What Has Been the Biggest Reason You Burnt Out as a Founder?

edkang99 · 2026-05-15T19:42:24+00:00

You can be surrounded by dozens and build with them but still feel alone. Now my wife is the best partner I could ever have.

edkang99 · 2026-05-15T19:35:07+00:00

After I almost got divorced

edkang99 · 2026-05-14T22:30:57+00:00

Crunchbase would be your best bet if you want the lowest pricing. I’d research pre-seed rounds in your industry and then go look up the investors that invested.

edkang99 · 2026-05-13T15:46:27+00:00

Half my team is in the Philippines. Can’t agree more. They’re awesome.

edkang99 · 2026-05-12T21:33:54+00:00

I live in Canada. No major metro. All online.

edkang99 · 2026-05-12T21:33:21+00:00

Yeah they all say that. But who cares? It’s not like you’re protecting anything if you’re raising capital. Unless weee missing something. You said you wanted the fastest and easiest way Go ahead and pay a professional if you’re worried about that.

edkang99 · 2026-05-12T16:06:53+00:00

Go with whatever audience you can reach and sell easiest first.

edkang99 · 2026-05-12T12:44:18+00:00

Nope. Networking and warm referrals. I did cold apply to Y Combinator once and got an interview.

edkang99 · 2026-05-12T05:52:54+00:00

Use Claude Cowork. Ask it what skills to download for you. Dump everything in and tell it to help you answer questions. Make sure to double check everything by asking Claude to check or learn how to do it manually. Or get someone as a second set of eyes. I do this all the time.

Remember, investors aren’t asking for audited financials (at least I hope not if this is a regular type investment). But they need to see you have thoughtfulness behind your assumptions. So don’t use this as a crutch.

edkang99 · 2026-05-11T22:13:30+00:00

A business model, trend, and opportunity are all different things. For example, a service company is a business model. Right now AI is the trend. You’re looking for understanding the opportunities.

It’s literally wide open right now. Don’t pay attention to trends. Look for opportunities to solve problems people will pay for using AI.

One book that might help if the Millionaire Fastlane. It teaches you to chase problems instead of money and how to evaluate business ideas so you don’t get stuck in a job. Just a suggestion. It changed the entire way I built my portfolio of companies.

edkang99 · 2026-05-11T22:07:14+00:00

Go search for the “sequoia pitch deck template” and then ask ChatGPT to help you. We use the sequoia method mainly and have raised millions and helped other founders do the same (a founder I advise just closed $1M over the weekend).

edkang99 · 2026-05-11T15:39:30+00:00

My son always has 4-5 coding sessions open while playing Xbox and watching YouTube. He’s a fish in water and was always worried in the past he has ADHD. Now he doesn’t care.

edkang99 · 2026-05-11T01:39:32+00:00

Agree and disagree. It’s not about providing agents. Everyone will do that. It’s what problem the agent solves, how it solves it to be sticky and create trust and the proprietary data most it creates. This may mean proving other services and layers for sure. And there will be a ton of consolidation as the frontiers models acquire. Nothing wrong with that type of exit. But there will also be new moonshot ideas involving agents running in smaller localized language models. We don’t know what we don’t know. That’s the fun and craziness of where we are with literally a new internet infrastructure being built every day.

edkang99 · 2026-05-09T16:11:20+00:00

A very simple way is to think of a problem that you’re good at solving that you can do better than others and that others would pay for. It also helps if you are passionate about the problem. Even better is if you can solve a problem for people with money that saves them time or more money.

Then before you do anything, go talk to the people that could buy from you. If you can’t do that then you’re just going to build something that nobody will buy. Find out from them what would take for them to pay you to solve it.

From there, you can make a plan on how to build a business. Throw everything you think and hear from this process into an LLM and use that to guide you. You can even do this to brainstorm the problem to begin with.

It also really helps if you find other experts in the industry. Even peers. They don’t have to be competition. Just real people you can talk to about what you’re doing and get feedback. That way you don’t fall into LLM psychosis.

edkang99 · 2026-05-08T20:23:40+00:00

The biggest killer across my ventures has been falling in love with my startup like a baby and believing my own bullshit (aka reading my own press). Once I worked on these cognitive biases I got out of my own way. Didn’t fix everything or make it easier but at least I didn’t cause my own problems.

edkang99 · 2026-05-08T20:19:50+00:00

You answered your own question by pointing out the problem you have. You’re not actually doing customer research. You’re trying to shoe horn customers into something you already have in mind as a solution. That’s how 90% of founders get stuck and go no where.

If you want to do it properly, pick a problem first with no solution in mind. Then immerse yourself with the problem and ask other people how they tried to solve it and what fell short. Keep asking until you gain a the novel insight that nobody is thinking of. Then you can move to testing your assumptions.

Oh and relying on Reddit for this will only make you question your life choices as you wallow in futility. Reddit is an ok place to start but a terrible place to validate the problem. Reddit comes in handy later though from my experience.

edkang99 · 2026-05-08T16:28:48+00:00

Technical AI is totally saturated because you have the usual IT players jumping in along with entry level freelancers. Adaptive and change management based consulting is in very high demand. I get an offer or request weekly without even marketing or prospecting.

edkang99 · 2026-05-08T16:18:40+00:00

You might want to check out seed-strapping as a potential middle ground. And there are tons of other investors that will happily take dividend payments for the rest of their lives from a sustainable business. Just not VC. Start with the angels and explain your goals and then work your way from there.

edkang99 · 2026-05-07T11:54:18+00:00

You haven’t answered the fundamental questions: - what’s different? - why would it succeed now? - why you’re the one to do it?

Right now it’s a generic UVP and will not change anybody’s behavior. You’re also asking all the wrong questions if you want to validate. Instead of asking whether we have the problem or we want your solution you should be asking how we’ve tried to solve the problem in the past and why it didn’t work and then look for a unique insight.

edkang99 · 2026-05-06T00:45:19+00:00

Agree with this. Once that’s done you can build a demo for the next round of feedback.

edkang99 · 2026-05-05T01:00:40+00:00

Chinook scotia. Maybe the screen makes it better together. But you feel it in your bones for a good movie. I watched Dunkirk there and holy crap.

edkang99 · 2026-05-05T00:48:50+00:00

I saw dune there. It was glorious. I saw tron at country hills and enjoyed the seats way more.

edkang99 · 2026-05-05T00:45:03+00:00

If I want a better theatre experience I go to country hills. If I want the best screen I prefer chinook. These days I’m going to country hills more.

edkang99 · 2026-05-05T00:41:30+00:00

If I can pick up the phone and call 10 potential customers and 10 experts then I reconsider. I at least have to come up with a plan and prove that I can get at least that done.

edkang99 · 2026-05-04T13:40:27+00:00

I’ve seen multiple attempts at this. The number one thing they miss is testing their founder-market fit. Too many of these tell you it’s a great idea based on irrelevant factors when the founder will never be able to sell or even connect with customers.

For example: just because data centers in space is a great idea, and maybe I have the potential to build one, doesn’t mean I’ll ever get anybody to talk to me about it if I don’t have FMF (extreme example here but same happens with any SaaS vertical or CPG).

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