Stage 1 review request (Exceptional promise)

Stage 1
1

Bio: Lead AI Engineer, 2+ years building production AI systems across computer vision, NLP, and multimodal AI. Based in Nigeria.

Mandatory Criteria — Recognition as a Leading Talent
Evidence 1 — Named lead role in a product-led tech company
Employed by current employer as Lead AI Engineer, specifically deployed as the founding AI engineer to build a proptech AI product to service as an AI assistant for engineers in the US.
Evidence: offer letter from employer, letter from employer confirming my deployment and role
Evidence 2 — Competitive award with external judging
1st place out of 1,000 participants at a hackathon organized in partnership with the American Business Council
Built an ultrasound AI system: trained a custom model to detect and interpret ultrasound imagery, built a voice-to-voice pregnancy assistant (Nigerian accent), and produced hardware schematics for a handheld device to deploy the model
Prize: 10M naira + trip to San Francisco
Judges from Cisco, Jumia, Smile io, tech cabal — fully external, independent panel
Press coverage: multiple online articles covering the win
Evidence: award certificate, press articles, judge panel documentation, hackathon scale evidence, product screenshots
Evidence 3 — Significant traction on products I built
Fintech app that has processed over 500 billion naira in transactions
Evidence: letter from CEO confirming my contributions, product metrics documentation

Optional Criteria 2 — Contributions Beyond Employment
OC2-1 — Independent venture
Founded your jobpilot, an AI-powered job application tool, currently in production and available as a downloadable app on the app store
Registered company, bootstrapped, with employees
Evidence: company registration, live product, employee records
OC2-2 — Hackathon recognition (supporting)
Healthcare AI work at hackathon demonstrates contribution to a critical sector beyond my employment scope
Evidence: same as MC Evidence 2 above

Optional Criteria 3 — Significant Technical or Commercial Contributions
OC3-1 — Proprietary computer vision system (current employer)
Built a hand-drawn sketch to editable floor plan converter achieving 90% accuracy
Replaced paid commercial alternatives, delivering direct measurable cost savings to the company
Evidence: product demonstration, letter from founder confirming cost savings, technical documentation
OC3-2 — AI multimodal restoration assistant (current employer)
Built a production multimodal AI system for property restoration
Evidence: product screenshots, technical description, supporting letter
OC3-3 — NLP business intelligence system (fintech)
Built a natural language to database query system providing business insights to marketing teams
Deployed on a platform processing 500B naira in transactions
Evidence: product documentation, letter confirming my contribution and business impact

Proposed Recommenders
Head of Engineering at current company (senior engineering leader at major European tech companies) — technical credibility, will disclose current shared employer transparently
Founder of YC-backed company — independent startup ecosystem voice
Hackathon mentor (also founder of a VC-backed company) — witnessed hackathon work firsthand, mentorship context​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

1 Like
2

@Francisca_Chiedu @Raphael and others please

I would appreciate your feedback :pray:t5:

1 Like
3

@Akash_Joshi @Francisca_Chiedu @Raphael your review would be really nice, thanks

4

@bolarinwa

Do you have 2 years of experience in the sector overall, or just 2 years specifically as an AI Engineer? Be careful with how you use job titles. With only 2 years of building production AI systems, you generally should not be using a Lead Engineer title unless you already have several years of prior experience.

Mandatory Criteria - Recognition as a Leading Talent

Being named a lead in a product‑led tech company is a job title, not evidence of how you have been recognised in the sector.

Your evidence listings are descriptions of what you did or were involved in, but they do not clearly state the actual evidence you are submitting. Also, giving feedback on a high level description of your evidence may not be very useful. If you can share the actual evidence set here, I am happy to take a look.

5

@Raphael

Thanks for the feedback, really appreciated. Let me address each point and resubmit with the corrections.

On experience and the “Lead” title: To clarify, I have approximately 4 years of professional experience in tech overall, with 2+ years specifically building production AI systems. I’ve updated the bio to avoid the title framing entirely, “founding AI engineer” better reflects the actual context, which was being brought in as the sole person responsible for building a product’s entire AI infrastructure from scratch.

On Evidence 1 being a title claim: Agreed. I’ve reframed it around substance rather than designation.

On evidence descriptions being too vague: I’ve made each evidence item more specific about what the documents actually confirm, so the strength of the evidence is clearer.

Bio: AI Engineer with 3+ years of professional experience in tech, including 2+ years building production AI systems across computer vision, NLP, and multimodal AI. Currently serving as the founding AI engineer at a proptech company. Based in Nigeria.

Mandatory Criteria — Recognition as a Leading Talent

Evidence 1 — Founding technical leadership in a product-led tech company

Brought in as the sole AI engineer to architect and build a proptech AI product from the ground up for the US market. Operated with full technical ownership — made all AI architecture decisions independently, selected the technology stack, and built the core systems without a senior AI engineer above me. The company’s AI capability did not exist before my deployment.

  • Offer letter confirming my designation as Lead AI Engineer and founding engineer scope
  • Letter from employer confirming I was the sole AI engineer on the product, that no AI infrastructure existed before my arrival, and that I held full technical ownership throughout

Evidence 2 — Competitive award with external judging

  • Award certificate confirming 1st place finish among 1,000 participants at a hackathon organized in partnership with the American Business Council, with a prize of 10M naira and a trip to San Francisco
  • Press articles from multiple independent outlets confirming the win, the scale of the competition, and the product built — an ultrasound AI system with a voice-to-voice pregnancy assistant and hardware schematics
  • Judge panel documentation confirming the judging panel was fully external and independent, comprising representatives from Cisco, Jumia, Smile.io, and Tech Cabal
  • Hackathon scale evidence confirming 1,000+ participants
  • Product screenshots demonstrating the ultrasound AI system built and submitted during the competition

Evidence 3 — Significant traction on products I built

  • Letter from CEO confirming my specific technical contributions to building the fintech platform and my role in the features that drove transaction volume
  • Product metrics documentation confirming the platform has processed over 500 billion naira in transactions

Optional Criteria 2 — Contributions Beyond Employment

OC2-1 — Independent venture

Founded yourjobpilot, an AI-powered job application tool, currently live in production and available as a downloadable app on the app store. Registered company, bootstrapped, with employees.

  • Company registration documents confirming legal incorporation
  • Live product accessible at yourjobpilot and on the app store
  • Employee records confirming the venture has hired staff

OC2-2 — Hackathon recognition (supporting)

Healthcare AI work at the hackathon demonstrates a meaningful contribution to a critical sector entirely outside my employment scope.

  • Evidence same as MC Evidence 2 above

Optional Criteria 3 — Significant Technical or Commercial Contributions

OC3-1 — Proprietary computer vision system (current employer)

Built a hand-drawn sketch to editable floor plan converter achieving 90% accuracy. Replaced paid commercial alternatives, delivering direct and measurable cost savings to the company.

  • Product demonstration showing the system working end-to-end
  • Letter from founder confirming the system replaced a paid commercial tool and the cost savings delivered
  • Technical documentation describing the architecture and accuracy benchmarks

OC3-2 — AI multimodal restoration assistant (current employer)

Built a production multimodal AI system enabling restoration engineers to receive intelligent structural assistance through a multi-step AI workflow.

  • Product screenshots showing the live system
  • Technical description of the multimodal architecture
  • Supporting letter confirming the system is in production use

OC3-3 — NLP business intelligence system (fintech)

Built a natural language to database query system providing real-time business insights to marketing teams. Deployed on a platform processing over 500B naira in transactions.

  • Product documentation describing the system and its business use
  • Letter from employer confirming my contribution and the measurable business impact delivered

Proposed Recommenders

  • Head of Engineering at current company (senior engineering leader at major European tech companies) — technical credibility; shared employer relationship will be disclosed transparently
  • Founder of a YC-backed company — independent startup ecosystem voice
  • Hackathon mentor (also founder of a VC-backed company) — witnessed the hackathon work firsthand, mentorship context
6

@bolarinwa

On experience and the “Lead” title: To clarify, I have approximately 4 years of professional experience in tech overall, with 2+ years specifically building production AI systems. I’ve updated the bio to avoid the “Lead” title framing entirely; “founding AI engineer” better reflects the actual context, which was being brought in as the sole person responsible for building a product’s entire AI infrastructure from scratch.

It’s safer to keep this simple, especially since you are applying through the Promise pathway and you are not mandated to hold a “Lead engineer” title in order to demonstrate leadership. You can show that through your evidence instead. I’ve seen feedback along the lines of: “…the applicant claims to be a Lead…” while claiming x number of years in the sector to be eligible for the Promise pathway…

On “Evidence 1 - Founding technical leadership in a product-led tech company”

An offer letter and a letter from an employer will not, on their own, demonstrate how you led a team or the development of a product in a digital technology company. In fact, the guidelines state clearly that reference letters are not sufficient. They are primarily meant to reference and validate the evidence you provide.

Evidence 2 - Competitive award with external judging

An award can be a good evidence when you clearly show what you were awarded for. For example, if you achieved 1st place among 1,000 participants at a hackathon, you should show what you actually did, as well as the selection and winning criteria. Press articles covering the event would be very helpful as external third party validation. Regarding the judge panel documentation, is this a formal document? If the source is not clearly credible, it may be viewed as self authored. However, if it is hosted on an external platform, such as the organiser’s official website, it can help validate your claim.

For hackathon scale evidence, consider what you can provide: photos, videos, or a database of registered users with metadata can all help demonstrate the scale.

Product screenshots are more persuasive when shown in context, for example, as part of what you presented to the judges, or as screenshots from the organiser’s platform where you uploaded your work. In that context, they can support your case. If they are presented as standalone screenshots without context, they may be less convincing. That said, if the complementary evidence above is strong, it can help compensate.

Evidence 3 - Significant traction on products I built

Adding another letter here may not be ideal. Having more than one letter within the same criterion can start to weaken the overall strength of your application. Product metrics documentation is typically a company sales artefact and may not clearly show how you, as a technical contributor, led or created the product. A letter from an executive can be useful if it explicitly attributes the product’s growth to the technical work you did.

For your OC2-1, company registration documents, a live product, and employee records will not show how you were recognised for contributing to the sector outside your day-to-day role. In fact, company registration can work against this, unless it is an NGO or similar context.

For OC2-2, you mentioned: “Evidence same as MC Evidence 2 above.” The guidance states that evidence needs to be unique. Reusing all of the same evidence from MC in OC2 is likely to appear repetitive or misaligned. Some evidence can be reused strategically, but it should be presented with a different context and narrative.

You currently have around four letters overall, which is quite a lot. The OC3 items are either descriptive or not yet convincing as evidence of how you technically contributed to a product-led company.

The authors of your three mandatory letters seem appropriate.

To be honest, you do have some promising pieces, but based on the recent standards, there is still a significant amount of work to do. I would encourage you to take some time to gather more robust and convincing evidence, especially for OC3.

All the best.

7

Raphael’s points on evidence are right. I want to add something on your OC2 strategy specifically, because both slots have a problem.

Your independent venture (yourjobpilot) is a registered, bootstrapped company with employees - that’s commercial activity, not voluntary work outside your occupation. The guide is explicit: OC2 evidence must be for non-paid, voluntary activities that are not undertaken whilst representing a company you’re associated with. A company you founded and run doesn’t qualify. That slot needs to be replaced entirely.

The hackathon reuse across MC and OC2 is also risky. You can reference the same underlying work in a supporting capacity, but if the primary evidence documents are identical across two criteria, assessors flag it. OC2 needs its own distinct evidence - structured mentorship through a recognised programme (offline, with selection criteria), open source contributions with verifiable traction, or a speaking engagement on the main stage of a 100+ attendee sector event.

On MC Evidence 1 - the strongest framing isn’t the founding engineer context, it’s the scale of what you built on top of it. A fintech platform processing 500B naira in transactions is a significant number. The question is whether you can isolate your individual technical contribution to that outcome with third-party evidence - not just a CEO letter, but something independently verifiable. That’s what lifts it from “capable employee” to recognition.