For the past 2 years, I have been working on my first tech startup.
It's not yet official, but it is over.
Why is it over?
I realized too late that the winning model required time and money. For a startup, I chose to bootstrap before generating revenue.
After almost two years, a lot of market research, user interviews, failed customer closings, and so on... I ended up understanding what this winning model was.
2 months to get the funds that we would use to create our new circular financing economy, 1 month to create a solid v1 risk analysis model, 3 months to start cycle one, finance companies, and get paid back. Small debrief. And 3 more months to do the second cycle and decide to push the project further or not depending on results.
...But this project does not excite me anymore. And within the same amount of time, working on a new startup project would be more beneficial to me, as I would be able to work 350 miles per hour again.
Sometimes, the vehicle you choose is not the best one on the first try.
In twelve minutes by foot, you would be able to cover 965 meters.
In twelve minutes by bicycle, you would be able to cover 4.8 km.
In twelve minutes by car, you would be able to cover 14.4 km.
In twelve minutes by spaceship, you would be able to cover 5600 km. (and reach space)
Maybe time has come to switch to a more efficient vehicle.
What mistakes did I make?
Spending 9 months before testing your market is too much.
Thinking that I did not know how to sell because the product was not getting purchased easily.
Thinking that it was only the CEO's role to sell in early stage.
Spending too much energy on my customers' Stripe-locked accounts.
My strengths:
I worked hard. Really hard. When people were living 1 day, I was living 2. When they lived 2 weeks, I lived a month. And when they lived 2 years, I lived 4.
I learned more about how to stay efficient at work while keeping a high-intensity work ethic. Split work into 2-hour deep work sessions, put a timer in front of you with time going from 00:00 to 2:00:00 (in this order), and always start a session knowing what is important to achieve. 5-6 sessions a day.
I did all the afterworks, networking, and events during the past year and a half. Even if that meant going back home to sleep at 1-2 am, three times a week and waking up at 7 am.
Always putting myself in the condition of having plans B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I in case plan A didn't work.
What did I learn that this time I won't forget?
The market decides everything. Give him what he wants. Innovate and break the barriers if needed.
YCombinator was right on how to launch a startup. But this time, I understood it.
In 12 days of work, I have the capacity to create a product that scales to 64K monthly active users. With $0 spent in ads.
I'm expensive. If I want to make money, companies have already paid me $2,000 a day to access my strategic vision and my knowledge.
I am actually very good at sales. I reached an 85% closing rate with no effort on the AI course I created on OpenAI's specialist agent (GPTs). My total revenue generated represents 20% of the total platform revenue (there are +30 online courses right now).
People lie to you. The only compass to follow is gut feeling and whether people pay for what you offer.
This journey taught me that:
Books are 20 to 40 years of summaries in 400 pages.
Storytelling and simple communication drive 100x more engaged people.
Public speaking is challenging, and people want opinion leaders, not flat water. This is also what you want for yourself to succeed.
The vision you see is prophetic: keep it, or work on yourself and change it.
At 23, it seems like a good starting point in life.
