Update #1

I just finished buildspace sf2, an 11-week program in San Francisco for people working on their ideas full-time.

As I write this, I'm flying back to my home in Seattle, WA.

I've been on my startup journey for the past nine months, previously making outdoor dog sleeping blankets and now working on an AI social media manager.

The MVP performs just one of the many tasks the final product will enable with AI. Today, it can read instructions from an Instagram caption to automatically send a link when people ask for it in a comment with a code word.

It's been live for 7 weeks. Here are the stats:

• 15,000+ Direct Messages with Links
• 50+ Instagram Accounts signed Up
• 5 Paying Customers
• Ranging from 10k to 400k followers

I've got a long way to go. It's a marathon, not a sprint.

My biggest lesson from buildspace is that Your financial runway will outlast your emotional runway.

You can almost always find a way to fund your building: part-time work, raising money, or turning on your sales game.

But even when you have the runway, you might still give up. From experience, I was close to giving up before getting into buildspace sf2. I was looking for a job. Not because I needed it but because I was feeling demoralized.

What are the best ways to take care of your emotional runway while working on a startup?

1. Committed co-founders and/or being around builders at the same stage or 1-2 steps ahead of you (thank you, buildspace sf2 for the last three months)
2. Getting enough rest and recovery: sleep, downtime, and meditation.
3. Hobbies that give you joy, ideally on a daily or weekly basis.

What's next for me:

1. Set up a good routine with rest and doing something fun every day.
2. Grow my network of builders in Seattle.
3. Expand and improve my cold DM marketing.
4. Birthday shindig this week.

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