Adil Mania

Early life

Adil Mania was born and raised in Rabat, Morocco, where he spent his first 19 years. In 2004, Adil's parents offered him his first computer, a Pentium 1, which sparked a lifelong interest in making cool shit online, ... and beyond.

Adil has said he resets his life roughly every decade by moving to a new country and reconsidering his assumptions, comparing the practice to starting a new season in a game. This brought him from Morocco to France in 2016 and eventually to San Francisco in 2026.

Education

Lycée Moulay Youssef

Adil attended Lycée Moulay Youssef in Rabat from 2011 to 2016. He completed secondary school (2011–2014) with Honors, serving as class representative in his second year and as a member of the school's Scientific and Cultural Club. From 2014 to 2016 he pursued preparatory classes (CPGE) at the same institution, on the MPSI – MP track. He again served as class representative in his second year and passed the CCP competitive exam.

ISIMA

In 2016, Adil enrolled at ISIMA (Institut Supérieur d'Informatique, de Modélisation et de leurs Applications) in Clermont-Ferrand, France, where he studied computer science engineering, graduating in 2020.^[5] studying Software Development, Algorithms and Decision Support, Law, Management, and Business Intelligence.

Adil was involved in multiple student organisations: he served as class representative in his second and third years, as Project, Communication, and Hand-Over Manager for Im@ge ISIMA (the school's entrepreneurship club), and as Editor for La GaZZette, the student newspaper. He also contributed to Cartzz, a card game designed for ISIMA students as a variation on the Uno format.^[6]

buildspace

In June 2024, Adil participated in buildspace's nights & weekends s5 programme, a builder-focused accelerator backed by a16z and Y Combinator.

Adil built yolomate, a weekly check-in app for friends to catch up, share memories, and make every week count. then stopped as he found his joy with Retro, a social media app for sharing memories with friends.

Career

Adil said that he has been obsessed with tech and media since childhood, and that entertainment is the best vehicle for making anything accessible to anyone.

Early startup involvement

In 2018, Adil attended his first Techstars Startup Weekend in Clermont-Ferrand. He found the format compelling enough that he subsequently switched from participant to organiser, running his own entrepreneurship events in the region.

Teen Startup Day

In 2019, Adil launched Teen Startup Day,^[7] a one-day startup hackathon for teenagers, modelled on Startup Weekend. The programme secured 17 partners and raised $3,000. It ran once before being shelved in 2020, a decision Adil has attributed to two compounding factors: the COVID-19 pandemic, and the inherent difficulty of organising events for an audience of secondary school students.

StartupOKLM

Adil founded StartupOKLM, in 2020, a media platform covering youth entrepreneurship and the French startup ecosystem. Adil said he started it because no one was making engaging content about startups for young French audiences. Within three years it became one of the largest platforms of its kind in France.^[3]

StartupOKLM produced documentary-style founder interviews, live Twitch podcast episodes, and street interviews that brought startup culture to general audiences. The platform went viral multiple times, accumulating more than 30 million views and generating over $40,000 in revenue.^[4]

Its flagship programme was Le Patron, a talk show in which Adil interviewed prominent figures from the French business and technology world (like Fabrice Grinda, Ilan Benhaim, Eric Larcheveque, etc.).^[2] The platform received press coverage from Welcome to the Jungle and Dix Mille Heures, among other outlets.^[1]

The White Mirror

From September 2024 to February 2025, Adil co-founded The White Mirror, an independent media focused on consumer social technology. The project allowed him to pursue a long-standing interest in consumer social.

Adil shipped multiple articles and interviews before winding it down to focus on other ventures.

anomalie.space

In May 2025, Adil co-founded anomalie.space, a hackerspace in Paris designed for builders, makers, and people working on projects that do not fit neatly into existing categories. Adil has said the goal was to create a space where being ambitious and a little weird is the default, not the exception.

anomalie.space shut down in November 2025 after no European investor stepped forward to lead a funding round.

Large Language Movies

in 2025, Adil launched Large Language Movies , a video production creative studio. Adil believed that AI is the new camera, unlocking new ways to tell stories and create content for creatives. The studio creates video content for technology companies using AI-assisted production pipelines (Google Veo 3.1, Kling 3.0, Seedance, etc.).

Silicon Mania

In 2026, Adil launched Silicon Mania, the most entertaining tech media company. Adil has said its goal is to make tech "actually fun to watch," positioning it as an entertainment-first alternative to traditional technology pessimistic journalism.

Adil has described the company's target as viewers who already care about tech and deserve to actually have fun, as well as people who do not yet follow the industry but would if it were presented differently. He has cited MrBeast and NBC as reference points for the kind of production ambition he is aiming for.^[8]

Interests

Adil is a supporter of Real Madrid C.F. He attended the 2022 UEFA Champions League final in Paris and travelled to Qatar for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, where Morocco reached the semi-finals, defeating Portugal before losing to France. Adil has said those two events were among the most significant experiences of his life.

Adil lists music, psychology, and minimalism as personal interests. He has said he places particular value on meeting people from different backgrounds and pursuing ideas across disciplines.

References

1. "Side Story: StartupOKLM — Adil Mania". Dix Mille Heures. Retrieved March 2026.
2. "Le Patron, le talk-show entrepreneurial". Planète Grandes Écoles. Retrieved March 2026.
3. "Entrepreneur, jeune média, solution — Startup OKLM". Welcome to the Jungle. Retrieved March 2026.
4. Interview sur StartupOKLM. Retrieved March 2026.
5. RDD Promos 20 et 21. ISIMA (16 November 2021). Retrieved March 2026.
6. "Cartzz, le Uno créé par les étudiants". ISIMA (12 June 2018). Retrieved March 2026.
7. Teen Startup Day — PEPITE Pays de la Loire. Retrieved March 2026.
8. "Our mission". Silicon Mania. Retrieved March 2026.

External links

• Email (adil@adilmania.com)
• Twitter / X (@adilmania)
• LinkedIn (@adilmania)
• GitHub (@adilmania)