional geek.

I live a Whole Food Plant-Based diet and a vegan lifestyle.

Why? First: for HEALTH and LONGEVITY. Second: because I despise animal cruelty. Industrial factory farming and commercial fishing are barbaric, cruel, and ecologically suicidal.

I am not standing here with an opinion. I am backed by an ARMY OF EVIDENCE-BASED MEDICAL DOCTORS:

• Over 17,000 physicians in the American College of Lifestyle Medicine.

• Dr. Michael Greger and his videos at NutritionFacts.org, reviewing every English-language clinical nutrition paper on Earth.

• Dr. Neal Barnard and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

• Colleagues from Korea like Dr. Euicheol Lee at vegedoctors.org.

• Decades of clinical proof from Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, the Mayo Clinic, and the World Health Organization.

[BEAT]

As Dr. Kim Williams, former President of the American College of Cardiology, said:

“There are two kinds of cardiologists: vegans, and those who haven’t read the data.”

[BEAT]

Remember when doctors used to stand on billboards smoking cigarettes? They wore white coats and told the public that smoking settled the nerves.

Today, that looks completely insane.

[BEAT]

The standard omnivore diet is at that exact same historical turning point right now.

Society calls red meat, dairy, and eggs “normal.” The biology says it is vascular poison. It thickens your blood. It damages your blood vessels. It sets you up for cardiovascular failure, stroke, diabetes, and early death.

Months after my stroke, I threw out the omnivore diet and went 100% Whole Food Plant-Based. I returned to the hospital for full blood panels. My blood flow cleared. My inflammation plummeted. My numbers normalized completely.

My doctor stared at my charts, stunned, and said: “I was wrong. You don’t need these medications anymore.”

[BEAT]

And I have to tell you… I was pretty damn proud of myself for that.

In venture capital, people talk about a 10x exit.

Getting off a lifetime of prescription drugs? That is an infinite return.

[LONG PAUSE]

So here is my official challenge to the MDs, the MDs-in-training, and the health buffs in this room.

Go do your own root-cause analysis.

Look at the peer-reviewed data and the videos at NutritionFacts.org.

I challenge any of you to go study the clinical nutrition, read the charts, and prove me wrong. Go ahead… I’ll wait.

[LONG PAUSE]

//—

Slide 5: The Tech Ecosystem’s Blind Spot

Let’s talk about the hypocrisy in our own backyards.

Just last night at a cocktail mixer, I met a doctor—some guy I literally just met last night—who pointed to an entrepreneurial friend doing weak push-ups and blamed it on his vegetarian diet. I had to stop him right there: vegetarian and vegan are two entirely different worlds, and worrying about protein for those arms is a complete myth.

[BEAT]

Excuses, excuses, and more excuses. Which leads straight to your hypocritical habit of eating a slaughtered cow—while Indian people pretend cows are sacred, yet their parts are used for all kinds of horrific tools, beef, shoes, and leather exports.

[LONG PAUSE]

You are your primary startup.

And scaling a company while destroying your vessel is the ultimate hypocrisy.

[BEAT]

So let me ask you: What if you don’t even want to be in that high-pressure grind? What then?

What if your goal isn’t grinding for a ten-year exit just to hand your wealth over to a hospital?

You could trade it all to lie on a beach. You could live the life of a firefighter and an NCAA competitive swimmer like Rip Esselstyn on a Plant-Strong diet.

Do anything. Be anything. Just stop killing your hardware with an omnivore diet.

[LONG PAUSE]

//—

Slide 6: Built on Data, Not Fads

(Slide Graphic: “ENGINEERS OF BIOLOGY: UNBREAKABLE & GRIT UNLIMITED”)

Look at proven tech giants, operators, and creators who treat their biological systems with pure data:

• James Cameron:

  Academy Award-winning director of the biggest blockbusters in history.

  Executive producer of The Game Changers, using his global platform to prove that elite world-class athletes, Olympians, NFL players, UFC champions, and record-breaking strongmen perform at the absolute pinnacle of human capability powered 100% on plants.

• Chris MacAskill:

  Worked side-by-side with Steve Jobs at NeXT and Apple.

  Took Fatbrain.com public on the NASDAQ, later acquired by Barnes & Noble.

  Now runs the channel Viva Longevity, teaching thousands of founders about evidence-backed vascular health.

[BEAT]

I want to be UNBREAKABLE and GRIT UNLIMITED.

[BEAT]

What does UNBREAKABLE mean?

It is about true longevity—living a long, healthy life with zero sickness, zero prescriptions, and zero drugs.

It means your startup is UNBREAKABLE—having the physical and mental stamina to take your company all the way to a massive M&A or IPO without breaking down.

And it means your life is UNBREAKABLE—Grit Unlimited. Refusing to break, no matter what hits you.

[BEAT]

If you optimize every single line of code or frames of film, why are you pouring garbage into your own body?

[LONG PAUSE]

//—

Slide 7: The Architecture of Longevity

(Slide Graphic: “THE TWO RULERS: THE KING & THE QUEEN”)

To run a multi-decade enterprise, you need two rulers commanding your biological architecture:

1. The King: Physical Exertion.

   Walking. Lifting. Mobility. Martial arts. Or something like that.

   This builds your bones, your stamina, and your mental grit.

2. The Queen: Whole Food Plant-Based Nutrition.

   Intact plants. Greens. Berries. Legumes. Whole grains.

   This floods your system with fiber, keeps your blood vessels clean, eliminates inflammation, and delivers maximum oxygen to your brain.

[BEAT]

Look at the Blue Zones—Okinawa, Japan and Loma Linda, California right here in the United States. Centenarians thriving past 100 with zero dementia and zero chronic disease. They eat whole, intact plants.

[BEAT]

The human record is Jeanne Calment in France: 122 years. My goal is not 100. My goal is 150+ years young.

Combine clean plant fuel with biotech, DNA repair, and cellular medicine, and you give yourself a life that spans generations.

//—

Slide 8: What Endures (The Closing & The Board)

Listen to me.

If you build an empire… If you ring the bell on the NASDAQ… If you walk away with hundreds of millions in an acquisition…

…but you are sitting in a wheelchair, unable to speak, unable to recognize your kids, or buried in an early grave…

You did not win.

[LONG PAUSE]

If you take a company to an IPO or an M&A, but you crashed your own hardware to get there…

you did not win. You just traded your life for an exit.

You were a genius about your cap table, but completely reckless about your biological engine.

Status will not bring back dead neurons. A high valuation will not clean a blocked blood vessel.

Look at me. Look at what it costs to survive an omnivore hardware crash.

Earlier, I told you:

Do not be like me.

Don’t be the omnivore who ignored the biological engine.

Don’t be the founder who waited for a stroke and a handicap.

[LONG PAUSE]

Now, standing here ten years later, completely rebuilt on plants… I tell you this:

Be like me.

[BEAT]

Change your diet from omnivore to Whole Food Plant-Based.

Overcome this diet.

Join me on this Whole Food Plant-Based journey, and watch your startup—and your entire life—change drastically.

[LONG PAUSE]

And here is the absolute reality of GRIT UNLIMITED:

In spite of this damn stroke… In spite of this damn aphasia… I am UNBREAKABLE. I will never give up.

[BEAT]

If it takes one month, one year, ten years, or fifty years to claw every single inch of my normalcy back—I am never giving up.

I am making progress every single day. Frustratingly slow, yes. But surely.

[LONG PAUSE]

And you? You are building a startup.

[BEAT]

You know what it feels like when your product breaks. When investors say no. When the code won’t ship. When progress feels agonizingly, frustratingly slow.

A startup is not built overnight. Neither is a human brain. Neither is a human body.

[BEAT]

When you face the fire in your company, you don’t surrender. You iterate. You fight. You grind.

Take that exact same founder grit and apply it to your own biology. Make your body UNBREAKABLE.

Make your startup UNBREAKABLE.

Give your body the clean plant fuel it needs to heal, to rebuild, and to run for the next hundred years—with zero sickness and zero drugs.

[LONG PAUSE]

I fight every single day. Rebuilding my speech syllable by syllable. Investing in plant-based food and products tech, and I’m going to do an aphasia startup! Building AI tools for speech accessibility and other AI startups. Planning charities to protect animals and return land to nature.

[LONG PAUSE]

In my life, I have had millions, and I have been dead broke.

[BEAT]

Money comes and goes.

What endures is family. A loving partner. Future kids. True friends.

The colleagues in the trenches with you.

And cherishing our animals and water critters and this living earth.

[LONG PAUSE]

And speaking of animal companions… I don’t run this operation alone. I have oversight.

(Click remote to advance to slide: “MEET MY BOARD OF DIRECTORS: GrendelKhan (GK) & Kipo”)

Meet my Board of Directors: GrendelKhan and Kipo.

Current operational status: sleeping 18 hours a day, completely unimpressed by my venture career, and highly judgmental of my plant-based bowls.

[BEAT]

When you survive a crash, you realize what actually anchors you:

Something to do,

Someone to love,

Something to look forward to,

And something to give back.

[BEAT]

As Winston Churchill said:

“I like a man who grins when he fights.”

(Pause. Look across the audience. Smile a genuine, triumphant grin.)

I grin through this fight every single morning.

You are the startup. Protect your hardware. Cherish this life.

[BEAT]

• Live a HEALTHY life.

• Love Life.

• Live Well together.

• Be UNBREAKABLE.

• And Grit Unlimited!!

[LONG PAUSE]

Thank you, Maine Tech Week!

<// — End of my speech —//>

….and the video of my Keynote speech is going to come if the MTW founders get move on.  LoL!

^__^;::