- Nepal-born engineer Pratik Karki quit Google after four H-1B visa lottery rejections
- Karki co-founded AI startup Anthromind after leaving his $300,000 Google role at 27
- He pursued an O-1 visa based on extraordinary professional achievements instead of H-1B
A Nepal-born software engineer has revealed how he walked away from a nearly Rs 2.8 crore salary at Google after failing the H-1B visa lottery four times in a row - a decision that eventually led to him securing a US green card and launching his own startup. San Francisco-based techie Pratik Karki shared his story in a viral post on X, describing years of uncertainty, family sacrifice, and the emotional toll of relying on a lottery-based immigration system.
Karki said his connection to the United States began in childhood. His father had worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley, before returning to Nepal after his parents separated, choosing to raise Pratik and his brother there. According to Karki, his father gave up the life he had built in America so the family could stay together. They moved into a small attic room at his grandparents' home in Nepal, where he spent much of his early life.
Years later, Karki returned to the US and landed a high-paying engineering role at Google. But his future in the country depended on the H-1B visa lottery, a system that randomly allocates work visas each year. After being rejected for the fourth consecutive time, Karki said he began preparing for the possibility of leaving the US, even though his wife, pets, and entire life were based there.
"I remember exactly what was going through my head. My partner was here, our cats were here, the life we had built was here. And none of it mattered because of a random draw I kept losing. I was looking at having to pack everything up. Try Canada, or go back to Nepal, and live thousands of miles away from the person I love," he wrote.
See the post here:
Following a long conversation with his wife at their kitchen table, he decided to take a major risk. Confident they had enough savings to survive for a while, Karki quit Google at age 27 despite earning close to US$300,000 a year.
He spent the following months exploring startup ideas with friends, mentors, and fellow founders in San Francisco before eventually co-founding the AI startup Anthromind. He said the idea grew out of problems he observed during failed AI pilot projects while working at Google.
"I left Google. Walked away from close to $300K in yearly comp at age of 27. What followed was the most intense few months of my life. Launching ideas into the air, stress testing them with friends, mentors, and other founders in SF. Somewhere in that haze, I figured out what I actually wanted to build. The definitive human data layer for frontier labs and enterprise AI teams. What had been an intuition from failed AI pilots at Google turned into a real product opportunity," he further shared.
At the same time, Karki began building an alternative immigration pathway. Instead of relying on the H-1B lottery, he pursued an O-1 visa, often referred to as the "Einstein visa," which is granted to individuals with extraordinary professional achievement.
He said he built his application through years of work that included judging hackathons, publishing articles, and strengthening his professional profile during his time at Google. His O-1 visa was approved, and the green card process followed soon after.
Karki recently announced that both he and his wife had finally received their green cards, ending what he described as a long and exhausting immigration journey. "Today my wife and I are both holding our green cards. I keep looking down at mine and feeling exuberant. Two immigrants, one company, one kitchen table conversation that changed everything. Baba, this one is for you, thanks to all your sacrifices and lessons. The immigration journey is over, but Anthromind is just getting started," he added.
His story has resonated widely online, with many highlighting the growing number of highly skilled professionals turning to merit-based immigration pathways such as the O-1 visa, EB-1A green card, and EB-2 National Interest Waiver after repeated failures in the H-1B lottery system.
