cant seem to focus for enough block of hours a day to make meaningful progress so woke up at 5 to workout and now starting the day.

i really need to disappear into woods with zero contact to this world to move something. i find myself getting irritated at my pace at increasing rate recently

I wish I was but I am not a hustler who can sell what doesn't make him "feel."

I wish I was, but I ain't. Building something and getting it out the door is the easy part. Pushing it through ups and downs is the hard part. I know that trait of mine is what has thwarted so many of the products i've touched. I tried to fix it, but a part of me doesn't wanna fix it. I want to find what makes me feel first.

Today for the first time in a while, I felt a glimpse of something again. Time to brush off that dust and run again.

I had a phase last year when I yearned for close (share everything homie-like) friends like back in college days, near my neighborhood.

but I stopped. and I don't think I will ever resume. here's why:
- chatting about day to day mundane topics with people I don't have existing bond with for hours gets very old very quickly
- I'm married now, so no biological instinct to go out much
- my real brother is my best friend, and I have 2 very close childhood friends, plus occasional peers (work-related) who are actually helpful in stimulating my thinking

unless who I sit with can bring me another dimension of joy, or help me make money/collaborate on work front, almost all of them can remain friendly acquaintances.

now I'm reaching the arc where all I care about boils down to:
- dream
- family
- love

everything else to me is noise

balls deep into work today. been eating shit for most of the past 2 weeks, and yesterday on a whim, built something i actually can see something with. distant gut feel but i can relate it to the product i have been wanting for decades. in its origin it won't be close to it, but if it can get to its ~final form, this is it.

people think consumer social is extremely hard if not impossible. I ofc agree with it. primarily built only social apps and flopped all of them.

but the only times when the big guys can be disrupted by the new ones are the times of change.

and the change we are facing is the biggest anyone has ever faced.

the next thing though won't look and feel like what we know. big guys have already ended that war. it is not possible to beat them with distribution of "another feature" or even philosophical addition like decentralization. people don't give a fuck about privacy, how the old data lives or dies, whether the account can be seized or not. none of these ivory tower bullshit will register to the overwhelmed minds of consumers. how do I know? I'm one of them.

not writing to say that I do know exactly what that next thing is, but timing is the dictator of boom or bust. if openai happened during dotcom days, there is just no chance from pure cost it takes to get anything working. six degrees was the og Facebook, yet timing killed it. instead of having the luxury to focus on what consumers fuck with, they had to scramble to keep the servers up.

time is now. and you can be the one. anyone can shoot their verse. one of us has a shot at a seat next to the legends.

past few days, i've been beyond wired in. i have not been this excited since my first ever startup. i'm designing, composing the story, building, music in my ears, blue berries in my mouth.

this will be good. i rarely say it, but i really believe this can make enough to pay rent within a month

this app is called “Richard” AI diary of successful icons, unraveling their stories in the format of diary posts based on known facts.

i carried this app around for a week and ultimately decided not to pursue because i couldn’t get myself intensely pulled to it naturally.

i archived it and arrived at my new app idea. having a blast and almost ready to ship it.

pivoting is a very personal choice.

here we go again.

what matters is the composure to navigate through the ups and downs, not to make every single day of my life an "up" day. that is not up to me.

i've flopped too many apps to preserve my pride, but i know that craft is not dead yet. i still hold the view that no matter how good the distribution, what works long term is product. i really don't need to prove it to anyone, but i will prove it to myself.

shining my pistol with this one. if i were a musician, let this become my platinum single. refreshingly original idea, fun mechanism, at the edge of controversy. built entirely alone line by line, pixel by pixel, by me. and one co founder (AI).

getting late, so getting delusional. nobody knows. i'll leave luck to heaven and shoot my verse to the void.

don't need testflight. go time

come on tim cook. approve and let me cook.

faith is the real moat.

not blind faith but faith in tune with the market and more importantly, with myself.

distribution can come and go. product can change.

in that rollercoaster ride, if faith gets derailed it is all for naught.

i dont mean religions, well, religion - where you believe in yourself.

finally launched Hailee.

i learned a lot about human psychology. i think i’ll stick a while around this one to iterate this time.



https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hailee-ai-girl/id6760208960

I've started 3 vc backed startups but I am not proud of any of the outcome.

~All of my past investors have been nothing but kind, empathetic, and helpful for me, fortunately.

I learned a lot, but for lack of better words, fucked them all up.

I don't intend to raise any external funding going forward. I will prove something that truly works to myself, then consider that path as one of the options.

Today's venture world - something is missing there the more I tune into the historical legends like rockefeller, carnegie and beyond. Something better become a business before leaning on other people's money.

you cannot forget:

- that first gaze on your eyes with curiosity and affection
- that first hands in the air as your music moves the crowd
- that first user in whose hands your product blooms

it is so hard to spark that "first," and even harder to make that last, but it is the very dream that makes it all worth it. i send my respect all those who relentlessly create despite the despair that lets them down.

we are all of one origin born to create. there's a reason why we feel so much better while creating compared to endlessly consuming.

two main school of thoughts as of today:

product-first:
'if the product is so good, they will come and stay'
this fits the artist type founders who would rather pull something out of their imagination and let it fly or die. products like snapchat belong to this category. there was not much of such product to "copy and scale."

distribution-first:
'i can sell anything, just name it'
this fits the hustler type founders who can spot and nail any rising trends. copy cat products belong to this category. there are plenty of products to copy and scale in today's world.

contrary to popular beliefs, there are cases of both directions working out, but only if they are done with speed.

i had a full week of feeling like shit, feeling like i have to pause and just get a job or do some part time contract work, and the ounce of doubt snowballed. day by day. the weight of it pressed my pride flat on the ground.

my head was about to explode from thinking about thoughts. the more i think, the more it complicates the obvious that is right in front of me.

i am making progress though. the AI girl app started converting paying users on its own so i resumed the marketing push, and also started working on one more app.

this one is to literally just help my fried attention span from constantly building on laptop/selling on phone. i just needed screen breaks and i gamified it this time.

new goal is to submit it to the store today and resume the marketing push.

just keep swimming. i sincerely want to make this work.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hailee-ai-girl/id6760208960

submitted the new app. felt good to push myself.

the more i move the more i believe.

motion is lotion my friends.

not sure why im so irritable today. not productive at all. 1% left til shipping the new app.

am i being lazy?
is the sleep affecting me?
family matters?

are these just excuses within my head that just forgot who i can share them with?

what is the point of sharing them?

unproductive days suffocate my soul. i have this undying thirst for greatness within to be written out but on many days, the ink implodes and spills to my guts.

i need a new outlet that is not conventional. this diary is the only spot where i get to vomit my raw thoughts. not the standup type of status where i post i ship this wdyt that, but just how i am feeling.

if it’s with people i’m not very close to, what is the point of showing my guts? they don’t care enough and i don’t care enough.

if it’s with people i love, why share the confusion and downward spiral with them? they will lose sleep worrying about me.

just rambling here is helping. gonna go for a walk then get back to wrapping what i started and think from there