When we first launched our product, I was embarrassed about its readiness, but we had to ship it. We learned from our initial customers, who provided valuable feedback that helped us improve.

In our first year, we faced significant challenges, including a tough go-to-market transition and hiring the wrong team for our stage of growth.

Despite initial struggles, we showed some growth, prompting an investor to suggest we raise a Series A round, which I eagerly prepared for.

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 launching our first consumer product, we realized we had compromised on key design elements, which ultimately led to its poor performance in the market.

We faced challenges with our product's pre-order sales drying up and struggled to maintain press coverage as our product wasn't ready for manufacturing yet.

Despite early growth, we faced challenges in fundraising, pitching to 150 investors, with most rejecting us due to the perceived unsexiness of our content-focused approach.

We raised our Series A on a prototype, which was challenging because many investors doubted our potential to become a public company.

Initially, we thought we were on the path to success, but I later realized that we were not converting users into paying customers because we were too focused on fundraising and PR instead of creating a product that people actually needed.