Emre Varol Email & Phone Number

Emre Varol is a Founder & CEO | A2SV - Africa to Silicon Valley at A2SV Foundation based in Palo Alto, California, United States, North America. If you’ve ever been to Africa, you know it’s the motherland of brilliant youth with immense potential to develop software and thrive in the digital global economy. After working as a software engineer at Google and Palantir and as a machine learning engineer at Liftoff for 8 years in Silicon Valley, I decided to spend 6 months in Ethiopia training students—and that experience changed my life. Despite the challenges these students face daily, the potential impact I saw in some of these young software developers was mind-blowing—and that’s why I founded A2SV. A2SV is a nonprofit tech academy and incubator that upskills high-potential African university students, connects them to opportunities at the world’s top tech companies, and supports them in building digital solutions to address urgent challenges across Africa. Here are our key accomplishments: ✅ In 5 years, our students have received more than 100 job offers from companies like Google, Amazon, LinkedIn, Databricks, Palantir, and Bloomberg. In 2022, our students achieved a 70% acceptance rate in Google software engineering interviews, where the average acceptance rate is just 2%. ✅ In 2024, we organized the biggest hackathon on the African continent, focused on AI for impact. The A2SV Hackathon attracted over 4900 participants from 48 countries across Africa, fostering collaboration, learning, and innovation in solving real-world challenges. ✅ We are building a global talent marketplace to help our top-notch African software engineers connect with companies around the world, offering their skills for impactful projects. How can you help? I’m currently based in Africa, working on the ground with my team, and we’re looking for investors, donors, and strategic introductions. 🔎 We urgently need more funding to sustain and scale our operations. 🔎 We’re looking to connect with top tech companies, including Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Tesla, to secure more opportunities for our talented graduates. 🔎 We’d love to connect with organizations interested in hiring world-class African software engineers. To get involved, please send me a LinkedIn message or email me at emre@a2sv.org.