Week 1: Four Zeros and the $25000 email. 8-O

Hey everybody,

So as promised, this is the firts of the weekly reviews of the 0-1 journey for Myaigi.

No one wants to hear about all the angst of what to build now vs later and deciding on features, so let's just say it was the usual brutality. After we got past that, we relearned what enterprise pricing looks like when you have zero revenue.

A sales rep named Ro***** from a certain social platform reached out. Nice guy. His platform adds social features to apps; Activity feeds, notifications, reactions etc.

A perfect fit, although the POA part should've been a red flag (Like in the fancy restaurants; if you have to ask....), but whatever, we replied with real numbers. Backend in Python. Frontend in React Native. Launch target: November. Projected users at launch: 2,500 (Please Lawd!).

Ro***** responded in 12 minutes. $2,083 per month, annual commitment. That's $25,000 to add a like button before we'd made a single dollar. Ouch, that wasn't going to fly so we closed the tab and marked it "revisit at scale."

We were kind and replied though, instead of ghosting.

That same week, we applied to Google for Startups. The form asked for our MRR. Zero. Customers? Zero. Funding raised? Zero. Burn rate? Zero (technically that zero isn't true but we had just started and hadn't burnt any money yet even if we'd signed up for a few things).

Four zeros felt less like an application and more like a confession booth. We were literally at "start from zero". It's hard admitting you have nothing but an idea and a couple of people who believe in it but Sabs looked at my screen. "Just submit it."

But the hardest question wasn't the financials. It was the 150-character company description; I mean we knew what we wanted to build but how do we describe it in a way that doesn't sound nuts and that everyone just gets it?

We tried "AI-powered habit tracker." Too generic. "Personal AI coach for skill acquisition." Sounded like every other app. We landed on: "Myaigi is 'I know kung fu.' An AI Habit intelligence system blending habit science and agentic AI." 130 characters. Three hours to write. We'd rewrite it four more times before anyone saw it.

Ro*****, if you're reading this, we'll be back. Just not at $25K a year quite yet.

Z