this prolly won't get views, I'd write anyways the biggest lesson i've learnt after 7 months of Rez is, don't start a startup with literal $0 in your pockets the ambition can only go so far then the reality will show up bootstrapping also requires some initial capital & it's very hard to keep the team motivated without financial incentives unless they share the same vision, which is very rare you won't get quality work don't expect anyone to help you for w/o providing any value in return i tried my best to raise but there are some obvious places where we lack so it didn't went through, there had been weeks of 2x meetings everyday but didn't made it to the second one skill issue? yes obvious mistake was, we were trying to raise too quick, our vision was strong which got us meetings, but the product didn't match up to it's level, for half of the time i was pitching the wrong narrative it cost me time & funding opportunity huge blunder no support no guidance no funds no nothing the markets changed, all agentic trading products does the same thing, or they are leaning to being the same thing create/ choose strat select venue/s deploy trades 24/7 or it's NLP based or a combination of both now one can argue "there are multiple DEXs, all have users" yes because they are DEXs, there is differentiation what if 20 platforms all integrated with same DEXs, let you deploy agents with diff UX what's the moat then? where's the differentiation? the ones with the biggest bags will win but, we onboard users, people deposited funds did 1:1 with users, got feedback this is something I could only dream of nah, I am not shutting it down, i def do not want to make just another bot for trading, I want to take my time, figure things out also s/o to @0xSuhass for shipping & putting up w me TL;DR - don't start a startup if you're dead broke.

We are sunsetting Rez Labs.

AGI will end up being like aliens. The government denies they are keeping it secret only for themselves. When in fact it never existed and the real conspiracy was making people believe they were hiding something. I'm almost ready to believe we are living in a simulation.

Yann LeCun (LeBased) weighs in on the @AnthropicAI debacle. I have to say I agree with 100% with Yann here. "One reaps what one sows." 👏

I have a lot of respect for @OpenAI codex team, codex doesn't stop you mid session even if you're out of tokens unlike @claudeai stopping mid session is very cheap. It's been a month of using codex & claude every single day, codex wins. no doubt.

web3 -> ai

even in the age of ai & vibecoding cbse & all other govt websites look & feel to be stuck in 90s

I've never faced an issue using @zeddotdev . But most of the so called "agentic IDEs" are basically vibecoded slop for vibecoding. It looks the same - has to, you can't alien IDE UI It feels the same It is the same Probably forked from VSC

I've been using Zed integrated with : - @opencode - Codex - @claudeai Code For over a month now, every single day. I am never going back.

I've uncapped credit allowance for @OpenRouter at our startup, we're working on building assessment engines, physics engines and a lot of research oriented stuff. Which models are a must try?

we once compared video game sizes, now we compare model sizes

I know of a protocol who keeps saying how good their product is but they never launched & they keep talking about "community"

working on assessment engines & computer vision

.@pmarca has the chance to do the funniest thing here

there are nice to have products then there are commercially viable products one can quickly move from one to another

deck for Rez was inspired by Intercom's pre-seed deck, if you're raising you should def check their deck simple crisp it just works

i was wrong Q4, 25 perps market tanked & agents were getting popular, VC money was flowing in, everyone was excited that's how I picked my idea to build Rez. From the get go, I focused on getting funded rather than building a product which users would want to use. only to realize later that w/o users you don't have metrics & without metrics you can't get funded. Lesson : prioritize users over everything.

didn't expect it would come down to this but it's been a while since I've spoken openly about - what's going at Rez. 3 versions 7 months 2 team splits later, I am at a point where I feel completely lost on what to do next. I've talked about this previously where all the agentic trading applications feels the same, is the same. More on that later but what I did terribly wrong was focusing on fund raising rather than prioritizing on building a product user's want. the idea was interesting which worked as an ice breaker but the product lacked, so what I thought as early support, later realized I've lost credibility by shipping half baked although at this stage shipping speed iteration is crucial and we lacked there too. over past few weeks I took a deep dive on all the shortcomings Rez had. short answer is pivot, understand what users want & keep building. even to do that you need a runway, I bootstrapped it. the only unfair advantage I have is I am staying with my parents, so sitting at home burning money without any clear outcome is a very difficult space to be in. for indian parents, if you make money it's all good, if you don't doesnt' matter how ambitious your goal is, it's not worth it. although my parents have been supportive. what i've learnt so far that, it's also about the circumstances you're in that decides the outcome. if you're working in tech, be in sf if you're working in crypto, be in dubai ..... etc etc I don't know what's next, but I'll figure it out

you've a lot in your mind and the moment you start writing, nothing comes out how do you overcome this ?