kevinjlu.eth 🐧🐧

Ai-Mi is shutting down. We've run out of operational funding and can't continue. I want to share the full journey with you - three years, three pivots, over $1M of founder capital that Andy and I put in (never paying ourselves a salary or reimbursing expenses), and the lessons that came with it. Here's the journey, what I learned, and why I'm more prepared than ever for what's next. The Full Journey This started in late 2021. Not with Ai-Mi, not even with Friendzone. Andy and I spent 2022-2023 building a talent academy and placement program with Hana Securities and our friends at Trinity Venture Studios. We were focused on bridging traditional finance and Web3 talent. By late 2023, after conversations with mentors we respected, we decided to pivot back into building Web3 products directly. We knew we could create more impact building the platforms ourselves rather than just helping others build. Friendzone - February 2024 We launched on Polygon. Hit 10,000 users in weeks. Got coverage in Coindesk and Cryptoslate. But we couldn't sustain momentum. The SocialFi mechanics we built on a product level weren't retentative - and the wider narrative around SocialFi itself - both fizzled out. Users churned fast. Looking back, we didn't understand our users deeply enough. We built what we thought was cool, not what people actually wanted to use daily. We should have talked to more users, iterated faster, and recognized the weak signals earlier. That's on us. Blast - Q1 2024 We won Mobile Big Bang. Rebuilt the entire product for mobile-first. This felt like our second chance. Shoutout to Sao <3 We raised a small extension from people we look up to - Dingaling and Jaden - who believed in us as people, not just the product. But by end of Q1, we were funding operations ourselves again. Still, we were burning through runway consistently looking to achieve the traction needed. Ai-Mi - Abstract We rebuilt and repositioned the product specifically to support Abstract's vision. We believed deeply in what the Abstract team was building and wanted to be part of that ecosystem. Most of you probably found me during this chapter. We launched - thousands of agents created, millions in trading volume, 10K+ unique users. The product worked. The infrastructure was solid. But we were seeing a pattern from before: volumes declining, engagement dropping, revenue not covering operations. Our TGE and working with the best Abstract communities was our last attempt to turn things around with the funding we had. It wasn't enough. It was during this period that I finally recognized the pattern: since early 2024, we'd been in constant survival mode. Every decision was about how to survive another month, not how to create lasting value. When you're in survival mode, you're not building something people love. You're just buying time. That's not a winning strategy. What I Got Wrong Speed. I didn't move fast enough when things weren't working. Each pivot could have happened months earlier if I'd been honest about the signals. Identity attachment. I put my name and face at the forefront. That made failure feel personal instead of professional. When things got hard, I couldn't separate my identity from the company's performance. Conviction vs. delusion. I stayed too convicted to ideas that weren't working. Conviction is good, but not when it blinds you to reality. Team building. I hired fast, too fast. Should have stayed skeleton crew until we had real traction. Vision. I was too romantic about the original vision instead of pivoting on weak signals. Fundraising. I kept rolling the cap table forward through pivots, afraid to admit one company failed and start fresh. Should have wound down cleanly and started new companies with clean terms. You can trust your investors' understanding of risk. Transparency. I didn't communicate challenges clearly enough or often enough. That created information gaps that hurt everyone. Product. Overengineered for scale instead of duct-taping until product-market fit. Waited for perfect instead of shipping broken and iterating. Recruiting. Recruited on vision and potential instead of waiting for traction and momentum. Runway. Let it get too low before addressing it. Should have been thinking about next round at 12 months, not 3. What I'm Taking Forward These aren't just lessons. They're life lessons that I would've died for when I first came into Web3 - that changes how I'll build everything from now on. Move faster. Recognize patterns earlier. Kill ideas that aren't working. Pivot on weak signals, not after burning months of runway. Less ego. More honesty. Especially with myself about what's actually working versus what I want to work. Clean operations. Skeleton teams. Duct tape until PMF. Ship broken and iterate. Clean cap tables. Clear terms. No baggage carried forward. Radical transparency. Better communication. Addressing problems at 12 months runway, not 3. Most importantly: Build for value creation first, survival second. When you're building to survive, you're already losing. When you're building to create value, survival takes care of itself. Hungrier Now Than Ever This public failure has given me something most founders don't get: complete clarity on what not to do. I know exactly where I went wrong. I know exactly what I'd do differently. And I know that the next thing we build will be better because we lived through this. The chip on my shoulder from this journey isn't about proving others wrong. It's about proving to myself that I learned. What Drives Me My purpose has always been about creating impact that changes lives for the better. Not building products that get used. Using products as a vehicle to genuinely add value to someone's life in a meaningful way. That's the work worth doing. That's the legacy worth building. I didn't achieve that with Ai-Mi. But I will achieve it with what comes next because I now know what it takes. About Andy & I @andyteecf and I have been best friends for 14 years. We've built everything together. Over these three years, we put in over $1M of our own capital as co-founders. We never paid ourselves a salary. Never reimbursed ourselves for flights, expenses, or anything else. We believed that deeply in what we were building. This didn't work out, but it hasn't changed our partnership. We built Ai-Mi with complete integrity. Never took shortcuts. Never compromised our values. Never gave up until we absolutely had to. When we build the next thing - and we will - we'll bring all these lessons with us. That's worth more than the capital we invested. What's Next First, I'm taking time to process this properly. Inner work. Rebuilding - both confidence and financially. One thing I realized: as a co-founder, you're a visionary. But how do you paint a vision and measure if you're heading in the right direction when you can't even see where you're headed? I'm grateful to have incredible people around me from 8 years in Web3. Catching up with friends, investing more deeply in those relationships - that's a priority now. Being based in Sydney, Australia makes that harder, but it's not an excuse. I'm also digging deep into on-chain consumer behavior and macro trends. We're undergoing a massive shift in Web3 - it's becoming more institutionalized, harder for dApps to make sustainable impact. I'm looking at where people put their money where their mouth is. The intersection between liquidity, attention, and genuine value creation. Then, back to building. Different. Better. Faster. Clearer. The next thing will be different because it has to be. These lessons demand it. To everyone who supported Ai-Mi: thank you. You deserved better outcomes. To our investors: I'm sorry we didn't deliver. You took a risk on us. To the @AbstractChain team: Thank you for the support and belief @Phin_totten @rajpatel. You have something special @0xbeans @LucaNetz . To our team: Thank you for believing and executing. You deserved better leadership. Failure isn't the end. It's a foundation. Three years. Three pivots. One wind down. And one founder who's now better equipped to build what actually matters. I'm not done. Not even close. -- Kevin