Arnav Pokharel

CTO and Co - founder at Lunaseed

I build products at the intersection of fintech, systems design, and applied AI.

Experience

Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

Lunaseed · Nov 2025 - Present

  • Designed the end-to-end system architecture.
  • Research and Development management.
  • Own technical strategy, roadmap prioritization, and build vs buy decisions.
  • Architected a multi portal system (Founder, Investor) with real time data flows, and secure document pipelines.
  • Evaluate, select, and integrate third-party services (Stripe, Plaid, Persona, Google) balancing cost, compliance, and scalability.
  • Manage cloud infrastructure across AWS and GCP.
  • Lead codebase architecture, review standards, and technical documentation.

ITS Media Services | Producer, Video Director

Washburn University · 2023 Nov - 2024 Aug

  • Streaming live campus events to 1,000+ viewers using Blackmagic,multi-camera setups.
  • Built a custom PA system for outdoor events, enhancing audio quality and coverage.
  • Driving the vision of the production team by mentoring camera operators and coordinating event logistics.

Projects

Venture diligence infrastructure that automates the verification and validation of startups and companies from Seed to Series D across five critical pillars: Legal, Financial, Business, Technical, and Compliance. Each diligence report is investor-grade, evidence-backed, and stage-specific, giving VC firms and prospective investors the confidence to make secure, informed investment decisions.

Live in production. Actively onboarding companies and investors.

Achievements

Washburn School of Business · May 2024

Community Innovation Challenge Grand Prize

Crowned the overall winner for a community-first fintech concept that impressed investors and alumni judges.

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Washburn Business Venture Challenge · May 2024

Fast Pitch + Elevator Champion

Secured the top pitch award for crisp storytelling and a traction plan that resonated with the judging panel.

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Washburn University · 2023 · 2024 Editions

Featured Founder, Washburn Business Magazine

Profiled for building student-first SaaS and for leading diverse venture teams across two magazine issues.

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Kansas Startup Community · May 2024

Entrepreneur Awards

Highlighted in WIBW and Washburn News for taking home multiple prizes at the Washburn Entrepreneur Awards.

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Education

San Francisco State University

Bachelor of Applied Science (BASc), Computer Science

Aug 2024 - Dec 2026 · San Francisco, California

Washburn University

Bachelor of Applied Science (BASc), Computer Science

Aug 2022 - Aug 2024 · Topeka, Kansas

Core Competencies

Frontend

Next.js · React · Tailwind CSS · Framer Motion · Zustand · TanStack Query · Radix UI · Shadcn/UI · Socket.io Client

Backend

Hono (Node.js/TypeScript) · FastAPI (Python) · Express.js · WebSockets · REST APIs

AI & ML Infrastructure

LLM Integrations and embedding models integration · OCR integration · RAG Pipelines · RLM Pipelines · Customized LLM models · Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) · Chain-of-Thought Distillation · Data Flywheel & Training Pipeline · pgvector for vector search

Cloud & DevOps

AWS — ECS, ECR, EC2, S3, SES, SSM, Amplify, Application Load Balancer · GCP — Cloud Build, Cloud Run Jobs, Services · Docker · CI/CD Pipelines · Tunneling (ngrok / Cloudflare) · Environment & Secrets Management

Databases

PostgreSQL + pgvector (Drizzle, Prisma ORM) · MongoDB (Mongoose) · Supabase

Third-Party Integrations

Stripe (Billing & Payments, Financial and customer Data) · Plaid (Banking & Financial Data) · Persona (KYC & Identity Verification) · Google OAuth · Google Analytics 4 · Google Meet API · Resend / Nodemailer · GitHub OAuth and data pipeline · GitLab OAuth and data pipeline

Dev Tools

Antigravity · Claude Code · VS Code · Git & GitHub

Writing

I also write about consciousness, systems, and reality models.

Read: Reality as STM+C