I fucked up. Made an all-or-nothing bet, and it failed spectacularly. So here I am, with 0 in my bank account, maxed out credit cards with a total of $22k debt. With no viable way out, yet. Self reflection time, here is the recap of the journey so far: It has been almost 2 years since I’ve started building in public, and it has been a series of failures after failures. I wrapped up my freelancing projects around December 2022, and got together with 3 friends to go after digital events. This was just after the COVID mania and digital events were still all the rage. We had a proven market, customers in line and a great distribution channel. So I’ve dived head first into building. 2 months passed by and I’ve created 3 adjacent products. A digital event platform, a digital certificate/credential manager and an abstract collection & management platform. What I’ve disregarded was the lack of commitment from the others. All of us were already running our own businesses, but I was the only one in the team that dropped everything to work on the project. Red flag that I shouldn’t have ignored… So, products were ready, team was not, and I was out of patience & funds to wait anymore. I quit, they disbanded. I left holding the bag, having invested 2-3 months with nothing to show for. I’ve thought about launching the products, but this was a space that I don’t have much reach, and I was a bit burned out. I begrudgingly accepted a freelance job to fix my finances a bit. This wasn’t the first time I’ve done this dance. Tried launching things with others, fail, return back to freelancing. While freelancing, the itch was still there to build. But whenever I try to combine freelancing with building my own products, I end up with succeeding in neither. A few months went by, I wrapped up the project and started thinking about a new path to follow. It was around July 2023 and AI boom was just starting. After seeing the potential, and no funds to pursue all the ideas I had, I’ve decided to raise funds to go after them. Since there wasn’t a single idea that I wanted to pursue, I’ve come up with a revenue-share based funding scheme. $50k, %50 of my profits for 3 years. It was a win-win model. I wasn’t giving up any shares, and investors will be able to get predictable, earlier returns. The idea I was pitching was that AI will grow a lot bigger, and that I can find very profitable niches in B2B area that’ll earn me and them a lot of money (which turned out to be true). After spending a few months pursuing investors, I’ve failed to secure enough interest to complete the round. The model was well received, but I was trying to raise just based on ideas, so it was harder to convince people. I’ve managed to convince the lead investor to give me a loan instead and we’ve agreed on a deal. October 2023, once again I’ve dived head first into building, an AI powered website builder. Worked for a month, got a few customers and shipped a private beta. Things were looking ok on the surface. What I wasn’t aware at that time is that I had already tapped deep into my energy reserves and I was running on fumes, using everything I had to ship the thing. … and I burned out. All the failures of the year, combined with the failures of previous years finally tipped me over and I crashed hard. Unable to work, unable to concentrate, unable to think clearly. It took me 4 months of playing games and watching TV series day & night to gather enough energy to pull myself out of the depression zone. It was April-May 2024 when I was able to open up my IDE without feeling physical pain. For the last 6 months I’ve been trying to freelance and build stuff at the same time (again.) I’ve tried to ship another product, SolidOps, which I’ve managed to deploy as private beta, but failed to open it up to the public as freelance work piled up. This is when I discovered a great opportunity. AI powered marketing, in a very profitable niche.

@ky__zo Don’t use webhook payloads. Query the API for latest data based on event. They are also moving towards that I think with v2 API and thin events.

@Erwin_AI Targeting a different generation 🙃

Our first product, Confidena, is progressing nicely. It offers comprehensive event planning & mgmt for organizers and serves as a good companion for attendees. We already have an event live using our platform while we are putting the final touches on it. Moving forward is 🚀

@sunglassesface

A relevant quote:

@philkellr I don't think it'll be the end for Nvidia, but stock price is another topic all together.

@MarcusBuffett Muting is more effective.

Sometimes life takes a weird turn and you end up giving an interview about entrepreneurship with no prep 😀

@FriendlyWebGuy @KevinNaughtonJr The brick of my gaming MSI weights more than my MacBook Pro 😂

@philz1337x Lovely idea.

Now that I've a co-founder again, I'm enjoying the benefits of having another person to make decisions with. I've missed this.

@strzibnyj Thanks Josef. First one is in the events space, already in beta. Second one is lead gen with AI, third one is about videos. I'll go into detail in the coming days.

@DmytroKrasun Thanks, Dmytro. You are an inspiration.

@finereli Thanks man. Hitting my head to the wall at max speed is how I've always learned my big lessons, for better or for worse. This one also taught me what I'm not capable of yet.

@helloitsolly Perfect way to get useless answers.

For the last ten years I’ve tried all-or-nothing bets, with mediocre results that ultimately failed. I’m going for a diversified approach this time, smaller steps. Feeing naked.

Sometimes retreat is the best move. Hit bottom 2 months ago. Found help. Have a path now. Gave up 40% of my TR company but gained partners who'll handle business/sales. I focus purely on tech - where I’m good at. Not what I wanted. Probably what I needed. Time to heal.

@philkellr @PSaezT Since I only use VPN occasionally I've never needed it. It seems it has been requested for some time now.