Support funding for Hardeep Gambhir's gap semester

Project summary

I am 20 y/o, taking a gap year after my first year in university to build communities and school of ‘builders’ in the Bay Area.

I have always found joy in building and shipping side-projects of mine. Early in my life, I’d organize community events for Indian festivals at 9 years old, emulate games at 10, hack software and games, and build art and craft projects at 11.

In pursuit of this curiosity of building projects, I realized early on I had surpassed my school’s art and computer curriculum by magnitudes. After hearing about similar positive experiences about project-based learning from numerous like-minded ambitious peers, I want this learning style to scale.

We are building a school of ‘builders’ where young people can pursue their ideas, be it for solving global problems or building interesting AI tools, full-time by taking a break from school and living together. We call this school The Residency advised by Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.

Despite initial struggles, we decided to push through and run our first mini cohort of five people in September to test our idea. I want to help run this cohort this September and facilitate the first cohort by bootstrapping and aiming to earn money through part-time side jobs and grants.

There is much potential in the Bay for my vision to flourish. I am building and joining builder communities where I hope to play a vital role in bringing them to life. I have been a community builder for as long as I can remember. Whether it’d be organizing events for 200+ people for Indian festivals when I was 8 years old or founding the Effective Altruism community in my university in my first year. I am confident I will be able to foster a place(s) for people to flourish with high energy.

What are this project's goals and how they be achieved?

We hope to remove the resistance young people have before starting a project that seems too complex, giving them a safe space to build their ideas and fail and fail again until they succeed. We hope this self-learning model will inspire and motivate the selected ambitious students to be immersed in the culture of ‘building and shipping’ and work on themselves. Initially we hope to be a place where young people come to take gap years - and eventually hope to become a place that provides an alternative self-education with community altogether.

How will this funding be used?

Living and travel costs to take a gap year and come to the Bay.

Given my current savings, I need to make an additional $1200 USD every month to sustain my gap year in the Bay Area. This $2000 funding will extend my runway period an additional two months giving me enough time to build a thriving community while I search for sustainable part-time jobs.

Who is on the team and what's their track record on similar projects?

Nick Linck is the Founder of The Residency. He excelled as a research scientist at IBM where he wrote numerous papers and patents. He started The Residency after building several startups and realizing the power of project based learning. Pedro Carreño is our Residence Experience Advisor with over 10 years of experience in building schools with a focus on innovation at Transcend Education. Jessica Hubley is our Legal Strategy Advisor and Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI is our strategic advisor.

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails? (premortem)

Finances are the most likely causes of the failure of my gap year. If I am unable to get a sustainable low-time commitment job in the right amount of time, I won’t be able to work with my desired intensity for these goals. Having this funding that extends my runway, it’ll help take my time to look for jobs while not drawing my focus away from my primary goals.

The outcome of not being able to financially support myself after October would mean having to move back to Toronto and work remotely for The Residency. This situation will be less than ideal when I want to ensure our success through facilitating and fostering the culture of the first in-person cohort.

The Residency itself would fail if a competitor comes along who offers a better service and culture to our target audience: ambitious young builders. Right now, we are a desirable option for many young builders. We received 120+ applications for our first cohort from students from Harvard, Stanford and driven autodidacts.

What other funding is this person or project getting?

I applied to Emergent Ventures but did not make it through. I am waiting to hear back from a few cold emails and 1517 Fund.

For now, I have not secured any external funding.

This is a career development and travel regrant to Hardeep Gambhir, an interesting high-energy teenager from Canada. It will enable him to take a gap year from university, travel, and explore various projects he might want to work on.

In the context of being introduced by a common collaborator (Nick), I've had a couple of conversations with Hardeep, and I was impressed by his high energy, past demonstrated agency, and knack for community building. His main goals are (and ought to be) flexible, as of now centering around visiting the US, especially the Bay Area, and exploring different communities and potential projects.

I'd be excited to see Hardeep hone his community-building aptitude, maybe nurturing and connecting promising communities across the Bay. Yet, should he decide to pivot and work on something drastically different, that might also produce interesting results. It seems to me he was a bit overlooked by the current funding systems and could potentially be a diamond in the rough. He has a thrifty mindset and originally was asking for $2000, which I upped to $4000 as that seems like it might give him a lot more flexibility given how constrained he currently is.

In the case of failure, I'd guess that the most likely scenario is that Hardeep's gap year just goes so-so, and it would've been a better alternative for him to stay in university.

Of note, The Residency is collaborating with a house that friends and I run together, and The Residency will host their MVP cohort here. Hardeep will likely come to visit should he come to the Bay, and pending how his plans pan out, he might become a housemate in the future.