Thomas Lee Young does not fit the image of a typical Silicon Valley founder. At 24, he is the CEO and co-founder of Interface, a fast-growing industrial AI startup. He speaks with a distinct Caribbean accent and has a Chinese last name. His confidence comes from being raised around oil rigs, not laptops. Growing up in Trinidad and Tobago, Young comes from a long line of engineers, going back to a great-grandfather who immigrated from China to the Caribbean.
Now based in San Francisco, Young is developing software for some of the biggest energy companies in the world. He sees his unconventional journey as more than just personal; it offers him unique advantages. He has firsthand knowledge of the industrial world he aims to change.
A Childhood Shaped by Energy Infrastructure
Trinidad and Tobago is a small nation with a significant industrial presence. Oil and gas exploration plays a key role in its economy and landscape. For Young, rigs and refineries were as familiar as city streets.
“My whole family were engineers,” Young has said. “Growing up, everything around me — dinner conversations, school projects, even the places we’d visit — revolved around energy infrastructure.”
This foundation, once thought to be distant from Silicon Valley, is now his greatest asset. Executives in oil and gas operations often meet the young founder with skepticism. But their doubts fade when he starts discussing operational challenges, safety protocols, and human errors that can lead to industrial accidents.
“It’s not just a story to break the ice,” Young says. “It’s my reality — and it’s what makes Interface possible.”
A Dream Built on Silicon Valley Mythology
Young’s journey to founding Interface started long before he ever wrote code. At age 11, he discovered Caltech through videos and blogs about Silicon Valley. He was captivated not by the technology, but by the belief that anything was possible if you were willing to build it.
He became obsessed.
He spent years saving for college, ultimately amassing $350,000 over six to seven years. He immersed himself in robotics tutorials and experimented with electronics. For his Caltech application essay, he wrote about modifying his family’s Roomba into a simple 3D mapping device.
It worked. Caltech accepted him in 2020.
But just as his dream seemed close, COVID-19 changed everything.
Pandemic Disruptions Derail the Plan
The pandemic created not just logistical challenges but also upended Young’s life. Visa appointments were canceled around the world, making it nearly impossible for him to finalize the immigration process. At the same time, the financial markets crashed in March 2020. The college fund he had spent years building “got hit entirely,” he recalls.
Suddenly, his future felt uncertain.
He had days, not months, to make a decision.
Instead of Caltech, he chose a much cheaper three-year engineering program at the University of Bristol in the UK. He enrolled in mechanical engineering, a field close to his interests, but it was a significant emotional setback.
“I was devastated,” Young admits. “But I also realized I could still get something done. It wasn’t the end.”
A New World Inside Heavy Industry
At Bristol, Young took a job with Jaguar Land Rover in human-factors engineering, focusing on the safety, usability, and reliability of industrial systems.
It was all new to him.
“I had never even heard of human-factors engineering before joining,” he says.
Yet it opened his eyes to a critical issue that would form the basis of Interface: the outdated, error-prone, and often ignored procedural documentation crucial for safety in industrial operations.
Inside manufacturing lines and automotive plants, he was shocked by what he discovered:
Safety processes managed with pen and paper.
Operating procedures full of inaccuracies.
Instruction manuals that hadn’t been updated in years.
Workers who openly disliked the cumbersome digital tools they had to use.
In an industry where a single mistake could cost lives, the documentation meant to prevent accidents was some of the least dependable.
Young proposed building a software solution to Jaguar, but there was little interest.
So he started planning his exit.
A Secret Trip to Secure a Future
Young learned about Entrepreneur First (EF), a European talent incubator that accepts people even before they have a co-founder or idea. With a 1% acceptance rate, EF chooses individuals it believes could become founders.
He applied.
He got in.
But he didn’t inform Jaguar.
Instead, he told the company he needed a week off to attend a wedding in Trinidad. He flew to EF’s selection event, impressed the organizers, secured his spot, and returned to work — only to resign immediately.
“They figured out pretty quickly that I wasn’t actually at a wedding,” he laughs.
Meeting the Co-Founder Who Shared His Detour
At EF, Young met Aaryan Mehta, who would become his CTO and co-founder. Mehta’s background mirrored his own international, disrupted journey.
Born to Indian parents in Belgium, Mehta also faced visa issues due to COVID. He was accepted at Georgia Tech and the University of Pennsylvania but couldn’t secure visa appointments. Instead, he studied mathematics and computer science at Imperial College London, developing AI systems for fault detection before joining Amazon to build machine-learning pipelines.
Their shared setbacks — and determination to pursue Silicon Valley — brought them together immediately.
“We had similar backgrounds,” Young says. “Super international, very technical, and both obsessed with building.”
They were the only team in their EF cohort that stayed together.
Company Born From Industrial Friction
The founders eventually settled in San Francisco, moving into a SoMa apartment and focusing entirely on developing Interface.
The company’s mission is clear but ambitious: use AI to audit and improve industrial operating procedures, making heavy industry significantly safer.
Interface’s software:
Uses large language models to read, parse, and analyze thousands of pages of safety documentation.
Cross-checks procedures against regulations, engineering drawings, and corporate policies.
Flags errors, inconsistencies, and outdated information.
Helps companies update procedures in real time.
In industries where a typo can result in disaster, the stakes are high.
Early results were eye-opening. For one of Canada’s largest energy firms — now an Interface client operating across three sites — the software uncovered:
10,800 errors and opportunities for improvement.
In less than three months.
Work that would have taken humans two to three years.
And cost over $35 million.
One mistake had persisted for ten years: a valve with an incorrect pressure range.
“They’re just lucky nothing happened,” says Medha Agarwal of Defy.vc, which led Interface’s $3.5 million seed round.
Contracts Worth Millions – and Growing Fast
Interface’s business model changed rapidly. Initially, Young tried outcome-based pricing, but customers did not like it. The company now uses a per-seat pricing model with extra charges based on volume.
The results have been promising:
A single contract with the Canadian energy firm brings in over $2.5 million each year.
New customers are coming on board from Houston, Guyana, and Brazil.
Oil and gas services represent a huge market, with over 27,000 companies in the U.S. alone.
Interface’s long-term goals go beyond energy, but Young is currently focused on perfecting what he sees as the most overlooked area in modern tech.
The Outsider Advantage
Young’s unique background – his age, nationality, and accent – often cause executives to underestimate him. He has learned to turn this to his advantage.
“There’s always that initial skepticism: ‘Who is this kid, and why should we trust him?’” Young says. “But once you deliver that ‘wow moment,’ everything changes.”
That moment often occurs when he explains how much money and time Interface can save and how many lives their software could protect.
After a recent site visit, Young says five workers asked when they could invest in the startup. For him, it was validation: blue-collar workers typically “hate software providers.”
His hard hat is always nearby in Interface’s San Francisco office – not as a prop, but in preparation for the next trip to an oil rig or refinery.
Inside the Startup: Fast Growth, High Pressure, and Long Hours
Interface has eight employees: five in San Francisco and three remotely. Most are engineers, along with a recently hired operations lead. The biggest challenge? Hiring quickly enough to meet demand.
Young is stretched thin. Defy.vc’s Agarwal recalls a recent call where Young casually mentioned he hadn’t seen the sun all day.
The idea of nonstop work in Silicon Valley is, in his view, completely true.
“You hear people say, ‘Oh, you go to a park and everyone around you has raised $50 million to build some crazy AI product.’ But it’s actually like that,” Young says.
He occasionally takes short nature trips with friends – recently to Tahoe — but most days turn into late nights at the office.
A Recruiting Edge: The Chance to Leave the Bay Area Bubble
Unexpectedly, the industrial fieldwork required by Interface has become a strong recruiting tool. Many engineers drawn to Silicon Valley often work on low-impact business software, asserts Young.
Interface provides a different opportunity: real-world impact, physical machinery, and trips to oil rigs.
“Less than 1% of SF startups work with heavy industry,” Young notes. “The chance to do something different — and something that actually affects people’s safety — is a huge draw.”
It’s a strange mix: intense AI development in San Francisco, interspersed with visits to hazardous industrial sites far away.
Chasing a Dream That Keeps Changing
Young understands that his life today does not fully reflect the Silicon Valley dream he envisioned as a child.
The reality is tougher:
Long hours.
High expectations.
Constant pressure.
Endless discussions about AI.
And little free time outside of building, hiring, and selling.
Still, he feels energized, not burned out.
The dream has not unfolded as he expected. Yet, it has become something more significant.
He aimed to build “anything and everything.” Now, he’s focused on building something very few attempt: AI for heavy industry, designed to prevent accidents and save lives.
“I feel pretty strong,” he says. “There’s just been so much intensity — but in the best way.”
