Every few months while she was in high school, MVHS alum ‘10 Diane Keng received a copy of Inc. Magazine, a print magazine focused on entrepreneurial news, in her mailbox. The year was 2009: Steve Jobs’ iPhone was revolutionizing the tech world, Google had just announced the development of Chrome OS and TechCrunch Disrupt was one of the biggest events worldwide. In this frenzy of new technology and the boom of Silicon Valley, Keng envisioned a place for herself. Now, she’s the co-founder and CEO of AI company Breinify and recently raised 10 million dollars in the latest seed round. 

“I remember thinking, ‘What if I could one day get on the cover or get into a story of Inc. Magazine? How amazing would that be?’” Keng said. “But I had no idea how to run a business, so DECA became my first stepping stone into it. I met a few other students, and I thought the way they presented themselves was really strong, like they were really great in-the-moment speakers. They were able to think on the spot, which I found was a really unique skill.”

Keng’s close friend and MVHS alum ‘08 Arnav Guleria recounts many memorable experiences working with Keng through DECA. He believes their time together gave him a glimpse into life outside the Cupertino bubble, including one situation in which a DECA advisor from another school physically trashed Keng’s display board at a conference and another in which a significant portion of Keng’s display was stolen. Keng and Guleria learned to astutely stand up for themselves, convincing the hotel staff to share the security footage.

“That kind of behavior by the adults gave the students a bit of a license to dramatize their own role,” Guleria said. “So we were kind of fighting a fight without rules. That situation was the first time where we got a sense of an environment where you didn’t have to follow the rules, compared to a very cloistered Monta Vista. These circumstances gave us a sense that our strict Monta Vista gloves could come off.”

Carl Schmidt, business department lead and DECA adviser, says that Keng immediately set herself apart from her competition as a very outgoing and entrepreneurial person. As a result, Schmidt took her to venture capitalists and investors. Keng would go on to become the president of Silicon Valley and California DECA and a student board member of the Cupertino Chamber of Commerce. 

“She can actually sit and talk with someone and know exactly what that person wants or is thinking about before the person themself knows,” Schmidt said. “She knows how to sell it. That’s a talent not everybody has. She also had the motivation to be an entrepreneur. You can’t study that at school.”

During her time at MVHS, Keng started her first company, and Schmidt helped her file the Limited Liability Company form for it. Realizing that many MVHS clubs gave free T-shirts, she created a business in which clubs could buy T-shirts from her. The special business model was that she imported the T-shirts in bulk from overseas at a lower price. Even though she didn’t make much profit due to hidden costs, such as import taxes, Keng believed that this was an important experience that solidified her choice to go down the path of entrepreneurship.

“Over time, you start to figure out whether you want to be on this path or not,” Keng said. “Either the moments that scare you give you a lot of exhilaration after, or they scare you, and you realize this is not for you, but you won’t really know until you actually try building your own business.”

After graduating from MVHS, Keng attended Santa Clara University, where she continued starting her own businesses while studying math and computer engineering on a full-ride scholarship. Over the next few years, Keng worked at Apple, and then moved to Symantec to focus on data science research. Attending events such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers conference, she met her eventual co-founder, Philipp Meisen, who specialized in time-interval data. With strong backgrounds in engineering and data science, they began brainstorming solutions to make traditional machine learning more applicable to anticipating user behavior and consumer preferences. 

With a well-thought-out solution and a solid foundation for their product, Keng and Meisen received fundraising, quit their jobs and began building Breinify as a company in 2015, specializing in AI-powered personalization for brand marketing. More than a decade later, Keng talks about the expansion of their company in today’s data science industry.

“Now, we’re entering a new phase where data science is kind of everywhere, and everyone’s able to use it,” Keng said. “So how do we actually make sure that it’s leveraged in the right way when it comes to retailers and consumer businesses, without the marketers having to be so technical? Obviously, all these things work if the data and the experience are good. But then they’re requiring all these departments to come together, and that’s actually where the hardship is. So that’s where our solution can kind of be the brain at the center of all these kinds of retail brands.”

Since founding Breinify, Keng has won numerous awards, including a spot on the 2021 Forbes 30 Under 30 list. She attributes much of her company’s current success to the experience she’s gained from her previous, less successful companies, specifically noting that her ability to start her own business in high school laid a strong foundation for her future in entrepreneurship. In the end, Keng believes that the risks she took throughout her entrepreneurial journey taught her the skills she needed to succeed and grow Breinify.

“My journey to Breinify was a lot of build-up,” Keng said. “It wasn’t a success on the first go, but it really makes you look back and say, ‘Wow, I’ve come a long way.’ To be an entrepreneur, you have to be not afraid to take risks, and you have to be willing to be scared, because you are going to experience a lot of things that you have never experienced before, but I think that’s part of the exhilaration. If you like repetitiveness and you like consistency, then this is probably not the right path for you. But if you like trying a lot of new things and like being surprised, then this would be the right field.”