2 months to $500 revenue (learnings as a 1st-time founder!)

Exactly two months ago, I left my full-time job as an early engineer at a YC startup to try to start my own thing. Though I've worked at startups and can code, I've never started a company or made something of my own that generated revenue.

In these past two months, I've learned a ton about pitching, fundraising, incorporation, and marketing and I'm sharing a few of my top learnings here:

• Don't talk to VCs unless you're ready to raise. Read http://www.paulgraham.com/guidetoinvestors.html. We were talking to VCs because they reached out and were thinking that we could raise off of our backgrounds without really having thought through our idea. First impressions do matter, and if you're raising it's better to group all of your investor calls together.

• In the generative AI space, VCs really only care about billion-dollar outcomes and moats. Most aren't even bullish on Jasper ($100M ARR). We're not sure if we ever want to do venture-scale (trying to bootstrap for now), but honestly, I'd rather actively build towards a multi-million-dollar outcome than just sit on my ass brainstorming billion-dollar startup ideas.

• Building downstream apps is more profitable (e.g. AI Avatars vs. dream booth API), but a lot of it will come down to marketing and distribution (e.g. Jasper vs. Copy.AI).

• Balancing work and life is difficult. Initially, I thought things would calm down after we launched, got our first customer, made revenue, etc. but it seems like things never stop. I am more fulfilled with work than I ever was though! (Now my main worry is not generating enough revenue to pay rent though, haha.)

If you're curious, we're currently a platform of AI tools for generating visual content including no-code tools for people to build their own AI image-generation pipelines. Use cases include clothes try-on, product placement photos, stock photos, vector illustrations, headshots, art, etc.

We're starting with AI-generated avatars for professional headshots or profile pictures. Long-term, honestly we're not quite sure what we want to do yet.

If you want to check out what we've built so far and play around with it, visit https://www.aragon.ai/avatars?src=ih. People who have used our platform have been pretty impressed with their results. We're also doing a promotion right now!

Would love to hear people's thoughts! Also happy to answer any questions about my journey so far. (Also building in public @wesleyytian!)

Best,