One year ago, I had come back from Cape Town, wrote up a newsletter post about the community building masterclass I created, then stop publishing Founders in the Cloud.
I have not gone totally radio silent if you have caught my updates on LinkedIn. But my complete and total focus since September of last year has been my startup.
Writing is my passion. It helps me think, and I genuinely like to share what I’m thinking about and learning with others. The energy it takes to put together a newsletter that I would feel proud of though is a time consuming effort. That was time I simply didn’t have.
What has occupied every waking moment of my life though is getting TribeROI off the ground. And that has been a journey and a half, and then some.
Here are the highlights (or lowlights, if you will):
I had a co-founder a year ago. Then I parted ways with said co-founder four months ago. It was not a pleasant breakup.
I went through three entirely different product directions, completely scrapping the previous work to rebuild from scratch.
I shipped one product to over 60 close connections that was universally panned. I am still thoroughly embarrassed by that episode.
I launched one community in Taiwan for AI startups, then had to abandon it because the co-founder I let go was also one of the founders of the community.
I failed to get any funding for my startup, after reaching out to over 120 investors, many of whom I know quite well.
I still do not have a single customer or commitment. There were some companies that were interested, but the product simply was not there.
I am now a solo founder and some days I feel like I am going to go fucking insane from the intense loneliness and isolation.
Through all of that though, I have managed to make something useful and finally feel like maybe I’m turning a corner.
I finally have a version of TribeROI that actually does the thing I have dreamed of building from the beginning, a tool that measures community business impact.
I released an open source event analytics tool called baraza that provides insights on events hosted on Luma.
I shipped a browser extension to clear up the noise of the LinkedIn feed called Clean Slate that is also open source.
I built my own AI engineering harness that has massively accelerated my shipping velocity while also increasing code quality.
I created my own CRM and now use it to help me strategize and manage my sales outreach campaigns.
I published two reports on the Taiwan tech scene, one report on government support for startups and one on the AI ecosystem in Taiwan.
I launched a new startup community in Taiwan called GIST and had a success event with over 50 attendees and 4.9 star rating.
I lost over 30 pounds by committing to a healthier lifestyle and exercising every day, completing over 1900 miles ran in the past year.
So that is the short story of what I have been up to. Now that I enter year two of startup life, there is still a shitload of uncertainty, but I feel a lot better about where I am right now.
Also I plan to get back to writing now that the painful part of rebuilding TribeROI (check out my revamped website) is now complete and ready to launch. I have something I plan to announce this week!
The other thing is that my focus is community and AI now. While I enjoy the cloud stuff from my AWS days, I plan to rebrand this newsletter over the next month. It will still be all my thoughts on startups, but emphasizing community and how I build with AI. I have a lot more to say on those topics and how important they will be for all businesses going forward.
Be awesome and chat again soon🙌
Mark
