Extraordinary - Aliens of Extraordinary Ability

Directory

Read stories of extraordinary individuals who crossed oceans to pursue their dreams, including those who were granted O-1 visas and EB-1A green cards.

Vinod Khosla

Investor, Khosla Ventures

Co-founded Sun Microsystems, revolutionizing computing when most saw computers as niche technology
Built Khosla Ventures to fund radical technologies others were too scared to touch
Invested $1B in clean energy, believing entrepreneurs can solve global challenges

Patrick Collison

CEO of Stripe, Co-Founder of Arc Institute

Grew up in rural Ireland, started coding at age 10.
Co-founder & CEO of Stripe.
Trying to increase the GDP of the internet.
Fascinated by progress, science, and how things get built.
People underestimate how much they can just do things.

Ali Ghodsi

CEO · Databricks

Co-founder and CEO of Databricks, a $62 Billion cloud computing company
Ph.D. in Distributed Computing at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden
Collaborator on Apache Spark
First Gen Refugee from Syria

Guillermo Rauch

Founder & CEO · Vercel

Started coding at 7, created my first company at 11, became a developer at 16, moved to San Francisco at 18
Created Next.js, a React framework used by 500k+ developers worldwide
Founder & CEO of Vercel, a cloud services company valued at $2.5B serving companies like Uber and Notion

Braden Boyko

Founder · Beluga

22 Year Old Storyteller
Viral Content Expert with over 2.3+ Billion views across all platforms
Gained 5 Million Subscribers in 5 months
Creator of Beluga (10M+ subscribers on Youtube) and various other channels.
Currently building Extraordinary with @Sigil.

Sigil Wen

Founder · Extraordinary.com

Giving hoodies to extraordinary aliens and investing in the top O.1% of talent
Opted out of M&T @ UPenn to build in silicon valley
Built Airchat with Naval
Actively angel investing ($25k-$100k) in exceptional technology founders through Spearhead

Danielle Fong

Inventor · LightCell Energy

Ph.D in Physics @Princeton at age 17
Forbes 30 Under 30 Energy Standout (2011)
Mentor @Thiel 20 Under 20 fellowship
Currently Founder, CEO, Inventor @lightcell energy
2x United Nations Speaker on Energy Tech Entrepreneurship

Deedy Das

Principal · Menlo Ventures

Principal @Menlo Ventures
Founding Team @Glean, Google Search, Facebook.
Worked with Pinecone and Anthropic, helped run $100M Anthology Fund.
Advisor to Perplexity, Sana, Aisera
Angel investor in Cartesia, Fulcrum.

Garry Tan

CEO of Y Combinator

President & CEO @ycombinator
Founder @Initialized Capital
Featured on Forbes Midas List
Designer/engineer who helps Founders
San Francisco Dem accelerating the Boom Loop

Steven Tey

Founder, CEO · Dub.co

Alex Masmej

CEO · Drakula.app

A blockchain entrepreneur known for pioneering personal tokenization and co-founding the NFT social platform Showtime.

Jason Liu

Founder · Instructor

Creator of Instructor.
prev. StitchFix, Meta
University of Waterloo Grad

Peer Richelsen

Co-Founder · Cal.com

Richard Craib

Founder & CEO · Numerai

Evil Rabbit

Founding Designer · Vercel

Founding Designer @ Vercel.

Div Garg

CEO · MultiON

Stanford PhD candidate and Cornell Bachelors graduate
Specializing in reinforcement learning and artificial intelligence agents
Dropped out to build Multion
Track record in self-driving car research at companies like Apple and Uber

Gill Verdon

Founder · Extropic and e/acc

Shawn Wang (swyx)

AI Engineer

Coiner of AI Engineer. Runs the Latent Space Pod

Aryan Sharma

CEO · Induced

i'm working on induced to accelerate actionable ai. we are a lean team, with amazing backers, and we ship fast. join us!
i've been working in tech since i was 13. after high school, i got a full scholarship from eric schmidt (former google ceo) to attend any university in america, but i decided to continue building products on my own instead. in the time after, i've been fortunate enough to work with and learn from incredible founders/operators/investors around the world - and that's seeded a lot of my work and thinking.

Vincent Weisser

CEO · Prime Intellect

Dhaval Shroff

Autopilot AI · Tesla

One of the Three Musketeers in Walter Isaacson's Elon Musk Biography. Founding team of tesla autopilot

Dylan Blau

3D Designer

Swiss 3D generalist/creative director based in NYC. Building
@lilnounsdao

Nikunj Kothari

VP · Khosla Ventures

Venture Partner at Khosla Ventures. Built Meter, Opendoor

Marvin Von Hagen

CEO · Interaction, ex MIT

Founder of interaction.co

Kashif Ali

CEO · TaxGPT (YC W24)

Bolun Li

Founder · Zogo

Zara Stone

Journalist and Author

UK born, San Francisco-based journalist and author. Full time tech culture reporter at The San Francisco Standard.
I have reported on the intersection of technology, culture, and business for The New York Times, The Atlantic, Fortune, Wired, Cosmopolitan, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, among others.
Author of, "Killer Looks: The Forgotten History of Plastic Surgery," (Prometheus Books, 2021) a narrative nonfiction book that explores the history of prison reform through the cosmetic surgery program offered to incarcerated people.

Will O’Brien

Founder · Ulysses

Diego Rodríguez

Co-Founder · Krea AI

Creator of Krea

Kumar Abhirup

Co-Founder · Merse (YC S24)

I am a 21yo Founder and Engineer, having built many projects in past, I am on a path aiming to solve humanities' most pressing issues, in an iterative fashion, starting from most trivial things imaginable.
Co-founder of Merse.co (YC S24) — Previously building Airchat (acquired) with Naval — Founder itsbeam.com (acquired)