I play pro basketball in France for Nantes Basket Hermine. I also find the money brands are losing inside their own numbers — including whether AI can see them at all.
I find the money a brand is losing inside its own numbers, then build the fix: the site, the content system, the ad pipeline. Right now that is a creative agency in Poland and my own two stores.
Born in Minsk. Trained under Marčiulionis in Vilnius. Pro at 15 with Lietuvos Rytas. Blocked my way through D-I in San Diego, made All-WCC at USF and tore my ACL (three surgeries, the last one rebuilt it from the other leg), spent a year rebuilding through Utah, Austin, and a Spurs Summer League rotation, played a full year with the San Diego Clippers, and now I'm playing pro in France while building.
Left Belarus alone at 13 to train at the Šarūnas Marčiulionis Academy in Vilnius. Two years under one of the great Lithuanian guards — first European to start an NBA game. Steel-tempered hands, footwork drilled until I couldn't think about it anymore.
Signed a pro contract with BC Lietuvos Rytas — one of Europe's top clubs — at 15. Represented Belarus at U-18 and won a Lithuanian youth championship before I could legally drive in the US.
#25
Day one at USD, Coach Lamont Smith nicknamed me "Squirrel" — I was moving "99,000 miles an hour." Four years on, I became the 5th all-time shot blocker in school history. Graduated with a marketing degree. The name stuck longer than any contract.
#25
Grad transfer to USF on a Master's track. Made All-WCC First Team. Helped USF reach the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 24 years. In the WCC quarterfinals — the game that clinched the bid — I tore my ACL.
Then I came back in. Same game. Watched our lead bleed from twelve to four. Stepped back on the floor on a torn ligament, dunked off the bad leg, got a block, got a steal. Ran the lead back to ten. Next play, on the move, the knee went the rest of the way.
Three surgeries followed. The first was the ACL reconstruction. During it, a nurse touched the harvested graft and contaminated it — infection set in. The second cleaned everything out. For the third they opened my healthy leg, took a hamstring tendon, and rebuilt the ACL with that. Twelve months on the table, off the floor, in rehab.
Spent the year rebuilding the knee, finished a Master of Science at USF, and ran ops at Hokali — sourced coaches across the US, organized summer camps, made the marketplace run. Closed the year by stepping back on an NBA floor with the Utah Jazz in Summer League.
#19
Signed with Austin Spurs in the G-League — San Antonio's affiliate. Limited minutes, full role. The season was about being on the floor at all. After a year sitting, that's a win.
#19
Second NBA Summer League — this time on the Spurs roster, this time as a real piece of the rotation. Posted "14 PTS · 13 REB · 5 AST" in one of the games. Two years out from the third surgery, finally moving without thinking about it.
#19
Full season with the Clippers in the G-League. Played, contributed, earned my peers' respect. Got elected Secretary-Treasurer of the G-League Players Union. Started realizing my voice mattered beyond the rim.
#19
Signed in France with ASA. Same season I started building for real — the D2C brands, the AI-search work, the software. Court in the morning, codebase in the afternoon. Running brands end-to-end with two people instead of twenty. Basketball took me around the world; I started using the platform to build.
Still building — the brands, the AI-search work, the software — and still playing pro in France, now with Nantes Basket Hermine. Two careers, same discipline. Court in the morning, shipping in the afternoon.
Pro basketball trains the discipline of one — show up, stay sharp, do the rep. Building the systems other people pay agencies for delivers the leverage of the other — one operator, ten outputs, every week. I'm not "a basketball player who codes" or "a builder who plays sports." Both are full careers. Both are running. The combo is the point — and the only person it makes sense to be is me.
Two careers, one person. Neither one is the hobby — work, awards, weird side quests, things I'm proud of that don't fit the timeline.
Secretary-Treasurer of the G-League Players Union. Helped negotiate the league's first-ever Collective Bargaining Agreement — wages, benefits, healthcare for athletes one tier below the NBA, codified for the first time. Did it while still playing a full season.
Worked under Daniel Bruton at SportRx — prescription sports eyewear. The intern role paid in the top 5% nationally that year. Learned product, learned ops, learned how a real consumer brand actually runs from the inside. The first formative business experience.
SportRxFinished an M.S. at USF during ACL recovery. Mornings in the training room, evenings in class, weekends in the lab. The body needed twelve months. The brain refused to take any off.
Long-running ambassador partnership with the brand that actually fits guys built like me. Campaigns, photo days, social. First time apparel ever felt like it was made for my body.
Visit American Tall
San Francisco company. Back then it was a marketplace that let parents book on-site sports lessons with vetted coaches — San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Jacksonville. I ran operations through my ACL recovery: sourced and onboarded coaches across the country, built out the summer camps, kept the marketplace moving. First time I shipped systems other people depended on. Today the company runs after-school and enrichment programs for schools.
Visit HOKALIPlayable character in the indie video game with my actual nickname. The handle followed me from Coach Smith's gym to a downloadable build.
The game
Shot a campaign for the Chinese sportswear brand. Some of the action frames in this story come from that day.
Day one at USD, Coach Lamont Smith nicknamed me Squirrel — I was moving "99,000 miles an hour." A student even dressed up in a squirrel costume for home games. The name stuck through college, and the speed stuck longer.
It's also a useful operating philosophy. Move fast. Be everywhere on the floor. Make plays others don't see coming. The court taught me that. The codebase rewards the same instincts.
Long videos on the AI side. Shorts on YouTube and TikTok. Basketball on its own accounts. Pick a tab.
AI tests on one side, court clips on the other. Both halves of the combo go through the same shorts feed. Recent four below.
Training, games, recovery, overseas life at 6'10". These accounts are basketball only. Instagram is the source. The rest is reposted from it, one clip a day, by a script.
The tests, the screenshots, and what actually happened.
I gave Grok a CoreS3 board and tried to build a little Rick for my desk. The screen design worked better than the colours on the real device.
I gave Claude and Codex a Subway Surfers-style game task. Both finished a build. Playing the results was a different story.
I asked Kimi K2.6 to rebuild an ecommerce site with a homepage and product page. I liked parts of the result, but it also created reviews I couldn't use.
Real products with real revenue. The receipts behind the videos.
Co-founded GMMY, a D2C vitamin brand powered by AI-driven TikTok marketing — intelligent automation to scale content, test creatives, optimize subscription flows. YUMM followed shortly after on the same playbook for pet wellness. Both live, both running.
Started shipping software in September 2025 — Remotion video pipelines, content automation, internal tools, AI agents that actually run. Two YouTubes and two TikToks a week documenting what works and what doesn't, with the prompts and configs attached.
Watch the buildTikTok growth strategies and content systems that run without you. From Remotion pipelines to n8n workflows, I help brands scale without scaling headcount. Currently partnering with a creative agency in Poland and taking a small handful of D2C clients at a time.
Work with meBuild, cost, files I used. Maybe twice a month. Unsubscribe in one click. No spam, no funnel, no upsell.
