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

Intro

00:00Hey everyone, my name is Arlon. 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.

00:12Beginning 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 5 3 minutes?"

00:25He 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 cuz what the hell is that subject?

00:39He 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 going to invest. I guess I showed that to him cuz I saw his eyes from like when I told him about and it ended up being my prece round.

01:06I'm the founder of Nomio and we're product lab building context super intelligence uh with our flagship product called NIA which is an API that reduces code hallucinations in coding agents like cursor so developers and companies can ship faster and save from 2 to 5 hours per person per week.

Start Before You Ready

01:27My 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 nmati back home in Kazakhstan.

01:41He 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 going to be very very cool. It is based in Silicon Valley." And like I had no [ __ ] clue what Silicon Valley means or like what is he talking about?

01:54So 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.

02:08Back in 9th grade or 10th 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.

02:19Getting into Stanford became like my number one goal ever. I really wanted to get in, maybe start a company after I graduated. I needed to have a very very strong university application which also includes like really good extracurriculars.

02:32I 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 extra curify which was an AI scholarship for high school students to basically help them apply to summer programs in US and had like AI counselor.

02:51It was very very early child days. It was kind of useful. I got 20,000 active users. I made couple thousand 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.

03:03So 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 want to 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 going to build this thing.

03:17I'm going to launch. I'm going to 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.

03:32So 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 prestigious university. That's like why I stopped cuz I didn't see myself like going 10 years down the line.

03:43And 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 inc before university because I realized that it's going to help me kickstart my career like exponentially compared if if I would go to like university and spend four years there.

Don't Start Local, Go Global

04:10From 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.

04:26I 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 Arlon, an 18-year-old who dropped out of junior year of high school and I finally got in in May this year.

04:40when 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 Arland, how are you doing? Yeah, you're on YC. Congrats. So I just like started screaming on the call.

04:54I screamed so hard that he started laughing. It was like 1:00 a.m. 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 going to support you and relocated to San Francisco.

05:10I always thought that I have to think big like there's no way I will stay in Kazakhstan. I always knew there's no way I'm going to like think locally. I'm like a very heavy user of GitHub copilot and cursor. I really want to work in that space like the codegen developer tools because I didn't really have like domain expertise outside of that.

05:28I'm still at 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 versel AI SDK or like this package cursor will build that for you and it will access the web but it will it will still hallucinate because it doesn't have like this up-to-ate training data of the latest documentation that Versel has.

05:54So NIA 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.

06:11Especially I'm a dev tool. It's not like I'm building some vertical B2B application for hospitals in Usbekistan 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?

06:28It doesn't take a lot of time to set it up for yourself to actually go global just like launch on global websites like Proto Hunt. I got some traction for that. Launched on Product Hunt, got product of the day. Reached out a lot of YC founders.

06:38Hacker News is a really good one. Hacker News is the official website from YC itself. Like people from all over the 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.

06:52just 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 DMing, cold emailing bunch of professors, bunch of other YC founders from like America, Silicon Valley specifically and that like really helped just like think think

How I Got Paul Graham as an Angel Investor at 18

07:10bigger. Yeah, I started call installing people in the beginning of the batch col installation. It literally means that those brothers Patrick Collison and John Collison 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 on boarding.

07:37It's really rare that the founder himself would come to your place and install a software on your laptop cuz 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.

07:52I would post every single color and 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 Mr. in the past four weeks by going to users houses every day.

08:0522% of the OC's and Spotify 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?

08:20Try to make me cry. Roast my product. I need that feedback cuz it's like the most valuable thing you can get from the user or 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.

08:34But 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.

08:49And 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 [ __ ] what I'm doing or like what I'm building.

09:03I should like improve my pitch or I'm cooked during my fundraising week and I'm not going to raise a penny. I said to myself like, "Okay, I got roasted in front of 100 people. I really got to work on myself." So, I was really sad for the rest of the evening, but really motivating at the same time.

09:18Then, at like around 10:00 p.m., I stayed until the end until PG actually goes to his car and leaves. So once he was leaving, I just like crammed 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.

09:34I'm going to improve my pitch and you're going to be shocked." He was very annoyed. So he just said, "Email me at pgy cominator.com." So the same second I emailed this guy. Well, 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.

09:47This is really surprising because 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 Arlon. Thank you so much for the talk. You inspired me to do Colossus installation every day.

10:01Um I believe I can sell to anyone who uses cursor or any aentic IDE. And like here I put new description. So cuz 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.

10:14Straight 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 spend 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 going to invest.

10:35I 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 cuz like he was the first investor in Stripe. So I guess like he also liked that cuz I saw his eyes went like when I told him about color installation we talked for a couple hours and I'm not going to show that part but like in the end he said hey I would invest in you if you'd like.

10:58So that's the entire story.

How to Make People Respond to Your Cold Emails

11:04When 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 because I really wanted to get into Stanford. So I think it was around like 900,000 professors from like top 20 universities.

11:18Georgia Tech, Caltech, Harvard, Stanford. And I got a lot of rejections like 99.9% were all rejections cuz 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 going to explain why it's so bad.

11:34From 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.

11:48The worst thing you can do is put inquiry, exclusive, seeking for. So those types of messages uh really cliche and just like make you sound like a bot. So just like try to avoid those and be very direct even on the subject like TBG I just like told him the kid who stopped you in the end or follow up on voluntary opportunities.

12:07So like really really concise uh just cut the [ __ ] 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 to three sentences.

12:18You get straight to the point. Professor Ila who actually allowed me to work for him for free. He's the head of venture capital at Stanford. Oh here's the email. I wasn't that good but it was shorter this time. Hello my name is Arlin. I would really really like love to explore virtual unpaid internship.

12:34Here'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 assistance soon."

12:46So, it wasn't a rejection, but also not an acceptance. For like 2 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."

13:03the 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 continue sending emails every single day. Like I I would have to die to just of being tired or like losing motivation cuz I genuinely care about the entire thing of like to get there I need to complete those small steps.

13:23This is like the matter of just how determined you are and like what's your end goal. I'm so so generally excited about what I'm doing right now and why like that I pursue this path. I couldn't be more grateful and like I don't see myself

Don't Limit Yourself

13:37anywhere else. It's just like people limit themselves. That's the only thing. People limit themselves and they think that they're people who were born with a talent of dreaming big and they cannot do that cuz they're they're just like not born or like not meant for that life.

13:50Look around every single human that 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.

14:06So 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'll just go do the thing.

14:18So 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 advice I can give.