i was selected for silkroad fellows, a fully funded technology and entrepreneurship program in the san francisco bay area with an acceptance rate below 5%. for six weeks, i worked from the silkroad innovation hub while contributing to research, community programs, and products built for the central asian community.
what i worked on
one of my main projects was an ai readiness study conducted with the mit kuo sharper center for prosperity and entrepreneurship. we started with 726 startup survey submissions and developed a focused dataset of 472 companies across kazakhstan, uzbekistan, kyrgyzstan, tajikistan, and azerbaijan. i analyzed how these startups were adopting ai in their daily operations and helped develop country profiles and specific findings that showed where the region’s ai ecosystem was growing and where important gaps remained.
i also joined the digital nomads kazakhstan team with other fellows to build a full-stack mentorship platform for the broader central asian community. i worked on the system architecture, relational data models, authentication, user profiles, and the workflows that help mentors and mentees discover and connect with one another. the project continued after the fellowship, which gave me the chance to stay involved with the community while building something that could make its knowledge and connections easier to access.
at the hub, i helped organize a meetup for more than 50 fellows, founders, students, and members of the silkroad community. i worked on the program and interactive activities, then watched conversations continue well after the formal event had ended. i also supported unicorn battlefield and learned directly from founders and investors about how early-stage companies make product decisions, approach technical growth, and think about fundraising.
beyond the hub
i treated the bay area itself as part of the program. i attended a figma × notion event and an invite-only google cloud × startx gathering at google headquarters. instead of leaving after the talks, i pushed myself to introduce myself to people whose work interested me and ask questions about how they had found their way into research, engineering, or startups. one of those conversations led me to a technical paper roundtable and eventually to a mentor.
i also competed in my first hackathons in the united states. our team placed in the top 5 out of 94 teams at the mongodb ai hackathon, where we built rehearsal room, a voice agent for practicing difficult conversations. soon afterward, i was selected for an nvidia-hosted physical ai sprint and worked with robotic hardware for the first time. our project, within reach, explored how an assistive robotic arm could identify obstacles, replan its movement, and bring essential items within reach.
what stayed with me
the fellowship made the technology and startup world feel much less abstract. i was able to work alongside founders and engineers, ask researchers about paths i had previously only considered from a distance, and better understand how software, research, and entrepreneurship can overlap.
the part i value most, however, is the community. the fellows became the people i continued building with after we left the house. we still review applications together, plan hackathons, and support one another when a new idea feels exciting or uncertain. the program lasted six weeks, but the relationships and work that began there did not end when the summer did.