We sold air and called it the future

April 21, 2025 · translated from Russian

My founder story, part two. Autumn 2022.

We have an AI model. We have no product.

We had $30,000 left over from the previous project.
My co-founder left. What remained was me and that money.
I thought, let it not sit there for nothing.

David, the technical co-founder I started with, and I began building the model.
A network that tells evaluation apart from observation.
We wanted to teach the AI to tell where speech carries projection and where it carries contact.
We thought. We tested. We trained.
An F1 score of 82 percent, and we were proud of it.

There was a wow effect. There were presentations.
A friend from India made us a beautiful brand identity, for free.
The first slides appeared, the first pitches.
But all of it went around the thing, not into it.

There was no product.
There was no use.
There was no customer pain.
There was an idea, and the illusion that an idea is enough.

We sold air and called it the future.
And we believed it.
Seriously, eyes burning, with a fresh folder in Notion.

I kept telling myself: a little more and this becomes a system.
But everything I was building was a legend.
Meaning instead of revenue.
Depth instead of usefulness.

I thought that if I made it beautiful, the world would believe me.
The world was asking for results.
I was still trading in intentions.