Transcriptly

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

EO14:39Added Aug 31, 2026

Arlan shares the relentless persistence it takes to break into high-stakes environments, revealing the exact process he used to land an internship with the head of Venture Capital at Stanford.

Watch on YouTube →
Contributed by 刘嘉琪

Transcript

Transcript format

  1. Intro

  2. 00:00Hey everyone, my name is Arlon. I'm like
  3. 00:01still 18. I just like finished YC summer
  4. 00:042025 batch. I'm from Kazakhstan, high
  5. 00:06school dropout, recently quit 11th grade
  6. 00:08and relocated to San Francisco and now
  7. 00:11I'm full-time building uh in the best
  8. 00:12city on earth. Beginning of the YC
  9. 00:14batch, Paul Graham. When I had my mini
  10. 00:16office hour with him, once he was
  11. 00:18leaving, I just like ran to his car and
  12. 00:20started yelling like, "PG, please just
  13. 00:22like give me a second. Can you like have
  14. 00:23an office hour with me for just 5 3
  15. 00:25minutes?" He was very annoyed. He said,
  16. 00:27"Oh, just email me." The same second I
  17. 00:30emailed this guy while he was in the
  18. 00:32car. This is like one of the craziest
  19. 00:33emails. You can already see the subject,
  20. 00:35the kid who stopped you in the end. This
  21. 00:37is really surprising cuz what the hell
  22. 00:39is that subject? He is actually trying
  23. 00:41to understand like what each business
  24. 00:43does. And if he sees a billion dollar
  25. 00:45opportunity in the business, also in the
  26. 00:46founder, he's going to invest. I guess I
  27. 00:48showed that to him cuz I saw his eyes
  28. 00:50from like when I told him about and it
  29. 00:53ended up being my prece round.
  30. 01:06I'm the founder of Nomio and we're
  31. 01:08product lab building context super
  32. 01:10intelligence uh with our flagship
  33. 01:11product called NIA which is an API that
  34. 01:14reduces code hallucinations in coding
  35. 01:16agents like cursor so developers and
  36. 01:18companies can ship faster and save from
  37. 01:202 to 5 hours per person per week.

  38. Start Before You Ready

  39. 01:27My parents, my mom and my dad had like a
  40. 01:29really really big impact on me since
  41. 01:31childhood. My dad had like 20 years of
  42. 01:33experience in construction tech. The
  43. 01:35first time I heard about YC was from my
  44. 01:37dad when I was around 10 years old. We
  45. 01:39were walking around like a local river
  46. 01:41nmati back home in Kazakhstan. He just
  47. 01:43like told me, "Hey son, there's like a
  48. 01:46university for startups. So once you
  49. 01:48grow up, maybe you'll go there and it's
  50. 01:49going to be very very cool. It is based
  51. 01:51in Silicon Valley." And like I had no
  52. 01:53[ __ ] clue what Silicon Valley means
  53. 01:54or like what is he talking about? So I
  54. 01:57just forgot about it for a couple years.
  55. 01:59But then in my high school, no one was
  56. 02:01really interested in startups. They
  57. 02:03mostly wanted to focus on studies. There
  58. 02:05were a lot of like high achieving
  59. 02:06students who wanted to get into good
  60. 02:08universities. Back in 9th grade or 10th
  61. 02:10grade, my mom mentioned that there's
  62. 02:12like this university called Harvard and
  63. 02:14Stanford. And I was like, damn. Okay,
  64. 02:16maybe I should like try studying at
  65. 02:17least a little bit and just like put
  66. 02:19more focus on my applications. Getting
  67. 02:21into Stanford became like my number one
  68. 02:23goal ever. I really wanted to get in,
  69. 02:25maybe start a company after I graduated.
  70. 02:28I needed to have a very very strong
  71. 02:30university application which also
  72. 02:31includes like really good
  73. 02:32extracurriculars. I did everything just
  74. 02:35for my university application. And when
  75. 02:36I actually turned 15, I took my first
  76. 02:38coding class in my high school back in
  77. 02:40Kazakhstan. The first thing I launched
  78. 02:42is extra curify which was an AI
  79. 02:45scholarship for high school students to
  80. 02:47basically help them apply to summer
  81. 02:49programs in US and had like AI
  82. 02:51counselor. It was very very early child
  83. 02:54days. It was kind of useful. I got
  84. 02:5520,000 active users. I made couple
  85. 02:57thousand on the side but then I didn't
  86. 03:00think I would do the startup for my
  87. 03:01entire life and it would just look good
  88. 03:03on the university application. So that's
  89. 03:05like the reason I I built it first. I
  90. 03:07always had this bias towards like
  91. 03:08comparing everything to university,
  92. 03:10which is really, really bad if you want
  93. 03:11to be serious about it. That's like one
  94. 03:13of the patterns I see among all of the
  95. 03:15high school students right now is that,
  96. 03:17oh, I'm going to build this thing. I'm
  97. 03:18going to launch. I'm going to make a lot
  98. 03:19of money, but at the same time, they're
  99. 03:21still obsessed into getting a good
  100. 03:23university. But in the back of my head,
  101. 03:25I realized the most useful thing you get
  102. 03:27out of university is that you just like
  103. 03:28get thrown into the community of like
  104. 03:30like-minded people who are equally
  105. 03:32smart. So that's like the single most
  106. 03:34useful thing is just like networking and
  107. 03:36connections. Your life can like
  108. 03:37definitely be ruined even after going to
  109. 03:39a prestigious university. That's like
  110. 03:41why I stopped cuz I didn't see myself
  111. 03:43like going 10 years down the line. And
  112. 03:45during that time, my dad, he applied to
  113. 03:47YC. And later he told me that he
  114. 03:50unfortunately got rejected with his idea
  115. 03:52that kind of like motivated me even more
  116. 03:55to get inc before university because I
  117. 03:58realized that it's going to help me
  118. 04:00kickstart my career like exponentially
  119. 04:02compared if if I would go to like
  120. 04:04university and spend four years there.

  121. Don't Start Local, Go Global

  122. 04:10From day one, I always wanted to go
  123. 04:12global while still in high school. I
  124. 04:14just like started applying to every
  125. 04:15single accelerator in the world. I got
  126. 04:18accepted into the best accelerator in
  127. 04:20Europe called Entrepreneurs First in
  128. 04:22London. So like I literally had no
  129. 04:24choice but to move to London and quit
  130. 04:26school. I made a lot of pe like friends
  131. 04:28in London. My investor introduced me to
  132. 04:30a lot of people. I talked to a lot of YC
  133. 04:31founders because I also was applying to
  134. 04:33YC in London. Hi YC. I'm Arlon, an
  135. 04:3618-year-old who dropped out of junior
  136. 04:38year of high school and I finally got in
  137. 04:40in May this year. when they're accepting
  138. 04:43you, they have to give you a WhatsApp
  139. 04:45call. That's like their tradition. So
  140. 04:46when I got the call, like the first
  141. 04:48thing I hear, hey Arland, how are you
  142. 04:50doing? Yeah, you're on YC. Congrats. So
  143. 04:52I just like started screaming on the
  144. 04:54call. I screamed so hard that he started
  145. 04:56laughing. It was like 1:00 a.m. in
  146. 04:58London. So I hang up. I called my dad.
  147. 05:01He said like you accomplished so much in
  148. 05:04like couple years that I couldn't do in
  149. 05:06like five or 10 years and I'm so so so
  150. 05:08proud of you and I'm going to support
  151. 05:10you and relocated to San Francisco. I
  152. 05:13always thought that I have to think big
  153. 05:14like there's no way I will stay in
  154. 05:16Kazakhstan. I always knew there's no way
  155. 05:18I'm going to like think locally. I'm
  156. 05:20like a very heavy user of GitHub copilot
  157. 05:22and cursor. I really want to work in
  158. 05:23that space like the codegen developer
  159. 05:26tools because I didn't really have like
  160. 05:28domain expertise outside of that. I'm
  161. 05:30still at high school. I only know how to
  162. 05:31code. But what really every single
  163. 05:33coding agent lacks and just like agent
  164. 05:35in general is having up-to-date
  165. 05:37knowledge base what is happening around
  166. 05:38them. So when you use cursor for
  167. 05:40example, you say like hey I want to
  168. 05:42build this application using versel AI
  169. 05:45SDK or like this package cursor will
  170. 05:47build that for you and it will access
  171. 05:49the web but it will it will still
  172. 05:50hallucinate because it doesn't have like
  173. 05:52this up-to-ate training data of the
  174. 05:54latest documentation that Versel has. So
  175. 05:57NIA started out as like a mini server or
  176. 06:00like a mini plugin that can be used with
  177. 06:01cursor and it like kind of grew that
  178. 06:03just like made me pivot entirely and go
  179. 06:06full in on that domain. I'm pretty sure
  180. 06:08it's like a fact. A lot of people think
  181. 06:09the same way I do that like you should
  182. 06:11just go global. Especially I'm a dev
  183. 06:13tool. It's not like I'm building some
  184. 06:15vertical B2B application for hospitals
  185. 06:18in Usbekistan or Afghanistan. It's yeah
  186. 06:20it's it's a developer tool that can be
  187. 06:22used with any agent that you can
  188. 06:24imagine. Why would you distribute
  189. 06:26locally if you can just share it with
  190. 06:28people online? It doesn't take a lot of
  191. 06:29time to set it up for yourself to
  192. 06:31actually go global just like launch on
  193. 06:33global websites like Proto Hunt. I got
  194. 06:35some traction for that. Launched on
  195. 06:36Product Hunt, got product of the day.
  196. 06:38Reached out a lot of YC founders. Hacker
  197. 06:40News is a really good one. Hacker News
  198. 06:42is the official website from YC itself.
  199. 06:45Like people from all over the the world
  200. 06:46like India, US, Kazakhstan, Russia, they
  201. 06:49all check that website every single day
  202. 06:50for new products that come out. So just
  203. 06:52like get it out there. just like build
  204. 06:54something in a couple days and put it,
  205. 06:56receive feedback, iterate on the
  206. 06:57product, make new friends from like
  207. 06:59different countries. That's what really
  208. 07:00really helped me. I was cold DMing, cold
  209. 07:02emailing bunch of professors, bunch of
  210. 07:04other YC founders from like America,
  211. 07:06Silicon Valley specifically and that
  212. 07:08like really helped just like think think

  213. How I Got Paul Graham as an Angel Investor at 18

  214. 07:10bigger.
  215. 07:14Yeah, I started call installing people
  216. 07:16in the beginning of the batch col
  217. 07:18installation. It literally means that
  218. 07:19those brothers Patrick Collison and John
  219. 07:21Collison founders of Stripe during the
  220. 07:23early days of Stripe, they would come to
  221. 07:25people's offices and sit by their side
  222. 07:27by taking out their laptops and
  223. 07:29installing Stripe on other people
  224. 07:31laptops to see how they use the product
  225. 07:33if there are any issues because it's a
  226. 07:35developer tool that required on
  227. 07:37boarding. It's really rare that the
  228. 07:38founder himself would come to your place
  229. 07:40and install a software on your laptop
  230. 07:42cuz founders are really really busy. And
  231. 07:44I started out with my batch just by
  232. 07:46going to their houses, offices, and
  233. 07:48installing my software on their laptops
  234. 07:49of like how Stripe Brothers would do
  235. 07:52during Stripe days. I would post every
  236. 07:54single color and install I would do and
  237. 07:55also give merch to those people. So
  238. 07:58yeah, just like a wholesome moment and
  239. 07:59also uh getting the product out there. I
  240. 08:03grew to 11K Mr. in the past four weeks
  241. 08:05by going to users houses every day. 22%
  242. 08:08of the OC's and Spotify batch and 5% of
  243. 08:11the spring batch are paying customers.
  244. 08:13I wasn't scared. I needed that negative
  245. 08:15feedback. Even right now whenever I get
  246. 08:17a new customer user, I just like tell
  247. 08:18them like please can you roast my
  248. 08:20product in my face? Try to make me cry.
  249. 08:22Roast my product. I need that feedback
  250. 08:24cuz it's like the most valuable thing
  251. 08:26you can get from the user or customer.
  252. 08:28Constructive feedback. That's also like
  253. 08:29the PG uh PG thing. Like he helped me
  254. 08:32out a lot. PG usually selects founders
  255. 08:34that he likes. But with me, I guess it
  256. 08:36was kind of different. He comes to talk
  257. 08:39for every single batch at YC in Mountain
  258. 08:41View. Like 400 people take Uber and just
  259. 08:43like go to the old YC office. So during
  260. 08:45his talk, he has like mini office hours
  261. 08:47with every single founder who just like
  262. 08:49comes up and stands in a circle. And
  263. 08:51when I had my mini office hour with him,
  264. 08:53he roasted my company and me like in a
  265. 08:56good way of course, but it was uh yeah,
  266. 08:58it was really demoralizing for me. So,
  267. 09:00like he said he doesn't understand the
  268. 09:02[ __ ] what I'm doing or like what I'm
  269. 09:03building. I should like improve my pitch
  270. 09:05or I'm cooked during my fundraising week
  271. 09:07and I'm not going to raise a penny. I
  272. 09:10said to myself like, "Okay, I got
  273. 09:11roasted in front of 100 people. I really
  274. 09:13got to work on myself." So, I was really
  275. 09:15sad for the rest of the evening, but
  276. 09:17really motivating at the same time.
  277. 09:18Then, at like around 10:00 p.m., I
  278. 09:20stayed until the end until PG actually
  279. 09:23goes to his car and leaves. So once he
  280. 09:25was leaving, I just like crammed to his
  281. 09:27car and started yelling like, "PG,
  282. 09:29please just like give me a second. Can
  283. 09:31you like have an office hour with me
  284. 09:32again like for just five, three minutes.
  285. 09:34I'm going to improve my pitch and you're
  286. 09:36going to be shocked." He was very
  287. 09:37annoyed. So he just said, "Email me at
  288. 09:39pgy cominator.com." So the same second I
  289. 09:42emailed this guy. Well, he was in the
  290. 09:44car. This is like one of the craziest
  291. 09:45emails. You can already see the subject,
  292. 09:47the kid who stopped you in the end. This
  293. 09:49is really surprising because what the
  294. 09:51hell is that subject? So he has like
  295. 09:53some memory from that. Uh and yeah,
  296. 09:55straight to the point. Hey Paul, this is
  297. 09:57Arlon. Thank you so much for the talk.
  298. 09:59You inspired me to do Colossus
  299. 10:01installation every day. Um I believe I
  300. 10:03can sell to anyone who uses cursor or
  301. 10:05any aentic IDE. And like here I put new
  302. 10:08description. So cuz like he asked me,
  303. 10:10you should really improve your pitch. So
  304. 10:11I said like I'm building a tool that
  305. 10:13gives coding agents the most precise
  306. 10:14context possible. Straight to the point.
  307. 10:17Couple days later he responded like if
  308. 10:19you want to come talk about your startup
  309. 10:21his assistant will find us an office
  310. 10:23hour. So I drove to Palo Alto by myself
  311. 10:26uh spend couple hours with him and he is
  312. 10:29actually trying to understand like what
  313. 10:30each business does and if he sees a
  314. 10:32billion dollar opportunity in the
  315. 10:33business also in the founder he's going
  316. 10:35to invest. I guess I showed that to him
  317. 10:37and also mentioning Collison
  318. 10:38installation because like Patrick
  319. 10:40Collison and John Collison are one of
  320. 10:42his like most favorite founders ever cuz
  321. 10:44like he was the first investor in
  322. 10:45Stripe. So I guess like he also liked
  323. 10:48that cuz I saw his eyes went like when I
  324. 10:50told him about color installation we
  325. 10:52talked for a couple hours and I'm not
  326. 10:54going to show that part but like in the
  327. 10:55end he said hey I would invest in you if
  328. 10:58you'd like. So that's the entire story.

  329. How to Make People Respond to Your Cold Emails

  330. 11:04When I was still in high school I was
  331. 11:0616. I would just like spend my entire
  332. 11:08summer two hours per day just like cold
  333. 11:10emailing bunch of professors because I
  334. 11:13really wanted to get into Stanford. So I
  335. 11:15think it was around like 900,000
  336. 11:16professors from like top 20
  337. 11:18universities. Georgia Tech, Caltech,
  338. 11:20Harvard, Stanford. And I got a lot of
  339. 11:22rejections like 99.9%
  340. 11:25were all rejections cuz I'm a high
  341. 11:26school student. They didn't have any
  342. 11:28opportunities for me. Even though I said
  343. 11:30I would love to work for free. Yeah. So
  344. 11:32this is one of the emails and I'm going
  345. 11:34to explain why it's so bad. From the
  346. 11:37subject, you can see it's like really
  347. 11:39bad. If I was reading that email, I
  348. 11:41would instantly put it in the trash and
  349. 11:42like archive the person who sent it to
  350. 11:44me. Subjects is really important. I'm
  351. 11:46not opening an email unless I get a very
  352. 11:48interesting subject in the headline. The
  353. 11:49worst thing you can do is put inquiry,
  354. 11:52exclusive, seeking for. So those types
  355. 11:55of messages uh really cliche and just
  356. 11:56like make you sound like a bot. So just
  357. 11:59like try to avoid those and be very
  358. 12:00direct even on the subject like TBG I
  359. 12:03just like told him the kid who stopped
  360. 12:05you in the end or follow up on voluntary
  361. 12:07opportunities. So like really really
  362. 12:09concise uh just cut the [ __ ] So try
  363. 12:11to keep it under like five four
  364. 12:13sentences and jump straight to the point
  365. 12:15like what do you actually want to get
  366. 12:17from that person? Give an introduction
  367. 12:18about yourself to three sentences. You
  368. 12:20get straight to the point. Professor Ila
  369. 12:23who actually allowed me to work for him
  370. 12:24for free. He's the head of venture
  371. 12:26capital at Stanford. Oh here's the
  372. 12:27email. I wasn't that good but it was
  373. 12:29shorter this time. Hello my name is
  374. 12:31Arlin. I would really really like love
  375. 12:32to explore virtual unpaid internship.
  376. 12:34Here's my resume. He didn't respond and
  377. 12:36I didn't give up after that. Like I kept
  378. 12:38sending follow-up emails for like two
  379. 12:40months. It wasn't an instant acceptance,
  380. 12:42but he said, "Hey, great from you on
  381. 12:45accomplishing so much. I may look for
  382. 12:46volunteer research assistance soon." So,
  383. 12:49it wasn't a rejection, but also not an
  384. 12:51acceptance. For like 2 months, I sent
  385. 12:53three more emails. So, I said like, "Uh,
  386. 12:56hey, hope you're doing great. I wanted
  387. 12:57to follow up on our previous
  388. 12:58conversation in case you didn't get my
  389. 13:00email. Just wanted to let you know that
  390. 13:02I'm still really, really interested and
  391. 13:03would love to work." the message is like
  392. 13:05really really straightforward now. And
  393. 13:07that's like when I got an acceptance. If
  394. 13:10they didn't respond, I would just like
  395. 13:12continue sending emails every single
  396. 13:13day. Like I I would have to die to just
  397. 13:16of being tired or like losing motivation
  398. 13:18cuz I genuinely care about the entire
  399. 13:21thing of like to get there I need to
  400. 13:23complete those small steps. This is like
  401. 13:24the matter of just how determined you
  402. 13:26are and like what's your end goal. I'm
  403. 13:29so so generally excited about what I'm
  404. 13:31doing right now and why like that I
  405. 13:33pursue this path. I couldn't be more
  406. 13:35grateful and like I don't see myself

  407. Don't Limit Yourself

  408. 13:37anywhere else. It's just like people
  409. 13:40limit themselves. That's the only thing.
  410. 13:41People limit themselves and they think
  411. 13:43that they're people who were born with a
  412. 13:45talent of dreaming big and they cannot
  413. 13:46do that cuz they're they're just like
  414. 13:48not born or like not meant for that
  415. 13:50life. Look around every single human
  416. 13:52that ever existed on this planet.
  417. 13:54Founding fathers who built America, all
  418. 13:57the presidents, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk,
  419. 13:59they're the same people as you. They
  420. 14:00just were really really curious and they
  421. 14:02stayed curious during their childhood,
  422. 14:03during their adulthood and when they
  423. 14:05were adults, they just like keep
  424. 14:06exploring. So if you just put it in your
  425. 14:08brain, in your head that all of those
  426. 14:10people are identical, but they're just
  427. 14:12like more curious and more eager to
  428. 14:14explore the world, you will realize that
  429. 14:16you can operate at the same scale if
  430. 14:18you'll just go do the thing. So like
  431. 14:20Nike or what company has this like
  432. 14:22saying just do it, go through that limit
  433. 14:24and break the barrier. So that's like
  434. 14:25the only piece of advice I can give.