Three years of an early stage founder, in numbers

April 30, 2025 · translated from Russian

What being an early stage founder actually looks like:

1. In three years, twelve attempts to ship a product. Exactly one worked and brought in money.

2. Co-founder iterations: eleven. I am on the twelfth now, and the team is fierce, burners and technical people out of Google.

3. Personal money spent: over $40,000. Everything I had saved and earned at Google.

4. Investor money spent: $155,000.

5. Earned in three years: a little under $15,000. I made almost five times that running retreats.

6. Free accelerators completed: three. All of them a waste of time.

7. Personal pitches to investors over Zoom: roughly 200.

Empy is the longest job I have ever held.
I have never stayed anywhere longer than two years.
It is about to enter its fourth.

What is the conclusion?
There is none. I am a stubborn ram pushing forward.
At some point I understood that it does not much matter what you work on.

You just have to keep pushing, and sooner or later it works.
What matters is giving it your soul and your body and working at a hundred percent.

We are just beginning.