From Excel to Grok Bot: How Lauren Tan Learned to Code and Work with AI Agents

Lauren Tan, who grew up in Singapore, first got into web work through a paid school website redesign at around age 15 or 16. She initially studied finance at Monash University, where an Excel financial modeling course introduced her to programming. After co-founding the failed price-checking startup ThePriceGeek, she taught herself web development and went on to work in frontend roles, speak at many conferences, and later join Netflix, Meta's React team, and xAI. The article is the first part of a six-part series examining her career path and how she uses AI agents in her work.