Founder recounts dropping Ivy League for AI hacking in SF, now mentors Horowitz Andreessen Academy

The author recounts leaving Canada at 17 after flying 4,236 km to San Francisco, declining an Ivy League program, and living in WeWorks while hacking on AI models and pursuing an O-1 visa. David Holz, later of Midjourney, gave him housing. At 18 he joined a hacker house with AI researchers including Karpathy, tested an early Slackbot that became Claude in 2023, and got his visa sponsored by Naval. He later founded Extraordinary, which helps talented people relocate to the US and works with companies like Ramp, Cognition, and a16z. He is now a mentor at the newly launched Horowitz Andreessen Academy.

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