At 14, Kimi began working on real-world projects. He didn’t wait until he felt ready, nor did he wait for permission—instead, he learned by doing, and moved forward through trial and error. This article captures how, over the course of one summer, he shifted from an observer to a creator. What follows is his story.
At 14, through hands-on projects, I quietly overturned the idea of “learn first, then do.”
I used to believe things should be fully understood and well prepared before you actually start doing them. As if, without being ready, you simply shouldn’t set off too early.
That summer at 14 changed that completely. In a cycle of errors, crashes, and restarts, I realized something fundamental: real growth rarely comes from reading alone—it comes from doing while learning, and learning through things breaking along the way. Books, to me, are more like maps. It was practice that finally gave me direction.
The first time I met Teacher Kehan was at a hackathon at Moonshot Academy. We built a memory tool called “Ciling.” As a judge, he said something unexpected:
“If you want to continue this, I can provide funding and space.”
I froze for a moment. I had never imagined a judge would take a team our age so seriously. That was the first time I realized that whether an idea is worth attention may have little to do with age—it depends on whether it can actually be built.
An even bigger surprise came soon after. Not long later, I was admitted into Moonshot Academy’s “One Small Step” program. It came with a four-year scholarship and housing support. The recognition felt so heavy that I didn’t quite know how to hold it. The school’s philosophy—“cultivating entrepreneurs with rich inner worlds”—felt exactly like the kind of learning future education should be about.
But in the end, I chose not to go. I wasn’t ready to step off my existing track; I just wanted to strengthen my fundamentals first. Looking back, it wasn’t a retreat—it was a pause that created space for a real beginning later.
Two months later, at a hackathon pitch event at No. 11 School, our team had just finished presenting a “university email classification assistant” when a familiar voice came from the audience:
“Have I met you before?”
It was Teacher Kehan. It felt like time had quietly folded in on itself.
A few days later, I received an invitation for an online meeting. On screen, Teacher Anna smiled and asked, “You’ve turned 14, right?” It turned out this was the minimum age requirement for joining the program.
That evening, my mom sat down with me seriously.
“Have you really thought this through? School is still your foundation, and projects will demand full commitment—you’ll be under a lot of pressure.”
“I’ve thought about it,” I said without hesitation.
She looked at me and added, “Balancing both will be hard.”