@thecuriousmaverick: This Delhi kid got a cease-and-desist from Google at 13. Now, he’s an O-1 recipient and has raised $81M for his U.S. company. Meet Tanay Kothari. At 10, Tanay watched Iron Man and decided he wanted to build a real life Jarvis. Back then, his parents allowed one hour of screen time a day. So he coded in secret from 10:30 pm to 5:00 am every night. And built 50+ apps through school. And when he was 13 years old, Google sent him a cease-and-desist. He’d built an app with 2.5M users, that Google did not like. But his obsession was clear: Make computers understand humans. That obsession continued through undergrad and masters Stanford University. He built and sold his first company before graduating, through which he also got the O-1 visa. And since 2021, he’s built one of the largest voice-first AI startups, Wispr Flow. Today, he’s the CEO of Wispr and recently raised $81M to scale the company. And the best part is: his company regularly sponsors immigrants on H-1Bs and O-1s, because he knows the pain of needing it as an international student. If your goal is to get an O-1 as a founder, focus on your obsession. Focus on building something that people use, that you can raise money for, and scale. If you do that, the visa will follow. Btw, I published a 60-page free guide on the O-1 with a lawyer. Comment below “guide” to get it.

Soundarya Balasubramani 💫

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Saturday 20 December 2025 17:30:15 GMT