Quick Facts
Biography
Iddris Sandu was raised in Harbor City, Los Angeles, California. He is a Ghanaian architectural technologist. He was born in Accra, Ghana, and raised in Compton in Los Angeles, California. He created theworld’s first smart retail store experience along with Nipsey Hussle. The store is called "The Marathon Store". He codes and creates algorithms.
Many of Sandu's claimed accomplishments and collaborations have been called into question after the retraction of a Forbes profile on Sandu, following reader criticism, including from software engineer Lex Alexander, that challenged the accuracy of Forbes' reporting. A subsequent investigation was published on Medium that examined the factual accuracy of media reports on Sandu by the New York Times, CNN, and CNBC. On September 27, 2019, The New York Times issued a correction clarifying that Iddris Sandu was not awarded the Presidential Scholar Award by President Obama.
Early life
Sandu was born in Accra, Ghana. His family moved to the United States when he was 3 years old. He started learning and doing computer programming at the age of ten using a public library. At the age of 13 Sandu was an intern and worked on several Google projects. One of the projects that he worked on was Google Plus. At the age of 15 he created a smartphone app that made it easier for his classmates to find their classrooms. Sandu also advocated for STEM in the high school curriculum.
He chose to not seek attending a higher education institution after high school. He decided to go into interning and consulting; companies such asBoeing, Twitter, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Uber, Snapchat, and Instagram.
At the age of 19, Sandu was creating his own apps and other software.
Career
As a technological design consultant and engineer, he has consulted for companies such as Twitter and Snapchat. For Uber he created the software called Autonomous Collision Detection Interface, a software program that detects a driver's hand motion and position. Sandu is mostly self-taught.
He has worked with Kanye West and Jaden Smith.
Awards
At the age of 15 he received a commendation certificate from Barack Obama.