Leaving ProperlyAI
After over a year of pivots, shifting ideas, and chasing different directions, we never quite found the right fit. In the last two months, we made progress—we launched a new landing page, got some responses, and learned that homebuyers struggle to access certain key information. We looked for ways to deliver that insight, but in the end, understanding what they really need, where to find it, and how to provide it effectively would take far more time.
People assume startups are just a bunch of tech bros building a product, waving a magic wand, and—boom—you have an automated business and millions in funding. The reality? It’s painfully slow. You’re probably running in circles, questioning everything, and losing your mind—especially if you’re in an industry where you lack deep experience.
Most of the time, people don’t actually need what you’ve built. That first failure—when we launched our initial product and it flopped—was brutal. We learned from it, but the sting still lingers. You pour months into building something you believe in, only to realize people don’t care.
The biggest lesson? Keep talking to the people you’re building for. The actual problem matters more than the way you solve it. We built great software, but in hindsight, a simple, manual tool could’ve worked just as well—at least to validate demand. If you can’t get people to use something basic, there’s no point in scaling it.
So why step away now? Because I see us heading down a similar path—one that will take much longer to gain traction. Reaching homebuyers to test our solution has been frustratingly difficult, and I don’t like this space enough to spend another year trying to just assess demand let alone building a full-stack product.
That said, I’m incredibly proud of how far we pushed this for the past year and a half. My cofounder, Vedant and I had multiple opportunities to quit, but we kept going, obsessed with every detail to make it work.
At the end of the day, I’ve given this everything, and I now know it’s not the right use of my time anymore. So, I’m stepping away from ProperlyAI to focus on a few passion projects—until I’m ready to revisit this space again.