5 Years, 12 Pivots

What seems to be missing in all of this is a cohesive vision and mission.

I do see mention of "making the world a better place," but that's a bit like saying "our company exists to generate revenue." That's everyone. What makes you, YOU?

You're chasing extremely niche problems, that, sure, may be real, but there is no examination of what those problems stack up to that would necessitate years of dedication.

It's no surprise, then, that these pivots feel more like whack a mole than company operation.

That's incredibly depressing, because after five years, you can't look back and say "how far did we move the needle against the mission?"

I envy / admire that kind of persistence. But I think it just makes it clear this is about the money and not the company, product, problem, space, or users.

Recently I spoke to a recently funded, first-time founder. They worked less than 2yrs in each of their 5-6 jobs, between summer internships, a VC fund, and investment bank, etc. They told me they started looking at different industries and zeroed in in this particular space, and wanted to build something there because “there was a lot of opportunity”.

They never worked in that space before and had no experience in it. They mapped it out as a “tough problem” in B2B that could potentially earn a lot.

Two non-tech founders, zero customers, $2M in funding.

This story and this post both kind of have that “I’m in it for the cash” vibe with zero interest in the problem itself. I couldn’t do it myself.

So your fist attempt was an online coding course where you would train users and they agreed that once they got a job, they would pay you a portion of their salary. But no one would honor their agreement once they were trained and employed.

Did I read that right?

Very nice, BAML looks useful. Building an agentic app right now, and trying to get agents to respond with structured output definitely makes me feel uneasy. So looking forward to trying this out.