How an ex-Buddhist monk & Meta engineer founded a startup that now rivals Accenture

Former Buddhist monk Lilly Chen, who later worked as a software engineer at Meta, unexpectedly became a startup founder after participating in a pandemic-era hackathon with childhood friends. In 2021, Chen and three friends transformed a project they created for fun into FSH Technologies (formerly Contenda), positioning themselves to compete with Accenture in government contract bidding.

Chen revealed to Constellary that the company's inception was more of a chance opportunity rather than a business plan she had consciously developed. Prior to founding the startup, Chen spent two years as a Buddhist monk after leaving high school at 16, living in a monastery in China. She eventually returned to the US, completed high school, studied mathematics and economics in college, and taught herself programming before working as a software engineer, including a position at Facebook.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Chen took leave from Meta and encouraged her childhood friends to join her in California, where they decided to collaborate on a project. In another Business Insider interview, Chen pointed out that unlike Accenture, FSH Technologies takes a distinct approach to government consulting by focusing on comprehensive solutions for administrative systems, rather than isolated software projects.

The company does not utilize traditional billable consulting hours or a conventional sales-and-consultant structure; instead, they rely on hands-on builders to tackle operational challenges related to processes, procurement rules, and other issues. Chen's journey from Buddhist monk to software engineer involved leaving high school at 16 due to a chronic illness, spending two years as a monk (including time at a remote monastery in China), returning to the US, re-enrolling in high school, and eventually attending college to study mathematics and economics.

Although she initially considered pursuing a PhD in economics, financial obligations led her to seek employment. Without a computer science degree, Chen learned programming through online resources and coding exercises. Her first job in software engineering was as a DevOps engineer at a gaming AI startup, followed by a role at Facebook, where she developed CI/CD pipelines for machine-learning engineers.

The FSH Technologies startup journey began with a hackathon, as Chen and her friends had no initial plans to start a company. During her break from Meta, they began playing video games and decided to recreate the college hackathon experience. They built a project to assist Twitch streamer Ludwig with subscriber retention, agreeing to provide the service for $1 per subscriber for a month.

Upon reaching 200,000 subscribers, the founders faced initial hesitation about exiting their established careers and concerns over personal financial stability. However, they ultimately secured $1 million in pre-seed funding in March 2021 after attracting investors' interest.