Ata Turhan is the founder behind Solarity AI, a company building mobile apps that help young men improve their body, mind, and spirit. Based in Dallas, Texas, he left medical school in Turkey in 2019 after concluding that AI would eventually outperform doctors at memorization-heavy reasoning, then joined the first cohort of Turkey's new AI bachelor's degree program and later completed a computer science master's degree in the US. On the Sunny Ray Show, he explains why he chose AI years before ChatGPT went mainstream and how his medical training now shapes his products. He walks through Looks Maxer, an app that scores faces using a divide and conquer approach across features like the nose and eyes, and IQ Maxer, a cognitive training app launched with a hard paywall instead of a free trial. He also shares his onboarding strategy, his reliance on viral organic short-form video, and his plan to add body and spirit apps.
He quit medical school in 2019 to bet on AI, and now builds apps that score faces and train the mind.
What are you building, and what problem are you solving with Solarity AI?
Our focus is young men, who struggle physically, mentally, and spiritually. They need guidance in all three areas, so we are creating mobile apps that help with body, mind, and spirit improvement.
What did you see in AI that made you leave medical school?
I realized medicine is largely memorizing thousands of pages, and computers already memorize better than humans. What was missing was reasoning. If machines reach human-level reasoning, they can do what doctors do, so I decided to go all in on AI and eventually start my own AI company.
What was it like being in the first cohort of Turkey's AI bachelor's program?
Many people were skeptical and said you could not learn AI without a computer science degree first. But the fundamentals like math, logic, and how computers work are what matter. The curriculum taught those first, then went deep into AI, so it felt almost like a master's degree.
How do you make sure your face score is accurate and not just a flattering number?
We use divide and conquer. Instead of asking AI for one face score, we score parts like the nose and eyes separately, then combine them with weights and other optimizations. We also test constantly, and users take a consistent biometric-style selfie weekly to track real progress.
Why did you launch IQ Maxer without a free trial?
From following public developers on X, I learned free trials convert poorly. RevenueCat statistics suggest around 2% with a free trial versus about 10% with a hard paywall. So we built a comprehensive 10 to 15 page onboarding and offer the first month for $1.
How are you finding your first users?
We rely on social media, mainly Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. We make viral organic videos about looksmaxing, not direct ads for our apps, because people skip ads. Once or twice a week we show app screen recordings, and we aim to gain tons of users by the end of the year.
How did you manage your time to finish first in your department?
I planned every hour of my day, for example this at 9:00, that at 10:00. It was hard at first, but after a few weeks you get used to it. If you have a good plan and follow it, you can do almost anything.
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