Reflecting On My Story So Far:

I recently closed my first-ever fundraising round for my startup, AllMind AI. Looking back on the past few months, I’ve realized how much I’ve learned and how different the process is from what people online often describe. I’ve always been a perfectionist. If I decide to do something, I want to do it exceptionally well. A great example of this is when I nearly scored 100 in Calc 2 at the University of Waterloo, while the class average was below 50. However, this mindset had to change when I started AllMind AI. Starting a company was entirely new for me. I had experience working in startups, but never learned how to start one. My naive belief was that building a business involved writing code, shipping it, and becoming a tech billionaire. I was very, very wrong.

Here are five key lessons I would tell my past self:

Take Your Time: When I started building AllMind AI, I approached it like a software engineer: start writing code immediately. This isn’t the best way to build a business. Take your time to think about what you want to build and why. Talk to potential users to ensure there’s a market for your product. Many of my friends failed because their products had no paying users.
It’s Not Easy: You will not become an overnight billionaire. I thought I would, but that hasn’t happened… yet!
Things Will Change: My product’s target audience evolved from professional banks to individual family offices, and now to retail investors and day traders. Even now I am currently rebuilding the entire product. Nothing is stagnant.
Financials Matter: I didn’t initially focus on financial modeling, bookkeeping, or tracking expenses, which caused issues. I would tell myself to get these things in order from the start.
Have Fun Don’t do it for the money. Do it because you genuinely love it and want to make the idea successful.

As a first-time founder who scaled from 0 to something not zero, these are my insights.