Face to Face with your Nemesis

I want to completely shed the notion that one should only post 'completed', 'successful', or 'useful' products because everything you build is worth sharing. These pieces may not work well, be pretty, or be useful, but I will write out my entire thought process around it and put a bow on whatever janky scraps I post so people can decide if it's worth using. I hope that these product memorial pieces create the jankiest of scrapyards possible--one that even I look back on bemused at the sheer volume of chaos

Nemesis

I think people spend too much time looking for their soulmate and not enough time looking for their nemesis. As a gag, I thought, "What if I replace every poster in SF that advertises to look for your next partner with one that promises you an eternal thorn in your side?" Nobody would purchase this for themself, but for a friend? Maybe that would be a funny gift.

Life It Lived

I developed the pilot and got it up and running. Now I'm fine tuning it.

Cause of Death (As We Know It)

Business Aspects

I think the biggest shortcoming was my lack of foresight for infrastructure like this. Every piece added, increased the time to make any subsequent changes. This grew cumbersome and bulky. Additionally, I had a number of 'self service'-esque ideas originally planned. I now know how dumb that is for something of this scale.

You first version should NOT be

Self service (they run it themself)
Self checkout (they pay for it without talking to you)
Self onboarded (they can evaluate without talking to you)

Early days, these are incredibly hard to create and potentially massive leaks for your pipeline. Ideally, you should run everything behind the green curtain and deliver an emailed product for them, you can negotiate a price through an email stripe link, you can onboard them over a call.

Personal Aspects

I honestly thought and still think this is a hysterical idea; however, I found that as I built and things became cumbersome that I was questioning whether there was a point. Do I want to build things to encourage AI to be used as a replacement for human connection? I really struggled with this and ultimately lean towards absolutely not. That's just not the point of AI and any tools created to do so are demonstrating a failing of society not a lack of suitable technological innovation. Rather than use AI, one should look to change society.

What Remains Valuable

I got to deploy a full infra project using mostly AI to assist in the development and deeply reflect on myself in a practical example.

How I’ll Honor It

I think we are still going to launch things in a closed beta and see how it works from there. I may still continue to develop it afterwards. I haven't decided yet.