Meet the 16-year-old builder who caught Stripe’s attention

This article is the first in our new series, The Backstory, where we sit down with founders, operators, investors, and community builders who are doing something out of the box. The goal is to uncover how they’re thinking about and solving real-world problems, and how they got there. 

Photo credit: Rexan Wong

Rexan Wong started coding at 14 by accident. Two years later, at 16, he built an image editing app called textbehindimage in three hours. A post on X promoting the app hit 300,000 views overnight and the app itself has since amassed over 500,000 users. 

In 2025, Wong, who grew up in Hong Kong, caught his big break when Stripe flew him to its San Francisco conference. The trip convinced him that’s where he needed to be.

In brief:

• Biggest moment: Built textbehindimage in 3 hours at 16, with over 500,000 users since
• Where you might have seen him: Building in public on X, which is how Stripe found him and flew him to its San Francisco conference
• Key achievements: Won five international hackathons (including Apple’s) at 15; shipped multiple content/marketing apps

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

How did you go from a coding class at 14 to building an app that hit half a million users?

I started coding at 14, completely by accident. A bunch of my friends signed up for a coding class at school, and I joined because, honestly, why not. I discovered I enjoyed it, the feeling of staying up late building something, then showing it to people the next morning and watching their reactions. That feeling hooked me.

That summer I taught myself properly, six hours a day of YouTube tutorials. By 2023, sophomore year, I started entering hackathons to test whether I was actually any good. I ended up winning five international ones, including competitions run by companies like Apple, against developers with years of professional experience. I was 15.

From there I pivoted into building products, mostly in content and marketing. In September 2024, I built textbehindimage in about three hours using AI coding tools.

That momentum led me to ship a couple more apps in the content and marketing space, and by documenting all of it, I spent the first half of 2025 growing my X following to 25,000. That’s how Stripe found me. They invited me to their annual conference, flying out a small group of build-in-public creators from around the world to San Francisco. 

That trip was my first real taste of the city, and meeting so many people I’d only known online, all in one place, convinced me this was where I needed to be.

What was it actually like watching textbehindimage take off overnight?