Shawn Esquivel

Portfolio

Awards, things I've built, and stories — patents, hackathon wins, open-source, Matchya, and Ekona Power.

List any competitions / awards you have won, or papers you've published.

Canadian Patent CA3122554A1 (2021) — Named co-inventor on “Methods of producing one or more products using a feedstock gas reactor,” assigned to Ekona Power Inc. The patent covers a pulsed methane pyrolysis process for low-carbon hydrogen production and ammonia synthesis feedstock, enabling >95% CO₂ emissions reduction vs. conventional steam methane reforming.

Hackathon wins — devpost.com/shawnesquivel

  • 1st Overall at Give Back Hacks 3 — Humankynd, a full-stack crowdsourcing platform for charitable causes.
  • 2nd Overall at SustainHacks — Decode, a Chrome extension that rates clothing sustainability to fight greenwashing.

Tell us about things you've built before — apps, websites, open source contributions.

Matchya — matchya.app

AI for mental health app. Solo-built, 8,000+ users.

MLH Fellowship — jupyterlab-git — github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab-git

12-week open-source fellowship contributing to the JupyterLab Git extension (sponsored by RBC; winner of MLH's 2022 Community Open Source Award). Shipped a few merged PRs.

Teaching Cursor & AI coding — shawn-builds.com

Paid Cursor course (800+ students), plus a YouTube channel at @shawn.builds (~26K subs).

Tell us about a time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage.

As a chemical engineering intern researching carbon markets, I cold-emailed the world's leading carbon researcher in Spain. To stand out, I read his full paper and led with a thoughtful critique plus ideas for his next one. He replied and took the meeting. That connection fed directly into research that became part of Canadian Patent CA3122554A1, a low-carbon hydrogen production process I'm a named co-inventor on.

In one or two sentences, the most impressive thing you've built or achieved.

I'm a named co-inventor on Canadian Patent CA3122554A1 — the IP behind Ekona Power's xCaliber™ methane pyrolysis reactor, which produces clean (“turquoise”) hydrogen and solid carbon from natural gas without CO₂ sequestration, water, or renewable electricity. Ekona raised a $79M Series A led by Baker Hughes and Mitsui, and is now piloting with ARC Resources ahead of 2026 commercial deployment.

Want to build with me?

I teach Cursor and AI coding. Go from idea to deployed app in one weekend.

Check out the course →