The Sun Is Also a Star
Chapter 23 of “Hold On’’: Cafe Reggio, NYC 2015
(N.B. I’m writing a novel, a chapter a week, here on Medium. Find out why I write here, start from Chapter 1 here, and always feel free to give me feedback in the comments. I write here for the community.)
While flying back from Peshawar to Istanbul, and then Istanbul to New York, Ahmed felt a deep sadness. He was leaving his parents and Hira behind in Peshawar and wished he could take them with him. For a moment, he imagined Hira flying back alongside him. In an attempt to soothe his aching heart, Ahmed turned to the cherished memories they had created during their time together. During his two-month summer break, he met Hira four times. They had deep conversations about their future. In the second month, Hira’s semester ended and she focused on her capstone project from home, making it difficult for her to leave the house.
Upon settling in New York City, Ahmed began preparing for a startup competition at NYU. The university offered a $20,000 grant for students to set up AI-driven startups and develop products aimed at solving pressing issues. Ahmed spent many nights in the university’s labs and library, working on his project.
Before the competition, Ahmed called his parents and Hira, asking for their prayers. His parents assured him they would pray, while Hira promised to give alms from her modest pocket money if she encountered someone deserving in their street. Ahmed was touched by Hira’s care and support.
Twenty startups were selected for pitch presentations before the jury. Ahmed’s idea, which involved developing a Natural Language Processing (NLP) product to evaluate university admission applications in the US, attracted significant attention and questions. He argued that universities spend a lot of time and resources evaluating applications and demonstrated the performance of his machine learning model on applications received by NYU, which the university allowed him to use for his startup. With a 70% accuracy rate, Ahmed expressed his desire to improve the model’s performance by using the grant for additional data and research assistants. He also discussed matching universities with applicants based on the alumni profiles, asking universities if they wanted to continue attracting similar applicants or change the mix. Ahmed claimed that his product would achieve over 90% accuracy if he won the grant.
Ahmed’s startup was among the three selected in this round. The second startup planned to tackle NYC’s traffic congestion by making predictions every noon, aiming to alleviate congestion during office closing times. Based on their model, traffic alerts would be sent to drivers in NYC, informing them which routes were more likely to become congested. The major challenge this startup faced was that its model could only shift congestion from one route to another. To address this, they needed to develop a system that generated different messages for various drivers, distributing traffic across multiple routes. The third startup focused on crime detection in the city using computer vision technology. The model analyzed and interpreted images and videos captured by surveillance cameras in real time to identify suspicious activities. Alerts were then generated for law enforcement personnel allowing them to react efficiently.
Thrilled with the grant decision, Ahmed immediately informed Hira and his parents through a text message before approaching Elizabeth, who generally went by Lizzy. She was a fellow contestant. Lizzy’s idea involved ranking universities differently by focusing on teaching quality and student care. Although her idea garnered many questions, she did not win the competition. Ahmed truly appreciated Lizzy’s idea. Even though they were part of the same cohort and had seen each other in various classes, they had never spoken to one another beyond the usual greetings. Ahmed expressed to Lizzy how fascinating he found her idea and mentioned that he was contemplating how her work could be integrated with his to create a more effective product for university application assessments. He admitted that he had struggled to match new students with alumni, but Lizzy had already made progress in that area. Excited by this revelation and seeking consolation after losing the competition, Lizzy agreed to meet Ahmed at a café across Washington Square Park. They walked together to Café Reggio.
Ahmed shared his background with Lizzy, who was amazed by his excellent English. She had always thought Pakistan was in the Middle East where people spoke Arabic. In turn, Ahmed asked about Lizzy’s life. She revealed that she was from Minneapolis, a Midwestern city, and would be the first college graduate in her family. No one in her family had ever traveled to New York or even Chicago, which was relatively close. While sitting in the café, Ahmed pointed out a coffee machine with a plaque indicating it was the first coffee machine ever imported to the USA. He also mentioned that the café had hosted Bob Dylan and Jane Jacobs in the 1960s and had been the site of much resistance during that time. Lizzy was once again astounded by Ahmed’s knowledge of the neighborhood. After their introduction, Ahmed did not hesitate to ask Lizzy to join as a co-founder for their new venture. Lizzy appreciated the offer but asked for some time to consider it.
She explained, “If you don’t mind, can I get back to you next week? I’ve been working on this competition and have neglected my other assignments. I need to catch up on those and then think about your offer. But I’m truly thankful. And you know we are called ‘Minnesota Nice’. (Lizzy giggled). So it’s always heartening to see kindness in others around us.”
Ahmed understood her need for time and agreed to wait. Meanwhile, he decided to refine his work further, figuring out how the two ideas could be integrated to create a winning product for university applications. As they both went on their separate ways, they felt optimistic about the potential of their future collaboration and the impact it could have on the world of higher education.
