Closing a chapter too soon
Today, we are sharing a significant update on our entrepreneurial journey.
In pursuit of an experience unlike any other this summer, the three of us—Harrison, Scott, and Kai—decided to team up to build a startup together. After exploring dozens of ideas, and building two of them (askpromptly.ai and promptcards.io), we decided it's time to choose new paths for ourselves going forward.
A variety of reasons led to us parting ways, but ultimately, it came down to differences in our life stages, unique situations, commitment levels and working styles.
Over the course of a month, we managed to accomplish a lot. We built Promptly, found a pilot customer, demoed the product to several others, showcased at two tech conferences, iterated on feedback, and pitched our progress to over 35 investors as part of NEXT36.
Every week there was a new problem to tackle: a customer not understanding our product, new information from an industry expert, an AI agent going off track, a team conflict, or us losing faith in what we're building. With each situation, we were challenged in ways that only building something of our own could - something not possible at school or a corporate job. Being a founder is about making consequential decisions in face of a tremendous amount of uncertainty.
Only we were responsible for the decisions we made. These moments forced us to see the results of our choices that, over time, refined our judgment as founders. With this experience, each of us can undoubtedly say we will be in a much better position the next time around. We’ve learned a ton (Our learnings from working in AI and building Promptly)
Entrepreneurship is not a sprint. And our journeys as builders, creators, tinkerers, visionaries, and day-dreamers, are far from over.
While Promptly is coming to an end, we’re excited for what’s in store for us next in the coming year.
Scott will be going back to school to complete his fourth year of university, and will be accepting an internship as a Technical Program Manager at Tesla in Palo Alto, California.
Kai booked a one-way flight back to Vancouver and plans to explore new ways to work on the problems he cares deeply about. He’s also currently open to remote software engineering opportunities—if you’re hiring or know someone who is, and think Kai might be a good fit, please reach out to him on LinkedIn.
And Harrison, who recently graduated, will be applying to full-time positions in Product, working on side projects, and will be going on a backpacking trip across South East Asia and Europe. If anyone has any connections or leads, please reach out via LinkedIn as well.
Finally, we’re looking for a home for Promptly. If you are interested in early stage AI-enabled user interviewing tech, reach out to Harrison.
We’re incredibly grateful for the experience and to NEXT Canada and NEXT36 for their support. The program has fundamentally changed our trajectory as founders, and we couldn’t be more appreciative of the opportunity. If you have any questions about the program, the three of us are happy to chat!
