The Craziest 3 Months in SF

The density of cracked-driven people in one city is absolutely insane.

January 2024

I got into The Residency and Buildspace SF2 and flew into SF.

I was working on Fitcheck, an app to help you get dressed in the morning based on the weather. Over the next month, I would continue adding more features and building in a silo. I only showed the app to a handful of people and when they didn't stick, I simply assumed I needed to add more features:

• The ability to add friends.

• A crazy large database of clothing so you didn't have to upload your own.

• A widget

• The ability to search your closet by color, style, and item.

When Buildspace first starts you set a 3 month goal and every week we demo to other students what we got done this week and plot where we're currently at.

This was my goal and progress after 2 weeks...

February: The Pivot

I had no momentum at this point but kept chugging through.

Then I had a conversation with a friend at Buildspace who commented how I seemed to undersell myself constantly and that might stem a deep-rooted belief that I'm not worthy of success. His words hit me like a truck because I knew he was right.

I had to make a big change. I was making a lot of micro pivots the past couple of weeks but needed an entire change of direction to change my momentum. I deleted 95% of my codebase, and changed the app so it was a single feature:

Take a picture of your outfit and get a score / feedback.

I hired a couple of UGC creators and got my first couple of paying customers. But none of the videos were going viral, and the conversion rate to paid was pretty low.

I was headed in the right direction but this wasn’t the right answer.

I also changed my goal from revenue from usage.

March: The Big Pivot

The opportunity came the second week of March when I discovered Color Analysis.

It's this trend that originated in Korea where you go to these specialists who try to determine colors that look the best and worst on you based on your skin tone.

People pay hundreds of dollars for this.

My mind was blown.

It then began spreading to the US, girls all over TikTok were talking about it asking others for advice on what colors looked best on them.

My product intuition was screaming that this was the time to go all in.

I built this prototype in about 2 days:

Then I invested a little over $10k in UGC marketing, and by the second week had my first viral video. That video alone drove about $4000 in revenue.

The rest is kind of history (not really) with the app just recently hitting the $80k mark in total revenue.

A Quick Reflection

When SF2 ended last week I felt about ten times more sadness than when I graduated college which is kind of wild to say.

The money and growth are great and all but damn, I feel so much gratitude for having taken part in SF2 and The Residency. I've never bonded with a group this quickly before in my life.

But it kind of makes sense. I remember Farza saying in one lecture that the amount of people who actually chase their dreams are so few in this world.

So imagine spending all your time with people like that on a daily basis.

You automatically begin to bond over your shared struggles, doubts, and obsessions.

Real recognize real.

Family > MRR.

Areas I Grew the Most

My self-belief

I've always struggled with my self-belief and this notion that these people I look up to and that are ahead of me know something or have something I don't. I've gone from thinking like this 40% of the time to like 10%, so still working on it.

Social Media Marketing

• Hiring/managing creators.

• Trend hopping.

Presenting

I used to take zeros in high school because I didn’t want to present for some classes

Demoing every week at The Residency and Buildspace forced me to get over my fear of public speaking pretty quickly.

Areas I'm Still Struggling In

Discipline

There have been about 10 days this past 3 months where I didn't get shit done, because I didn't properly plan out what I was going to do. On these days I would dive straight into my work, when I didn't even know what I was trying to accomplish. The result was hours spent working on things that weren't even important.

Meditation

This ties back into the discipline thing. I was super on and off with the practice even when I knew how important it was to performing at my highest capacity.

Positive self-talk and clarity of vision are two of the biggest benefits of meditating daily, the crazy thing is, this can make or break your startup so the fact that I'm not doing it consistently is something I need to fix.

Overthinking / Clarity / Focus

Many of my biggest regrets in my life have come from doing things without thinking, which is why I've gotten into the habit of overthinking. Going with the flow is something I'm really struggling with.

Other questions I’m lacking clarity on

• Do I see myself as more of an artist or an operator?

• What do I really want? How do I determine if status/money is warping this narrative?

• I want to eventually build in the tools for thought space, but that's a very long-term play, and building these viral one-feature apps is what I'm really good at.

• I enjoy making videos, but they take so much effort, should I start documenting the journey again?

• Maybe I’ll worry about it if I’m “passionate” about making one feature viral apps after I get rich.

If I knew I couldn't fail, would I still be doing what I'm doing? That's the question I'm grappling with right now.

Biggest Lessons Learned

• Momentum is everything.

• Find the golden mean.

  • I was too emotional in the beginning which made it harder to pivot. But also having no emotion at all makes it hard to get up in the morning and get to work.

  • Also had to find the balance between socializing and deep work. There were so many conversations I had in buildspace that changed my thinking. But there were also conversations where I was simply looking to distract myself from my work.

• Obsession can't be taught, but conviction can be developed.

• You are your biggest enemy. No one else. So knowing yourself and what you really want is 50% of the game, maybe more.

• Entropy is always at work. You need discipline, clarity, and systems to counteract this force of nature.

• There are no solutions in life, only trade-offs.

• Scared money don't make no money.

• "We often interpret a situation as difficult when it isn't supposed to be any other way.” - Art of Focus

• I'm kind of cracked. I think there are very few people who could identify a trend, quickly build a prototype, and then go to market all within a week.

What's Next

I’m actually not in this photo cause I went to the bathroom when they took it.

• Go all-in on growing this app and build adjacent apps in the AI beauty space.

• Most likely, I will start traveling southeast Asia in June for at least 3 months.

• Tinkering with what a chat-first personal knowledge management tool looks like.

Gonna be disciplined asf going forward and send this newsletter out every 2 weeks no matter what. Some weeks will be shorter than others, but I promise to keep it interesting.