The $25k Prospera AI post-mortem

I lost over $25k on my last startup, Prospera AI.

Here are the 5 bitter lessons I learned.

Honestly, I was kind of ashamed to talk about it for a while. But there's real value in these, and I'm already applying them to my new startup, Oxygen. Moving way faster this time because I'm much smarter than I was 12 months ago.

→ The world doesn't need another LinkedIn AI tool. HeyReach, Sendpilot, Expandi already nail it. Your edge as a startup has to be building what's next.

→ Founders stay in product. I split it with my co-founder. He owned product, I owned GTM. Only after the breakup did I get back into building, and only then did I see how disconnected I'd become from the customer and the product.

→ Hire late. One cracked founder with AI replaces a team. The people we hired were great. Bringing them in was still my mistake. The delegation layer is the agents, not headcount.

→ Build for the model 6 months out. Things should almost break in your product today, because in 3 months they'll be solved. I built for the models of that day. On time = late.

→ Stay lean on cash. I threw money at problems with people and tools. Only two things actually matter:

1) Build the right product 2) Talk to actual and potential users

The rest is in service of those two. You don't need a massive budget for either.

$25k tuition. Worth every cent.