Journey Of Launching An AI Startup. Win or Perish Challenge 2025!

Author: admin

  • Day 2 – Work Diary #3 – Setting up Laravel Jetstream & Deploying on Forge

    Had a load of random tasks come into my reality today; but decided to stay focused on just building through my roadmap. I know I need to write it all down at some point but for the moment just going with the flow.

    I’ve got some existing customers that’s that I need to talk to, and some tasks to complete for them. And there’s a demo to sort out for next Tuesday which is pretty much an impossible task and no idea just yet how I’m going to approach that.

    For the moment I’ve got Laravel JetStream up and running. Had to do some docker tweaks to get Laravel Sail working with Postgres. JetStream gets some basic dashboard stuff up and running.

    … which also has basic user functionality, and two factor auth which I will want to test to see how it works. Also browser session clearing is quite fun to have.

    At any rate, I’m not sure about using JetStream totally, but for the moment it will serve a purpose. I don’t like Inertia and this would force that architecture, but I can figure it out. I also want to use my React dashboard, but I will have to also figure out the best way to integrate that. It may be that I just use the Fortify stuff and rebuild the UI and functionality. Will see.

    Next is going to be hooking this up to Forge and getting deployment working.

    Had to scrap the Forge server and build it again this time implicitly requesting for postgres. Have realised I am going to need alternative setup for the python API that I will be building. But will come to that when I get there.

    But whilst I am doing this, I realise that I could just upgrade to Postgres 17 and see if that will work.

    https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/postgresql-17-released-2936

    Reprovisioned the server and got it to match the local Laravel Sail setup exactly. Needed to tweak the postgres up to 17, ubuntu to 20.04, and PHP to 8.4. This now matches the local Docker to the remote Forge server. Less likely to get random bugs that I don’t understand in the future.

    Once I had done:

    • Deleted and created a new Server on Forge
      • Matched Ubuntu, PHP, Postgres versions to the local docker
    • Resynced with github repo

    … finally got it up and running … and wasn’t encountering any missed migrations or server errors.

    Excellent!

  • Day One – Work Diary #2

    I hadn’t expected to need to think about a fundamental business decision within hours of day one, but that’s the way things go.

    My newly appointed office, based out of the local Wetherspoons, at £1.80 for unlimited hot drinks, is a good place to start the day when you don’t have an office. 🙂

    Anyway, last three hours has been a solid meeting with someone I very much respect. It very much impacts what I am doing, and a high level analysis is:

    • There is a prebuilt codebase available to me, that isn’t too far away from being a ready product in the AI sector.
    • I can form a company with this person, and build that company beginning with this product.

    The challenges are:

    • The tech stack is something I am not 100% familiar with. I was very, very much wanting to go with Laravel + React/Vue + Python + Flutter. This is sort of similar but based on the https://www.graphile.org/news/graphile-starter/ start kit. Most notably I wanted to use Laravel for the backend ‘brain’ but this would negate that.
    • I have been trying for a few weeks on and off, to get this working locally. We got it working on a Linux box last night, but to no avail on my MBP. So I haven’t really had the opportunity to really get to grips with it. This is the big blocker.

    The opportunities are:

    • The person in question is talented and experienced and would be a huge, huge force in going forward. He is, subject to caveats, happy to let me run with it as CEO.
    • Of what I know of it, the system has working parts that are very much part of my roadmap.

    For the moment that’s all I am going to write on the subject. I’m going to get on with other things today, and sleep on it. And figure out a way to get the product working locally where I can use it.

    Back to Laravel

    Laravel JetStream

    The main problem I have is that the rest of the frontend I want to use is built with React components. I have way more access to React frontend components than Vue components. I can work with both, but since I already have some sort of dashboard ready to go built with React/Next … I have to think this through.

    I’m choosing to build first with JetStream because that will implement the Laravel Fortify things that I need. I don’t want to put time into custom implementing my own auth structure right now, and JetStream will be a good starting point. I will be able to port things further down the line. Also Laravel Spark works well with JetStream so that’s a bonus.

    Laravel Spark is really important because that’s how I envisage getting paid eventually, through a subscription access to the system.

    I’ve got somewhere to be tonight, and didn’t expect a couple hour meeting (which is totally great), but still aiming to get something small up and running today as a small milestone.

    Onwards.

  • Day One – Work Diary #1 – Choices…

    Where to start is a tricky question. There are:

    • A ton of YouTube videos I want to watch on specific subjects of AI
    • Some social media stuff I want to prepare
    • A few videos I want to make which lay the foundation with some fun examples of what AI can do

    But ultimately I think the best place to start is getting a SAAS platform up and running with billing. Whilst what I make initially is probably just going to be in showcase form, I know that eventually the safest bet is to get a system up and running that people can sign up to on a running monthly amount. Not that I am ready to charge for anything right now!

    One choice for software right now is a Flutter mobile app, connected to Google’s AI API, which I really like since I prefer making mobile apps as opposed to responsive web apps. Although the gains are marginal now between the two choices. But I do like the ability of the mobile app to be carried around with you, with offline capability so you can keep your data to yourself. I really don’t want to build a business that has to deal with lots of companies’/people’s personal and private information, although that’s the way sometimes.

    The better choice is to build a web system where I can:

    • Eventually have users paying to gain access
    • Showcase my work over the initial 7 months (mobile app would force them to download the app, so it’s less sharable) to get feedback

    I’ve been somewhat playing with two ideas already. One is a flutter app, the other is a web based system. So I’m not starting entirely from scratch.

    I do think long term everyone is going to have some form of real-time digital assistant; and this will be monitoring things for you; abstracting aware mundane activities that it can complete for you; and creating a knowledge base that you can reference at a later date… amongst many other things. So that sort of real-time application will have to work across desktop (I still think people will work from desk/laptops) and sync with their mobile devices. Potentially we might see separate mobile devices and the resurgence of the PDA. Which would be fun.

    So today, I want to keep going with the commitment to make a video everyday. Mainly this is just to get momentum on social media and in my own mind, and also because I just want to show people who have no idea, what’s possible with AI these days. So I’m going to have a play with Cursor and use it to build some fun web AI built web tool which I will later deploy.

    But for the moment I just want to get a web system up and running to act as some form of platform to deploy on. So I’ll use Laravel for this.

    • I want it hooked up to kintronix.ai, setup with Forge and Digital Ocean
    • I want some form of public splash screen page. Since I don’t know exactly what it’s going to do yet, it’s going to be somewhat difficult but just have something up and visible. Maybe just links to this blog, LinkedIn and the future showcases I make.
    • Ideally would love Stripe and subscriptions integrated straight away but this could be a day two thing
    • Upload a fun showcase of what AI can build in just a few minutes of using it. Have made a 3D text creator with it
    • YouTube channel setup and first video done
    • LinkedIn post for day one posted

    Ok let’s go

  • Day One – AI Startup & Burning Bridges. No product market fit. No funding. No market advantage. Just an ambition to try.

    I’ve had quite a few ideas for a while about the way forward. But I’ve been hesitant to commit to any of them until last night when I realised I just had to burn bridges behind me so I had to move forward. This is a small reference to a chapter in Think & Grow Rich, which I read a long time ago. Shortly put, you have to burn your bridges behind you so there is no source of retreat. You either win or perish.

    In my case, I’m not going to fully perish (hopefully), it’s just that I have given myself a hard deadline of October 2025 since that’s when my available money is going to run out. At that point, if nothing has come of it, and it really seems like I am up against a brick wall… I will concede my entrepreneurial dreams and go work on a funny farm. Or more probably, I’ll go back to employment.

    Client Work Gets In The Way

    So in the next eight months, I’ll avoid as much client work as humanly possible. I have mostly reduced my commitments, but there are two projects that I’ve made a commitment to support and don’t want to give them up. I potentially will do consultancy in the interim to get some cash in, but ultimately the main challenge over the last few years is the balance between client work and having an entrepreneurial seizure. Client work is always the easier route to putting bread on the table but the time and mental energy it takes to do that, is taken away from the singular focus you need to build something yourself. So I’ve made the mental decision to allow myself to focus just on building, and use up my financial reserves to keep on living. I will be pretty much broke by October 2025, but that’s half the fun!

    Public Commitment

    When I realised this idea last night, the main theme of it was making a public commitment to going down this route. So I’ll be making a story out of it on LinkedIn, in combination with this website, and across social media. It’s somewhat daunting, and I’m sure plenty of people are going to have negative things to say; and many will expect failure; but it feels right to do this. I expect to make a YouTube video each day on my findings, and then put that out on LinkedIn daily. It’s a bit up in the air at the moment, but I’ll figure it out as I move on. Will also need to get on Insta and Twitter but will deal with these later on.

    Team

    I do have some really good people around me, and have been chatting with them recently on starting something up. Various ideas swirling around. But I realised that I needed to take the lead and march/bumble forward, and if they want to join me on the journey then that’s great. Some of you reading this will recognise you are in that group of people. Up to you to see if you want to join. For the moment it’s just me.

    AI will take my job if I am not aware

    I’ve used AI helpers in programming for a few years now, and quite frankly it’s been an eye opening process. I’ve programmed and worked on the web in general, starting as a hobbyist, then professionally, for 29 years now. To see most of my knowledge advantage now annihilated by AI, and to realise that my programming career is all but over in its current form … this took a while to get over the sadness of it. And I’m certain almost everyone is going to be affected by the rapid onset on this technology. If you aren’t aware and looking into it, and you work in the knowledge or information service industries, you will be washed away.

    Once you get beyond that, it’s pretty amazing the superhuman skills it can give you. But I’ll leave that for some of the forthcoming videos.

    I’m aware that I am completely up against a wall

    Companies have insane amounts of funding pouring talent into this sector. Many people are way ahead of me technically. Younger minds have more neuro-plasticity to adapt and less junk stored from the last 30 years of the internet. At 41 I am aware it’s a good age to start again as a new CEO, I’ve got experience and wisdom that I never had twenty years ago when I started a small web agency. But it’s still tough to constantly keep up to date, constantly reinvent yourself, and still find time to actually live life as its meant to be (i.e. not behind a computer screen).

    I have no product market fit currently. I have some ideas but nothing approaching something that fixes a real world problem. I have only enough funding to afford to cover me up until October. And I have zero market advantage. I am basically starting from zero knowledgewise, I have very few major connections, no social media profile and not much codebase to go on.

    And I’m up against the worlds best with all my weaknesses. So, it’s a big ask but screw it you only live once. I have given myself a hard deadline to build something within 7 months.