Week 26 report - 2024

Disclaimer: We're still in business. Didn't have much to share since I was out meeting finance professionals and the team was building the product.

Confession

There's so much to say. Rather, there's so much to confess.

Until May of 2024, I had been arrogant about what a great design is and how I thought I knew so much about UX design. The truth is, I knew nothing. I was a piece of shit and I realized this about 3 weeks ago.

I thought I had all the ingredients to create great user experience followed by a sleek interface. I thought I knew everything about it from my past experiences and learnings. Well, this was pure ego shit.

I have failed to fulfill my duty to understand the market. The most important thing I had to do was not build something but understand them. I knew about all these frameworks to understand the market like The Mom Test and Design Sprints, but failed to actually understand the true meanings of them.

Action

So, I had been running around all over Seoul to meet finance professionals and retail investors. As a result, a fog of uncertainty has started to clear out and I have gained momentum and energy. I enjoyed talking to potential customers and discovering opportunities.

I started gaining more confidence about the problem we're solving. The team started gaining more confidence. We were starting to feel that we were actually on to something. People on Reddit paid attention to what we could offer when we proposed our idea. They showed passion when we contacted them to ask follow-up questions.

Pado is finally evolving from a research and development team into a startup, breaking out of its shell along the way.

Lessons

I don't ever think that I will be fully humble. It is really hard to be humble. Especially when you know you're smart.

You tend to get all snobby and become a know-it-all, as you start gaining knowledge about the field.

You know what's so funny about this? It's that I knew all of this, and it's called the Dunning-Kruger effect.

I think that it's really important to catch those signals of "stupidity". As far as I know, my signals are when I start talking full baloney — a chain of hypotheses — and stay in the office too long.

I am starting to get it. It's all about learning something new, and I was really a retard. There's nothing to learn inside the office — just a figure of speech. My job is to get ingredients from outside of the office and lay them out on the table and start discussing.

Sophia

Show, don't tell. We'll get back to you on Sophia, next week.

I promise you, it's going to be fucking awesome. It's finally a product that the whole team is really proud of. Kudos to Dylan and Pierre for their hard work and passion. I am grateful to have met them and be part of the team.

Founder-Market fit

There's a term in the startup world: Founder-Market fit. It's a pretty intuitive term, and I had been thinking about my fit with the finance world.

Truth is, I still don't know if I am fit for the job. I don't know if I am ever going to be great like my role models: Steve Jobs, Brian Chesky, and Jack Dorsey.

But I know one thing for sure.

I don't hate it.

I view life as a journey of identifying preferences. But I found myself having difficulties figuring out if I like something or not. So, I started to go with evading things what I disliked, rather than pursuing something I liked. So far, I am having fun, which is a good signal.

A wave never stops

Yeah so, I am not quitting. The team is not quitting. We are not quitting.

Pado never stops.