How an 18-Year-Old High School Dropout Raised $6.2M | Nozomio, Arlan Rakhmetzhanov

1. 0:00 – 1:23

   Intro

   1. ARArlan Rakhmetzhanov0:00

      Hey everyone, my name is Arlan. I'm, like, still 18. I just, like, finished YC Summer 2025 batch. I'm from Kazakhstan. High school dropout. Recently quit 11th grade and relocated to San Francisco, and now I'm full-time building, uh, in the best city on Earth. Beginning of the YC batch, Paul Graham. When I had my mini office hour with him, once he was leaving, I just, like, ran to his car and started yelling, like, "PG, please just, like, give me a second. Can you, like, have an office hour with me for just five, three minutes?" He was very annoyed. He said, "Oh, just email me." The same second, I emailed this guy while he was in the car. This is, like, one of the craziest emails. You can already see the subject, "The kid who stopped you in the end." This is really surprising, 'cause w- what the hell is that subject? He is actually trying to understand, like, what each business does, and if he sees a billion-dollar opportunity in the business, also in the founder, he's gonna invest. I guess I showed that to him, 'cause I saw his eyes went, like, when I told him about [censored] , and it ended up being my pre-seed round. [upbeat music] I'm the founder of Nozomio, and we're a product lab building context super intelligence, uh, with our flagship product called Nea, which is an API that reduces code hallucinations in coding agents like Cursor, so developers and companies can ship faster and save from two to five hours per person per week.

2. 1:23 – 4:05

   Start Before You Ready

   1. ARArlan Rakhmetzhanov1:25

      [upbeat music] My parents, my mom and my dad, had, like, a really, really big impact on me since childhood. My dad had, like, 20 years of experience in construction tech. The first time I heard about YC was from my dad when I was around 10 years old. We were walking around, like, a local river, Almaty, back home in Kazakhstan. He just, like, told me, "Hey, son, there's, like, a university for startups, so once you grow up, maybe you'll go there, and it's gonna be very, very cool. It is based in Silicon Valley." And, like, I had no fucking clue what Silicon Valley means or, like, w- what is he talking about? So I just forgot about it for a couple years. But then, in my high school, no one was really interested in startups. They mostly wanted to focus on studies. There were a lot of, like, high-achieving students who wanted to get into good universities. Back in ninth grade or tenth grade, my mom mentioned that there's, like, this university called Harvard and Stanford, and I was like, "Damn, okay. Maybe I should, like, try studying at least a little bit and just, like, put more focus on my applications." Getting into Stanford became, like, my number one goal ever. I really wanted to get in, maybe start a company after I graduate. I needed to have a very, very strong university application, which also includes, like, really good extracurriculars. I did everything just for my university application. And when I actually turned 15, I took my first coding class in my high school back in Kazakhstan. The first thing I launched is X Repurify, which was an AI scholarship for high school students to basically help them apply to summer programs in US, and had, like, AI counselor. It was very, very early ChatGPT days. It was kind of useful. I got 20,000 active users. I made a couple thousand dollars on the side. But then I didn't think I would do the startup for my entire life, and it would just look good on the university application, so that's, like, the reason I, I built it first. I always had this bias towards, like, comparing everything to university, which is really, really bad if you wanna be serious about it. That's, like, one of the patterns I see among all of the high school students right now, is that, "Oh, I'm gonna build this thing. I'm gonna launch. I'm gonna make a lot of money." But at the same time, they're still obsessed into getting a good university. But in the back of my head, I realized the most useful thing you get out of university is that you just, like, get thrown into the community of, like, like-minded people who are equally smart, so that's, like, the single most useful thing, is just, like, networking and connections. Your life can, like, definitely be ruined even after going to a prestige university. That's, like, why I stopped, 'cause I didn't see myself, like, going 10 years down the line. And during that time, my dad, he applied to YC, and later he told me that he unfortunately got rejected with his idea. That kind of, like, motivated me even more to get in YC, like, before university, because I realized that it's gonna help me kickstart my career, like, exponentially compared to if I, if I would go to, like, university and spend

3. 4:05 – 7:10

   Don't Start Local, Go Global

   1. ARArlan Rakhmetzhanov4:05

      four years there. [upbeat music] From day one, I always wanted to go global while still in high school. I just, like, started applying to every single accelerator in the world. I got accepted into the best accelerator in Europe, called Entrepreneurs First in London, so, like, I literally had no choice but to move to London and quit school. I made a lot of pe- like, friends in London. My investor introduced me to a lot of people. I talked to a lot of YC founders because I also was applying to YC in London. Hi, YC. I'm Arlan, an 18-year-old who dropped out of junior year of high school. And I finally got in in May this year. When they're accepting you, they have to give you a WhatsApp call. That's, like, their tradition. So when I got the call, like, the first thing I hear, "Hey, Arlan, how are you doing? Yeah, you're in YC. Congrats." So I just, like, started screaming on the call. I screamed so hard that he started laughing. It was, like, 1:00 AM in London, so I hang up. I called my dad. He said, like, "You accomplished so much in, like, couple years that I couldn't do in, like, five or 10 years, and I'm so, so, so proud of you, and I'm gonna support you," and relocated to San Francisco. I always thought that I, I have to think big. Like, there's no way I will stay in Kazakhstan. I always knew there's no way I'm gonna, like, think locally. I'm, like, a very heavy user of GitHub Copilot and Cursor. I really wanna work in that space, like the code gen, developer tools, because I didn't really have, like, domain expertise outside of that. I'm still in high school. I only know how to code. But what really every single coding agent lacks, and just, like, agent in general, is having up-to-date knowledge base, what is happening around them. So when you use Cursor, for example, you say, like, "Hey, I want to build this application using Vercel AI SDK or, like, this package." Cursor will build that for you, and it will, like, access the web, but it will, it will still hallucinate because it doesn't have, like, this up-to-date training data of the latest documentation that Vercel has. So Nea started out as, like, a mini server or, like, a mini plugin that can be used with Cursor, and it, like, kind of grew. That just, like, made me pivot entirely and go full in. On that domain. I'm pretty sure it's, like, a fact. A lot of people think the same way I do, that, like, you should just go global. Especially I'm a dev tool. It's not like I'm building some vertical B2B application for hospitals in Uzbekistan or Afghanistan. It's... Yeah, it's, it's a developer tool that can be used with any agent that you can imagine. Why would you distribute locally if you can just share it with people online? It doesn't take a lot of time to set it up for yourself to actually go global. Just, like, launch on global websites like Product Hunt. I got some traction for that. Launched on Product Hunt, got Product of the Day, reached out to a lot of YC founders. Hacker News is a really good one. Hacker News is the official website from YC itself. Like, people from all over the world, like India, US, Kazakhstan, Russia, they all check that website every single day for new products that come out. So just, like, get it out there. Just, like, build something in a couple days and put it, receive feedback, iterate on the product, make new friends from, like, different countries. That's what really, really helped me. I was cold DM-ing, cold emailing bunch of professors, bunch of other YC founders from, like, America, Silicon Valley specifically, and that, like, really helped to just, like, think, think

4. 7:10 – 11:00

   How I Got Paul Graham as an Angel Investor at 18

   1. ARArlan Rakhmetzhanov7:10

      bigger. Yeah, I started Collison installing people in the beginning of the batch. Collison installation, it literally means that those brothers, Patrick Collison, John Collison, uh, founders of Stripe, during the early days of Stripe, they would come to people's offices and sit by their side by taking out their laptops and installing Stripe on other people laptops to see how they use the product, if there are any issues. Because it's a developer tool that required onboarding, it's really rare that the founder himself would come to your place and install the software on your laptop, 'cause founders are really, really busy. And I started out with my batch, just by going to their houses, offices, and installing my software on their laptops of, like, how Stripe brothers would do during Stripe days. I would post every single Collison install I would do and also give merch to those people. So yeah, just, like, a wholesome moment, and also, uh, getting the product out there. I grew to 11K MRR in the past four weeks by going to users' houses every day. 22% of the YC's S25 batch and 5% of the Spring batch are paying customers. I wasn't scared. I needed that negative feedback. Even right now, whenever I get a new customer, user, I just, like, tell them like, "Please, can you roast my product in my face? Try to make me cry. Roast my product. I need that feedback." 'Cause it's, like, the most valuable thing you can get from the user or a customer, constructive feedback. That's also, like, the PG, uh, PG thing. Like, he helped me out a lot. PG usually selects founders that he likes, but with me, I guess it was kind of different. He comes to talk for every single batch at YC in Mountain View. Like, 400 people take Uber and just, like, go to the old YC office. So during his talk, he has, like, mini office hours with every single founder, who just, like, comes up and stands in a circle. And when I had my mini office hour with him, he roasted my company and me, like, in a good way, of course, but it was, uh, yeah, it was really demoralizing for me. So, like, he said he doesn't understand the shit what I'm doing or, like, what I'm building. I should, like, improve my pitch or I'm cooked during my fundraising week, and I'm not gonna raise, uh, a penny. I said to myself, like, "Okay, I got roasted in front of 100 people. Uh, I really gotta work on myself." So I was really sad for the rest of the evening, but really motivating at the same time. Then at, like, around 10:00 PM, I stayed until the end, until PG actually goes to his car and leaves. So once he was leaving, I just, like, ran to his car and started yelling like, "PG, please just, like, give me a second. Can you, like, have an office hour with me again, like, for just five, three minutes? I'm gonna improve my pitch, and you're gonna be shocked." He was very annoyed, so he just said, "Email me at, uh, pg@ycombinator.com." So the same second I emailed this guy while he was in the car. This is, like, one of the craziest emails. You can already see the subject, "The kid who stopped you in the end." This is really surprising, 'cause w- what the hell is that subject? So he has, like, some memory from that. Uh, and yeah, straight to the point, "Hey, Paul. This is Arlan. Thank you so much for the talk. Uh, you inspired me to do Collison installation every day. Um, I believe I can sell to anyone who uses Cursor or any agentic IDE." And, like, here I put new description, so 'cause, like, he asked me, "You should really improve your pitch." So I said, like, "I'm building a tool that gives coding agents the most precise context possible." Straight to the point. Couple days later, he responded like, "If you want to come talk about your startup, his assistant will find us an office hour." So I drove to Palo Alto by myself, uh, spent couple hours with him, and he is actually trying to understand, like, what each business does, and if he sees a billion-dollar opportunity in the business, also in the founder, he's gonna invest. I guess I showed that to him, and also mentioning Collison installation because, like, Patrick Collison and John Collison are one of his, like, most favorite founders ever, 'cause, like, he was the first investor in Stripe. So I guess, like, he also liked that, 'cause I saw his eyes went, like... when I told him about Collison installation. We talked for a couple hours, and I'm not gonna show that part, but, like, in the end, he said, "Hey, I would invest in you if you'd like." So that's the entire

5. 11:00 – 13:37

   How to Make People Respond to Your Cold Emails

   1. ARArlan Rakhmetzhanov11:00

      story. When I was still in high school, I was 16. I would just, like, spend my entire summer, two hours per day, just, like, cold emailing bunch of professors, 'cause I really wanted to get into Stanford. So I think it was around, like, 900,000 professors from, like, top 20 universities, Georgia Tech, Caltech, Harvard, Stanford. And I got a lot of rejections, like 99.9% were all rejections, 'cause I'm a high school student. They didn't have any opportunities for me, even though I said I would love to work for free. Yeah, so this is one of the emails, and I'm gonna explain why it's so bad. From the subject, you can see it's, like, really bad. If I was reading that email, I would instantly put it in the trash and, like, archive the person who sent it to me. Subjects is really important. I'm not opening an email unless I get a very interesting subject in the headline. The worst thing you can do is put inquiry, exclusive, seeking for. So those types of message are really cliché and just, like, make you sound like a bot. So just, like, try to avoid those and be very direct, even they... on the subject. Like, TBG, I just, like, told him, the kid who stopped you in the end or follow up on volunteer opportunities. So, like, really, really concise. Uh, just cut the bullshit. So try to keep it under, like, five, four sentences and jump straight to the point. Like, what do you actually want to get from that person? Give an introduction about yourself, two, three sentences. You get straight to the point. Professor Ilya, who actually allowed me to work for him for free, he's the head of Venture Capital at Stanford. Uh, here's the email. I wasn't that good, but it was shorter this time. Hello, my name is Arlan. I would really, really, like, love to explore virtual unpaid internship. Here's my resume. He didn't respond, and I didn't give up after that. Like, I kept sending follow-up emails for, like, two months. It wasn't an instant acceptance, but he said, "Hey, great from you on accomplishing so much. I may look for volunteer research assistants soon." So it wasn't a rejection, but also not an acceptance. For, like, two months, I sent three more emails. So I said, like, uh, "Hey, hope you're doing great. I wanted to follow up on our previous conversation in case you didn't get my email. Just wanted to let you know that I'm still really, really interested and would love to work." The message is, like, really, really straightforward now, and that's, like, when I got an acceptance. If they didn't respond, I would just, like, s- continue sending emails every single day. Like, I, I would have to die to just... of being tired or, like, losing motivation, 'cause I genuinely care about the entire thing of, like, to get there I need to complete those small steps. This is, like, the matter of just how determined you are and, like, what's your end goal. I'm so, so genuinely excited about what I'm doing right now and why, like, that I pursued this path. I couldn't be more grateful and, like, I don't see myself

6. 13:37 – 14:38

   Don't Limit Yourself

   1. ARArlan Rakhmetzhanov13:37

      anywhere else. It's just, like, people limit themself. That's the only thing. People limit themselves and they think that they're people who were born with the talent of doing big and they cannot do that 'cause they're, they're just, like, not born or, like, not meant for that life. Look around. Every single human that e- ever existed on this planet, Founding Fathers who built America, all the presidents, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, they're the same people as you. They just were really, really curious, and they stayed curious during their childhood, during their adulthood, and when they were adults. They just, like, keep exploring. So if you just put it in your brain, in your head that all of those people are identical but they're just, like, more curious and more eager to explore the world, you will realize that you can operate at the same scale if you will just go do the thing. So, like, Nike or what company has this, like, saying, "Just do it." Go through that limit and break the barrier. So that's, like, the only piece of, uh, advice I can give. [gentle music]

Episode duration: 14:38