My neighbor applied to US colleges on my behalf.
I never asked him to.
That one decision led to everything.
β A decade building AI before it was called AI
β Vision-language models at @MicrosoftAI
β @Uber's blue dots, where you get picked up. Location search. First AI agent.
β Search & agents at @Dropbox Dash
β Now building @joinNEXA - AI that knows who you should know
The whole time, visa anxiety in the background.
Anyone who's been through the US immigration system knows the feeling.
You build, you ship, you prove yourself.
Then wait for a piece of paper to tell you it counts.
Finally got my O-1.
Shoutout to @0xSigil for the advice that genuinely changed the trajectory of my application.
One conversation paved the way.
And thanks to @extraordinary for the hoodie.
Finally, an Alien of Extraordinary Ability π½
I'm officially an Alien of Extraordinary Ability and moving to NYC thanks to @extraordinary
O-1 took 2 weeks but 15 years to build.
Late-night coding β product launches β startups founded β bets on myself all came together for USCIS to review.
There's no shortcut.
LFG π
In 2024, a high schooler cold DM'd us asking if he could work at Cognition before college. We said yes. We ended up helping him with his college essays and his US visa.
If you've used DeepWiki or Devin, you've seen @Mokshit06's work.
@3blue1brown sat down with us to hear the whole story.
we threw a welcome to earth party for our Alien of Extraordinary Ability πΈπΊπΈ alien flowers, alien hoodie, American flag, map of earth, moon projector.
huge congrats @suntzukit on the O1A! thx @extraordinary for the iconic hoodie (cc: @0xSigil) π¦