ElevenLabs and its founders
Video, timestamped captions and a scoped source review.
Zach Yadegari and Cal AI
Watch the original Short, follow its timestamped caption record and see the source-review scope below.
Timestamped caption record
Automatically generated captions, reproduced as a record of the video—not as independently verified reporting. Timestamp links open the relevant point on YouTube.
Read the caption record (27 lines)
- 0:0015 top colleges rejected him.
- 0:02The app he built in high school just
- 0:04sold [music] to MyFitnessPal.
- 0:07Zack Yagaari started coding at 7. At 17,
- 0:10he and his friend Henry Langmack had an
- 0:12idea.
- 0:13Take a photo of [music] your food and AI
- 0:14counts the calories.
- 0:16They called it CalAI.
- 0:18No investors, [music]
- 0:19no advisors, two high school students.
- 0:22It spread through TikTok and Instagram
- 0:24creators. 15 million downloads, 30
- 0:27million dollars a year in revenue.
- 0:30Then he applied to college. A 4.0 GPA,
- 0:3334 on the ACT, rejected by 15 of 18
- 0:37schools. [music]
- 0:39He posted the rejections online and the
- 0:41internet argued about why.
- 0:43Meanwhile, the [music] app kept growing
- 0:45past 50 million dollars a year.
- 0:47In March 2026, [music]
- 0:49MyFitnessPal announced it had bought
- 0:50CalAI.
- 0:52The colleges said no.
- 0:53The market [music] said yes.
- 0:55Follow Vibe Economics for more.
Original publication and evidence scope
Original YouTube title: “15 colleges rejected him. MyFitnessPal bought his app.”. The original title may contain claims not confirmed by this companion.
Upload date, duration and captions were retrieved from the public YouTube record on 2026-10-16. Dates are day-level, not an asserted exact upload time. Market values, audience totals and references to “today” belong to the original publication context.
Keep exploring founder stories
Slack and Microsoft Teams
Video, timestamped captions and an explicit research status.
Browse all new Short companions ↗ · Watch the documentaries ↗