How an 18-Year-Old High School Dropout Raised $6.2M | Nozomio, Arlan Rakhmetzhanov
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Arlan Rakhmetzhanov, 18-year-old from Kazakhstan, high school dropout, quit 11th grade, relocated to San Francisco, completed YC summer 2025 batch, full-time building Nozomio. At beginning of YC batch, during mini office hour with Paul Graham, ran to his car yelling for 3-5 more minutes. Paul Graham annoyed, said email him. Immediately emailed with subject "the kid who stopped you in the end." Paul Graham invests if he sees billion-dollar opportunity in business and founder.
Founder of Nozomio, product lab building context superintelligence. Flagship product Nia, API reducing code hallucinations in coding agents like Cursor, helping developers and companies ship faster, saving 2-5 hours per person per week.
Parents had big impact. Dad with 20 years construction tech experience first mentioned YC when Arlan was 10, walking by local river Nelmati in Kazakhstan, called it "university for startups" in Silicon Valley.
In high school, peers focused on studies for good universities. Mom mentioned Harvard and Stanford, so aimed for Stanford to start company post-graduation, built extracurriculars for application. At 15, first coding class, launched Extracurrify, AI scholarship for high school students applying to US summer programs with AI counselor (early ChatGPT days), 20,000 active users, made couple thousand dollars. Built for university application, not long-term startup.
Bias toward comparing to university bad for serious founders. University main value: community of like-minded smart people for networking. Dad applied to YC, rejected, motivated Arlan to get into YC before university to kickstart career faster than 4 years at university.
From day 1 wanted global. Applied to accelerators worldwide, accepted to best in Europe Entrepreneurs First in London, quit school, moved to London. Met friends, investors, YC founders while applying. Got into YC in May, WhatsApp call at 1 a.m. London, screamed in excitement, dad proud, said accomplished more in couple years than he did in 5-10, supported relocation to San Francisco.
Heavy GitHub, Copilot, Cursor user, focused on code gen developer tools. Coding agents lack up-to-date knowledge base, hallucinate even accessing web (e.g., Vercel AI SDK docs). Nia started as mini server/plugin for Cursor, pivoted fully into domain.
Go global especially for dev tools. Launched on ProtoHunt, product of the day. Reached YC founders, Hacker News (YC site, checked daily by people from India, US, Kazakhstan, Russia). Build in couple days, launch, get feedback, iterate, make friends worldwide.
Cold DMing, emailing professors, YC founders in Silicon Valley.
Did Colossal installations like Patrick and John Collison (Stripe founders) in early days: visited batchmates' houses/offices, installed software on laptops, posted about each, gave merch. Grew to 11k MRR in past four weeks, 22% of YC S25 batch and 5% of Spring batch paid customers.
Not scared of negative feedback, asks new customers/users to "roast my product, try to make me cry" for constructive feedback.
Paul Graham talks to every batch at old YC office in Mountain View (400 people). During mini office hour, roasted Arlan's company/pitch in front of 100 people: doesn't understand, improve pitch or won't raise during fundraising. Demoralizing but motivating. Stayed until 10 p.m., ran to car, emailed immediately subject "the kid who stopped you in the end."
Email: thanked for talk, inspired Colossal installations, new pitch "tool that gives coding agents the most precise context possible." Days later, Paul responded, met in Palo Alto for hours. Paul invests seeing billion-dollar potential. Mentioned Colossal installations (Paul first Stripe investor, loves Collisons). Paul said "I would invest in you if you'd like" for pre-seed round.
At 16 in high school, spent entire summer (2 hours/day) cold emailing ~900,000 professors from top 20 universities (Georgia Tech, Caltech, Harvard, Stanford) for opportunities, 99.9% rejections.
Bad subjects: "inquiry," "exclusive," "seeking for" – sound like bots, trash them. Use direct, concise subjects e.g. "the kid who stopped you in the end," "follow up on volunteer opportunities."
Keep emails under 4-5 sentences: 3-sentence intro, straight to ask. Example to Professor Ilya (head of venture capital at Stanford): allowed unpaid virtual internship.
Follow up persistently: sent 3 more over 2 months, straightforward "hope you're doing great, follow up on previous, still interested." Got acceptance. Would continue daily if needed.
Determination from completing small steps toward end goal. Genuinely excited about path. People limit themselves, think not born for big dreams. Founding fathers, presidents, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk same as you, just more curious, stayed curious, explored. Operate at same scale if you break limits – just do it.
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