A Nepal-born engineer once made a decision many would hesitate to take. He walked away from a nearly $300,000-a-year job at Google, all because of an immigration lottery that kept saying no. Two years later, he now has a green card and his own company.
My father gave up American dream, I didn’t
The story begins not with the founder, but with his father, a researcher who completed postdoctoral work at Harvard and Berkeley, only to abandon his American career to raise two young sons alone after a marriage ended. The family returned to Nepal, to a single room in a grandparent’s attic.
“Every move I have made since leaving Nepal has been about continuing what he started,” Pratik wrote in a social media post, which has now amassed over 120,000 views. That sense of unfinished dreams quietly shaped everything that came next.
Four Rejections and a $300K Job on the Line
Pratik eventually found his way back to the United States, landing a job at Google. But his immigration status depended on the H-1B lottery, a system that randomly decides work visas each year. After the fourth rejection, he sat with the email for a long time. His partner was in the US.
“I remember exactly what was going through my head. My partner was here, our cats were here, the life we had built was here. And none of it mattered because of a random draw I kept losing,” Pratik wrote.
He added, “I was looking at having to pack everything up. Try Canada, or go back to Nepal, and live thousands of miles away from the person I love.”
That night, he and his wife had a long conversation. She reminded him they had savings. That this was his dream. That was enough. “We had enough saved to stay afloat, and that this was my dream after all. That was all the conviction I needed.”
GOT OUR GREEN CARDS TODAY! Here’s the full story, no BS, and a special thank you to my dad.
My dad did his postdocs at Harvard and Berkeley when I was a toddler. Then his marriage ended, and he had to take care of my brother and me on his own.
Walking away from Google
At 27, he made the decision. He left Google, walking away from a salary close to $300,000 a year. What followed was not easy. The next few months were intense and uncertain. He spent his time in San Francisco testing startup ideas with friends, mentors, and other founders, trying to find something worth building.
There was no clear roadmap. Just questions, ideas, and long conversations. “Somewhere in that haze, I figured out what I actually wanted to build. The definitive human data layer for frontier labs and enterprise AI teams,” Pratik shared.
The idea that finally stuck came from his time at Google itself. He had seen repeated failures in
AI projects and noticed a gap, there wasn’t a reliable way to structure human data for advanced AI systems and enterprise use. At a startup event in San Francisco, he met a co-founder who had been thinking about the same problem. That meeting led to the beginning of a new company called AnthroMind.
The visa fight ahead
Having ditched the H-1B path, Pratik filed for an O-1 visa, granted to individuals with “extraordinary ability.” The case was approved. “I did all the groundwork myself, through my Google career, judging hackathons, and published writing. The case got approved!”
The green card, issued under the EB-1 category, followed. On Tuesday night, he and his wife were both holding theirs. “Two immigrants, one company, one kitchen table conversation that changed everything,” he wrote. “Baba, this one is for you.”