The YC Mantra
Inside Y Combinator, one piece of wisdom echoes through every batch: ship, ship, ship.
But sometimes, shipping alone isn’t enough to win.
Back in Stripe’s early days, founders Patrick and John Collison didn’t wait for users to figure things out on their own. They would literally grab the keyboard, integrate Stripe into a customer’s product, and only leave once payments were running live.
That relentless, hands-on approach became legendary in YC history as the “Collison Install.”
Meet Arlan Rakhmetzhanov: From dropout to YC founder
Today, that playbook is alive again in the story of Arlan Rakhmetzhanov, a Kazakh high school dropout who is now part of YC’s S25 batch.
Arlan refused to wait for users to onboard themselves to his product, Nozomio. Instead, he went straight to developer teams, set up the integrations personally, and ensured they were up and running.
He repeated this process daily throughout YC.
The result?
$11K in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) within just four weeks.
What Nozomio builds
Nozomio’s first product is Nia, a context augmentation layer designed for coding agents.
- Indexes repositories and documentation
- Injects deeper development context into workflows
- Boosted Cursor’s performance by 27%
- Compatible with any coding agent and any IDE
Why this matters
The Collison Install isn’t just a Stripe story from the past — it’s a timeless lesson for founders everywhere: Don’t just sell your product. Make sure people actually use it.
Arlan is carrying that same YC energy into the present, now bringing Nozomio and Nia to developer communities worldwide through LinkedIn and beyond. For startups, the difference between hype and traction is simple: hands-on execution.
Arlan’s journey shows what’s possible when founders stop waiting and start installing.
If your dev team wants to explore Nia, drop a comment and get connected.
