12d • General discussion
My 4 big lessons after the first weeks of building my second 7-figure AI Startup
I thought I would share this in here Aslam, since it might help someone else who is building a product such as a software:
Building my second AI startup has been humbling in a very specific way.
For context: I’ve been part of building a 7-figure startup before. Not a “one-tweet, one-launch” success, but years of real involvement. Product decisions. Customer conversations. Server Outages in the middle of a conference we were presenting our product at. Pressure. Messy execution. The whole thing.
And yet, this second startup forced me to relearn fundamentals I thought I had already mastered.
What surprised me most wasn’t some new AI insight or clever growth hack. It was how valuable the boring stuff still is. The same principles Y Combinator has been hammering into founders for years about building products people actually want. Simple. Uncomfortable. And incredibly easy to dismiss once you think you’re “past that stage”.
That assumption is exactly what gets you into trouble.
Here’s what building this startup drilled back into me.
1. Talk to your first customers. Early. Relentlessly.
This sounds trivial until you notice how easily you avoid it.
In my head, I had a clean narrative: problem, solution, ICP. On paper, it made sense. In reality, my first real users immediately poked holes in assumptions I didn’t even realize I was making.
The biggest mistake isn’t building the wrong feature. It’s building in isolation and calling it strategy.
Every meaningful improvement we made came from a real conversation, not from thinking harder or refining slides. Talking to users didn’t slow us down. It removed weeks of wasted work.
2. Iterate fast based on what they actually do, not what they say.
Feedback is noisy. Behavior isn’t.
People are polite. They’ll say “sounds cool” and never come back. They’ll praise features they never touch. If you listen only to words, you’ll drift.
The only feedback that mattered was:
Did they use it again? Did they struggle at the same point? Did they ask the same question twice?
Fast iteration wasn’t about shipping more. It was about shortening the loop between observation and change. The moment we treated the product as something fluid instead of “released”, momentum picked up.
3. Pitch everybody. But ask the right question.
Early on, pitching feels awkward. Especially if you’ve built something before. You want to sound confident. Polished. Certain.
That’s a trap.
The most useful conversations weren’t the ones where people nodded along. They were the ones where I explicitly asked:
“What would stop you from paying for this?”
“Would you actually spend money on this today?”
“What feels unclear or unnecessary?”
Not “Do you like it?”, but “Would you pay?”
Every honest no contained more value than ten vague yeses.
4. Make trying your product absurdly easy.
This one cost me real money to relearn.
In the beginning, I did what almost everyone does: ads → landing page → sign-up form. The result? Traffic, but barely any signups. Friction everywhere.
Then I remembered something obvious in hindsight: how ChatGPT did it.
You don’t sign up sign up first. First you get value.Then you’re asked to commit.
We changed the flow so people could experience the product before creating an account. We only did that last night, but we will try the Same ads & Same audience. I will report on the result.
People don’t want to believe your promise. They want to feel the value first.
The meta-lesson
Experience doesn’t exempt you from fundamentals. If anything, it makes you more likely to skip them because they feel “too basic”.
Building this second startup reminded me that progress usually comes from doing the obvious things exceptionally well, not from chasing cleverness.
The principles haven’t changed. Only my respect for them has deepened.
What “obvious” fundamental are you currently skipping because it feels too basic for your level?
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My 4 big lessons after the first weeks of building my second 7-figure AI Startup
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