Not having a lot of money forced us to innovate and focus on making every dollar count, which ultimately helped us grow faster than competitors who had more funding.

We aimed to be profitable on the first order, which was uncommon at the time, and this focus on profitability helped us succeed.

In the early days, we were always scared of not getting it right and being out-executed by competitors, which drove us to focus hard on our early customers and their needs.

During the early days, we faced challenges in raising funds, leading to personal sacrifices from the team, including Tony selling his apartments to keep the company afloat.

I had to earn every single user and every single dollar that came in, which taught us to be extremely efficient and scrappy with our incubation capital.

We raised money for the first time after five years of existence, once we had a clear picture of our market and customer traction.

We realized that to grow our business, we needed to raise capital, as we had no money in the bank after three years of operation, and we didn't want to remain a lifestyle business.

We did not expect the first batch of startups to make money; it was an experiment for us to learn how to be investors, which shaped our approach to supporting founders.

After graduating, I focused entirely on my startup but struggled to achieve profitability, which taught me the importance of having paying customers.