Alexandr Wang

i forgot about this until @ScottWu46 reminded me, but back in january 2017 when we were 19, scott and i had lunch in SF at lunch, we talked about how our IMO/IOI/math competition gang could be the next paypal mafia. i knew the competition kids were geniuses by any standard, and felt confident in time we could take the tech world by storm fast forward nearly 10 years later, and many of our friends from that time are some of the most exciting people in AI and technology (@ScottWu46, @akshat_b, @chameleon_jeff, Jerry Ma, @randomjohnnyh, @0xShitTrader, @stevenkplus1, @thejessezhang, @vickie_ye_, @alexwei_, @demi_guo_, @d_m_ziegler, @hughbzhang, @_mohansolo, @MarkSellke, and many others i'm sure i'm forgetting) i'm now at that age where i reminisce about everyone i grew up with, and i've known most of these people since middle school (via MATHCOUNTS!). even though we were scattered around the country, we would gchat about math problems and hang out on AoPS, then we did math/algo camps together, and then we did internships together. very crazy to think about the degree of sheer brilliance of this group when we were just teenagers, and so special to see so many go on to leave their mark on the world. note to parents: if your kid is on gchat all day solving math problems with some anonymous group of cross-country asian kids, (s)he may just turn out alright.