How a guy from Almaty dropped out of school to move to London and start his own startup

Arlan Rakhmetzhanov, 18 years old, city — Almaty, Founder CEO Nozomio, Linkedin

About Me

Since an early age, I have been passionate about technology, which is probably why I became the founder of a startup for the second time. This passion was largely nurtured by my parents, Valeria and Sanzhar, to whom I am grateful for their support and inspiration. From the age of 10 or 11, I became interested in entrepreneurship: I read a lot about Silicon Valley and Steve Jobs, although at that time I did not fully understand why I was so drawn to that place.

When I was in high school and turned 15, I wanted to create an internal tool that would use artificial intelligence to help me apply for the best scholarships and extracurricular programs. After the tool started working and producing results, my friends also asked for access to it, and soon others began using it. That’s when I decided to monetize my solution, and it eventually grew to 20,000 users. It was then that I realized how great it is to solve problems that help not only yourself but also the people around you — it was a turning point for me.

Additionally, in my free time, I developed more than five iOS apps and published them on the App Store, where they collectively garnered over 10,000 downloads as of 2025. I also released a mini-book on venture capital for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Nevertheless, my main goal has always been to get into Stanford University. I was not interested in other universities because I clearly knew that I would end up there one day. I sent cold emails to more than 300 professors and eventually got the opportunity to become a research assistant for Professor Ilya Strebulayev, the founder of the venture capital initiative at Stanford.

Currently, I am developing a startup that creates a platform for orchestrating autonomous AI agents, automating routine tasks in software development, such as manual code search, learning new codebases, quality control, and code review.

About the Project

My startup is called Nozomio. I start with Nia — an AI engineer capable of deeply and contextually understanding complex codebases and automating routine tasks in software development. Most modern artificial intelligence tools work more like advanced auto-completions, lacking deep contextual understanding. This leads to developers constantly having to monitor and manually correct errors made by AI. I personally encountered this problem and, after numerous conversations with other engineers, confirmed that there is a huge demand on the market for a tool capable of independently building a multi-level model of code and performing tasks like an experienced senior developer.

Current stage: I launched the product on February 14. In this time, I attracted more than 700 users, of whom over 15 are already paying. Last week, I signed a contract with a B2B client. The product took third place in the Product of the Day ranking on Product Hunt and is used by two teams from Y Combinator.

About the Entrepreneurs First Program

Entrepreneurs First, EF, is a leading European accelerator specializing in investing in talented individual founders at the earliest stages, often even before an idea or team is formed. Since its founding in 2011, EF has helped create more than 600 companies with a combined valuation exceeding $11 billion.

The program is supported by a number of well-known entrepreneurs and investors, including Patrick and John Collison — founders of Stripe, Reid Hoffman — co-founder of LinkedIn, Tom Blomfield — founder of Monzo, Demis Hassabis — co-founder of DeepMind, and Matt Mullenweg — creator of WordPress.

EF invests up to $250,000 in startups, receiving 8% equity in return, as well as additional equity through MFN, Most Favored Nation, which is fixed upon attracting external investments.

I learned about EF when I was in school and felt that I was getting bored — I wanted to go beyond the curriculum and try myself in real entrepreneurship. One day, I saw a post on LinkedIn about the top 10 accelerators in the world, and EF was on this list as one of the best in Europe. This immediately caught my attention, and I decided to apply.

As soon as I found out that I had been accepted into the Entrepreneurs First program, I immediately called my acquaintance, now friend — Arsen Klyshbek, co-founder of The Personal AI Company, who also went through this program. We were happy, and literally five minutes later I already knew for sure — it was time to leave.

Initially, the invitation came from the Paris office of the accelerator, but after a call with Arsen and Nurdaulet Bazylbekov, founder of Eurasian Hub, it became clear that I needed to go to London. There are more venture capital funds, and the next 48 hours we activated our entire network to organize a transfer to another city.

Arsen corresponded with the team in San Francisco, I was constantly in touch with Paris, which did not want to let me go, and Nurdaulet contacted the heads of the London program, being in a ten-hour flight from Europe to America, and asked for a decision to be made urgently.

In the end, we received an offer from the London program, and I immediately signed it.

My parents supported me, and I am immensely grateful to them for believing in my decisions and providing constant support. The reaction of my parents turned out to be better than I expected: my mom cried with joy, and my dad immediately supported me and said that I should not miss such an opportunity under any circumstances. Thanks to their support, this step was much easier for me than I could have imagined.

I also want to express special gratitude to Arsen Klyshbek and Nurdaulet Bazylbekov, who helped me with the move and adaptation to the new place.

Plans

My main principle is “to do what people really need.” In the near future, I plan to constantly communicate with users, understand their needs as deeply as possible, and continue to improve the product based on their feedback.

And also, if you are reading this and want to quit everything to move to Silicon Valley and build the future of software development, write to me at arlan@nozomio.com.