First reflection
The last 6 months
In January I quit my job and went all in on building. I had this idea of an AI university, which I was super passionate about, so I decided to pursue it full time. Through the next weeks up until March the shape of the idea changed a lot and I ended up working as an AI coding mentor for vibecoders.
I was able to get into an accelerator called SH1P. It was their first cohort and it made a really significant influence on my journey. I learned how to pitch correctly, how to speak with clients, and how to identify if I am really working on something people want. Thanks to Will, Mac and Krish who were extremely helpful through this.
After SH1P I gained my first 1K beta testers and made 6 B2B partnerships. Even though I was getting a lot of positive traction, I soon realized it was fake. In the short term it might work, but I was learning that frontier labs could soon do the same thing my product does. And in general, edtech as an industry will be more and more competitive. When you can do more with AI, people learn less. Nowadays you can cheat on almost anything.
On that sad note, I was still able to take the most from my startup. I was accepted to Antler residency. At that point I didn't have enough money to go. I was even thinking of rejecting the offer.
I didn't give up. I found a way to grind, improve my financial stability, and on June 1st I was in San Francisco. For a lot of people it's just a city. For me it felt like something else. It's hard to describe but just the energy is different.
You can casually meet millionaires and billionaires here. Guys who make protein gummies, friends who during lunch are closing 7-figure deals. I love San Francisco.
Where I am now
I felt extremely stressed. I was accepted into one of the best residency programs in the world, but I didn't have a product to work on. I needed a co-founder first. After dozens of meets and coffee chats I stopped on Luchi.
We pivoted to commercial real estate. Hard to imagine I would be working on this a year ago, but I had some previous experience and Luchi had a bunch of connections. It was an obvious choice.
Within the first 2 weeks we found a problem and almost closed our first deal for $20K with a $7B fund. Unfortunately the lack of SOC 2 security was a red flag for them, so they passed.
Over the next weeks we kept working with our point of contact, polishing the product overall.
Today
We almost finished MVP and started booking first demos. We tried a donut strategy, pretending to be a DoorDash and going to offices to sell. We were able to get into all the offices, but it's hard to tell if any of those will convert. It's Sunday. I guess in one of the next reflections I will mention this again with some results.
The goal of this diary: reflect on my days and share the lessons I learned and mistakes I made. Most days might feel boring to someone else. I become better by 1% most of the time, and that's exactly what we'll be discussing here.