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

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  • Day Four – Building an AI Company. What are the alternatives?

    I’ve made the decision to attempt to build an AI Company. The other options were to:

    • Find an normal job at a decent startup as a web developer in a leadership role. I have done plenty of project management, product ownership and development over the years so whilst there are many better programmers out there than me, I do have a lot of skill and experience to offer any startup. And I love it, still, 30 years on from building my first website on GeoCities. Problem with employment is I do start to feel trapped in a box, and having to be somewhere every Monday morning.
    • Carry on as freelance but improve scheduling workload so I wouldn’t constantly be juggling multiple clients and projects. Freelance is probably the worst way to go self-employed because over the years it’s a war of attrition on your energy levels. If you don’t get it right, it can really grind you down.
    • Find a decent contract. Contracting was super attractive because you can make thousands a week if you find the right one, and you get to focus on one project at a time – which is much easier on the mind, and you are able to give your fullest to it. And once the contract is over you can take a well earned break.
    • Build a web agency up from scratch. If you are going to manage multiple projects, you are better doing a web agency of sorts. But then you have to deal with people and building a team, and that comes with all sorts of problems. A lot of agencies now are struggling because, in reality, most of the digital transformation has now been complete, and the availability of tools for websites and software, together with the increase of supply of capable people mean the profit margins have been hit. Of course, the best agencies with the great service and product, will do well… but building one from scratch now, was something my heart wasn’t in.
    • Do something completely different. Learn a trade such as plumbing or electrician. I may still get training for these qualifications since I’d like to know how to wire up a house or fix plumbing. I think AI will probably shrink the information / service workforce and going back to trades is a good bet for many.

    I’d been considering all of these things at once since the start of the new year, perhaps longer. In the end my heart wasn’t in any of them and that’s why I was dragging my feet.

    I’d always wanted to build a product, and whilst ten years ago would have been an ideal time to get started, and whilst right now is a really challenging time in my life to do so… it’s also the best time. So I’ve got a hard deadline, a bit of runway, going to do my best.

    Some Further Rambles

    I haven’t yet got around to doing videos on the tools available to us right now, but some of them are awesome and transformational/paradigm shifting. I will do videos eventually, but the blog is good enough for the moment.

    The challenge of building an AI company has a few components:

    • Yourself and your energy
    • People who want to work on the foundations with you
    • Gaining exposure
    • Understanding the technology
    • Keeping up to date with the rapid progress
    • Being willing to keep on working despite realisations of intense competition
    • Using AI within the company to build the company
    • Working out how to give value to people already running companies in a way that’s different from the plethora of options already out there

    It seems to me that people who work hard to keep up to date with the AI world are going to become the experts at making recommendations as consultants, so there’s clearly an opportunity for web design and software agencies to ‘upgrade’ themselves to ‘AI transformation experts’.

    Side-note: Brave Browser Leo

    Let’s you summarise webpages.

    Side-note: Really Simple Example of AI Monetised

    I was shown a really simple WordPress plugin today that charged users for filling in alt tags on images. You send the image off to the server and it sends back a really good description. I don’t know how much impact alt tags have on SEO anymore, but it saved significant chunks of time. This is a really simple example of using AI to create an income stream.

  • Day Four – Work Diary #4

    Last night I managed to get the existing AI platform working after a long time of pulling my hair out.

    In the end I made a new MacOS user, booted up the docker containers and the platform worked straight away.

    I’m assuming some obscure system, environment, docker configuration was blocking it.

    Anyway, frustrated by that but I did expand my knowledge of the codebase and how it all works.

    Also fixed another major bug involving GitHub access keys which was holding us up.

    Laravel Forge + Digital Ocean

    Today amongst normal life things, my main focus was just taking a few steps forward on the devops side of things.

    I now have kintronix.ai live with a basic Laravel Jetstream install. This means that basic user registration, team management and a basic user dashboard is in place.

    I also setup staging.kintronix.com and secured that site with simple htaccess.

    So, I’m happy with the work done today.

  • Day 3 – Building an AI Startup : General Thoughts & Long Term Aims

    Building an AI Startup could involve:

    • Optimising the algorithms with which the language models are made, to reduce the cost of creating them in the first place.
    • Creating more efficient hardware with which to process the language models.
    • Training the language models
    • Building software that uses the language models to create new markets, or to optimise current business delivery

    It’s unlikely that I can do any of the first three, so the last one is the most obvious. For the moment I am just talking about Language Models here. Deep learning / data analysis is part of the AI game but for the moment I’m just focusing on Language Models, since they are all the rage.

    We also want to look at image, video and audio creation; since these will significantly disrupt industries that use them day to day. My last job at homemove.com was an amazing example.

    Beyond their excellent use of AI agents to enhance sales, one thing really stood out and that was an AI generated video that was created fairly quickly and inexpensively. It was TV commercial quality (ish). That was enough for me to know how disruptive this technology is going to be.

    Long Term Aims

    • We are each going to have a choice of Virtual Assistants. These will help us navigate through life, and will abstract away a lot of mundane tasks; and will act as a firewall (protection) from the exponentially increasing amount of information out there. It will use processing power to help us make sense of the enormous amount of information out there.
    • Large corporations will also have virtual assistants for each employee. And each of those virtual assistants will likely be linked to each other, and especially those of their managers! As you go up the tree, there will be some sort of overriding ‘AI God’ that is monitoring it all, reporting on it, and most probably taking action.
    • Governments and militaries, if not already, will have extensive AI monitoring systems. The capacity for summarising overall sentiment using just their ‘backdoors’ to Facebook, is quite frightening.
    • I think buildings and cities themselves will have overriding AI brains. Call them AI agents if you like. They will be real-time systems and I suppose not much different from current software excepting they will have surveillance analysis, real-time number crunching and some use of LLMs.

    I don’t think AI needs to always be done in a creepy or sinister way. AI surveillance if done correctly can actually anonymise privacy if we chose to want to do that. Currently the UK government is intent on facial recognition down to each person, much like the Skynet program in China.

    Anyway, these are also just projections from within our own paradigm of life currently. We’re already seeing fully automated sea ports and internal logistic delivery centres, so I expect that fully automated companies driven solely by AI (with an overseer) to be running. The nature of a corporation as we know it may well change. But for the moment we just have to ride the wave and see what happens.

    My long term aim is to find a niche within the Virtual Assistant / AI Agent market, both for individuals and for corporations. There are plenty of people jumping on this bandwagon already, but the market is going to be huge for it.

    Anyway it’s been a long day, so will leave with just a short work diary below.

    It’s a Saturday but I still managed to get some time in.

    Invested today attempting to get some more Docker configuration fixed. Difficult when you are on a brand new tech stack, and stabbing in the dark with console logs. The main problem is the local stack doesnt seem to like my host environment and it’s become a slow process figuring out how to sort that.

    Most of my time was spent on configuring the DXP software, which is an existing AI driven platform that I can help take over and run with. Ultimately it listens to RSS feeds and generates websites from it, but the technology there is adaptive to many other things and is built to scale.

    That said, haven’t been able to get it configured so spun up an Ubuntu box on Digital Ocean with Gnome Desktop. Just about got it and running but its now maxed out at 100% CPU and I can’t login to it currently. Going to let it rest for a while, then come back to it.

    I have some ideas now how to fix it.

    Also Digital Ocean has its own AI Agent Capabilities. Something to look at in the future

    https://cloud.digitalocean.com/gen-ai/welcome?i=6b4c9b

  • Day Two – Setting (Laravel) Sail and Leaving The Shores Of Hesitancy

    Day Two – Setting (Laravel) Sail and Leaving The Shores Of Hesitancy

    It’s really easy to get stuck in hesitancy. It’s an easy place to dwell. Life can be good there but it does start to stagnate. My decision to set sail and commit to building something tangible within 8 months reminds me of many quotes that better summise the principle of what I’ve done.

    “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

     Mark Twain

    And I really like this one because it has a bit about ‘financial unrest’ in.

    “To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise, you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen who play with their boats at sea… ‘cruising’ it is called. Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in. If you are contemplating a voyage and you have the means, abandon the venture until your fortunes change. Only then will you know what the sea is all about.

    -Sterling Hayden

    And one more …

    “For the truth is that I already know as much about my fate as I need to know. The day will come when I will die. So the only matter of consequence before me is what I will do with my allotted time. I can remain on shore, paralyzed with fear, or I can raise my sails and dip and soar in the breeze”.

    Richard Bode.

    I think you get the gist.

    Practically speaking, today was about getting a new base platform deployed, having three key conversations, and finally working on the existing AI platform that potentially I can run with as a company.

    Got the base platform done. Users can sign up to it and manage their profile, etc. Took a bit of tweaking but Laravel proves its worth straight away as normal. Will aim to get on a public domain tomorrow.

    Conversations were good. It’s good to have a close inner circle of people who support you no matter what. It’s hard to find like minded people who have backbones and good principles, so they are very much appreciated.

    Out of one of the conversations came some upcoming tech events in the UK. I’ll endeavour to get to all of these. Getting out and about networking again is something I knew I needed to do for a while, so I look forward to being blown away by the industry progression at these events.

    Upcoming UK events

    Out of them came some London events to attend, which I’ll sign up to:

    • 25-26 March 2025. Tech.eu Summit. London, UK
    • 2-7 June 2025. SXSW London. London, UK
    • 9-13 June 2025. London Tech Week. London, UK
    • 8-9 October 2025. Sifted Summit. London, UK

    Impressed By WordPress

    For all the developer hate toward WordPress over the years (which I bought into) … having just started using it up again, I’m really impressed by the writing experience. I know there’s a ton more I can do, and will do with the site, but the fact you can just get started out of the box with a website is awesome. Best CMS on the web by far in terms of ease of use and functionality out of the box. Screw the WordPress haters.

  • 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.