Nate Besthoff
My Projects

About Me

Nate Besthoff
My Background:

I am a Sophomore majoring in Arts, Technology, and the Business of Innovation at USC's Iovine and Young Academy and minoring in Artificial Intelligence Applications in the Viterbi School of Engineering. I am looking to pursue a career in product engineering, following a passion that I developed in high school as a student at Nuvu in Cambridge, MA - a project-based high school modeled after MIT's architecture studios

My Expertise and Interests:

My expertise is in conceptualizing and developing MVPs for innovative products, and I have created dozens of rapid prototypes. I have a technical background in Python programming and electronics prototyping. I have experience in product design, experience design, architectural design, and user testing. Professionally, I have experience teaching SDRs and using AI tools for sales. That makes me a bit of a generalist at the moment, but my various skills and experiences come together and have culminated into a deep interest in designing home automation products.

Objective:Secure a product design / brand strategy internship for Summer '26

Work Experience

HaptiQ
Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer
Mar 2025 – Present

Developing a haptic wearable that helps individuals with walking impairments break out of freezing episodes through external haptic cues. Secured $15K in funding from USC OORI and recently developed an MVP.

Skaled Revenue Performance Agency
Intern
Jul – Aug 2025

Designed a new service offering, a project-based certification curriculum for SDRs. I also designed an automated research + outreach workflow with Make, integrating Slack, Notion, and error handling.

LoopBack Analytics
Intern
Jun – Jul 2025

Designed an autonomous lead generation pipeline that scraped public data, qualified leads via ChatGPT API, and enriched contacts through ZoomInfo API — generating thousands of qualified leads.

Southbridge Boathouse
Co-Manager
Jun 2020 – Aug 2024 (Summers)

Guided customers through equipment selection based on skill level and conditions, matching users to the right experience. Managed intake workflow including waivers, payments, and safety tracking for all patrons.

Relevant Coursework

In Progress
EASC 360
Spring 2026, Maymester

Global East Asia Japan-Tokyo: Japanese Society and Design Thinking

ACAD 281
Spring 2026

Constructing Experiences

ACAD 360
Spring 2026

Design Strategy: Problem Solving

ARCH 106
Spring 2026

Workshop in Architecture

Completed
ACAD 406
Fall 2025

Purpose-Driven Innovation Incubator

A
ACAD 324
Fall 2025

The Practice of Design: Ideation

A
ACAD 325
Fall 2025

Human Technology Interaction

B+
TAC-299
Fall 2025

Special Topics – Law Without Borders: Law in a Cyber Universe

A
ACAD 222
Spring 2025

Introduction to Machine Intelligence

A
ACAD 274
Spring 2025

Designing Interactive Data Systems

A
ACAD 174
Spring 2025

Innovators Forum

A-
ACAD 182
Spring 2025

Case Studies in Innovation

A-
ACAD 181
Fall 2024

Disruptive Innovation

A
ACAD 188
Fall 2024

Modeling Products with SolidWorks

B-

Agent Native Product Engineering

As an aspiring Product Engineer, I seek to become an expert in utilizing Agentic AI to its fullest potential. The following is a list of areas that I am currently using / exploring

  • Claude Code + Cowork
  • Claude Plugins and Custom Skills
  • Webhooks
  • Openclaw
  • LangChain and LangGraph
  • Crew AI
  • n8n and Make Automations
  • Prompt Libraries and Prompt Engineering
  • Learning Memory

Stay tuned for some cool agentic projects by the end of the month!