you know like every other founder, I'm my own harshest critic
but looking back at the company's life I think I'm finally proud with what we did so far
and this makes me so hungry for more
> sep 2024 meet co-founder, start interviewing prospects on AI devtools needs
> dec 2024 first product launch (Dedale: code visualization to counter slop code generation), correct directionally, too early, poor execution, huge traffic, some usage, 0 retention
> jan 2025 raise from @join_ef , huge impostor syndrom, don't realize they try validate you, never the idea or product
> feb 2025 first 3 months in SF, ship 2nd product (new observability for AI debugging), spend too much time selling & building, not enough time listening & watching, try game metrics that don't matter, ignore the rest, try please VCs, fail
> june 2025 pivot hell, going full agentic AI coding, existential dread, @luaroncrew joins as founding eng.
> july 2025 feeling like failures, founder duo breaks up, company survives: I decide to keep it, thinking we might be able to resurrect it
> august 2025 burnt, keep shipping prototypes just for fun and evasion, some attention online, some traction, no path to revenue, stuff shipped too mid, thinking about giving up daily
> sep 2025 move to the middle of forest in Finland 3 months, @luaroncrew turns co-founder, we go all in new idea, outship cursor and devin, build our own sandbox tech and cloud agent factory on top
> nov 2025 product ready, finally something I'm genuinely using, tears of joy, first serious users that spam us with bug reports but keep using, first revenue, "shit we selling subscriptions to a devtool finally"
> dec 2025 money too low, split second decide go to SF again, traction is mid but there is something going on with some users, we go full delulu, good intros, good pitching and frenetic meeting gets us a cheque from @fdotinc (the literal goats) company survives couple months away from bankrupcy
> feb 2026 convert frustration and missfit with previous product into better product (@asciidotdev: pocket CTO in telegram), too ahead of its time but way better traction and retention, revenue goes 10x
> april 2026 go to SF again to onboard users, realize out of SF users start churning, bought the fomo of something too early for them, and SF users keep asking for the tech underneath, not the product, which they could do better for real
realize doing both reliable infra & consumer facing product on top as a team is shooting yourself in the foot, but forces you to build good focused infra
realize empirically by talking more with users that infra we have is pretty solid and what people want, also more high value to just focus on that for users
we strip the product, ship only the infra
> may 2026 https://t.co/hS7RyaZfX6 is born
now: our biggest launch ever, doubled previously 3 months of revenue in just a week, but most importantly: great retention, usage growing 45% week on week for 4 weeks
users keep asking for more of it, now we have to scale our infra. a good problem to have
so yeah YC is very fucking right. talk to users, ship fast, learn fast, do things that don't scale, build products that can scale (commercially), be early, try survive at all costs