Q1 2025 Update: Startup, Graduation, Job Seeking..
Yesterday marked 3 months since I graduated. I reflected on the last 3 months which seemed to fly by.
Highs and lows, sleepless nights, ideating, trying to get a startup off the ground, combating fears and anxieties on a regular basis, building product and getting your first few customers.
It's been a crazy ride already.
I did something not many would do, startup as an international student in the US. Just 3 months into the journey, I understand why many don't do it.
Getting a company off the ground is painful in itself, doing it as an immigrant is just 10x worse. An experience I highly don't recommend. But if you're an entrepreneur, you aren't going to listen to me anyway.
Why we started up Honestly I didn't initially plan on starting up. But a brutal job market kind of pushed me to seriously consider it. After applying to what felt like countless jobs, some even perfectly aligned with my experience I still couldn't get a single callback for an interview.
I realized something was seriously going wrong in the hiring process (or something was seriously wrong with me!) because I had tried everything, mass applying, tailoring applications and even going through referrals. Recruiters I spoke to mentioned being overwhelmed by the volume of applications but still unable to find the right candidate.
Me and Ferran Sulaiman had toyed with the idea of starting up, we had built smaller products before but having experienced first hand the painful job search process, the entrepreneur in us saw the opportunity to build in this space. We started woking on Zeke during Buildspace last summer.
Learnings I keep going back to this quote by Jensen Huang:
“If we realized the pain and suffering involved and just how vulnerable you’re going to feel, the challenges that you’re going to endure, the embarrassment and the shame, and the list of all the things that go wrong—I don’t think anybody would start a company. Nobody in their right mind would do it.” It is quite true, but the journey has been transformative in its own way. I still learn so much about myself everyday.
I had never been comfortable asking for help, I'm still learning but now a days I don't think twice before shooting off an email or DM. I faced more rejections in the past few months than I have in my entire life. I handle rejections better now, in fact that's my default expectation. The world doesn't really owe me anything, the sooner you realize it, the better. I am slowly learning to make peace with the uncertainty of it all, there is a drastic difference in how you operate at a job versus a startup. Runway is always top of mind.
I am also eternally grateful for those who helped us and continue to do so with no expectations. Getting to hear outside perspective has been such a blessing and has centered us on many occasions.
Future As it stands today, we have a handful of paying customers, 100+ signups ($0 spent on marketing!), we are brainstorming a few pivots and applying to startup accelerators for a big break.
Even today, I'm not sure what the future holds but I wanted to document this journey for others to see. We only hear about the Googles and Facebooks of the world, but the journey is far from glamorous and I want to show that.
Let's see what the rest of 2025 holds!
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