From Hardhat to Ai Founder: A Bootstrapping Journey to $100k

Bootstrapping as a recent graduate is a challenging ordeal. You have to raise some cash to reinvest in hopes that someone will take a leap of faith with you. I needed quick cash without having the time to wait for employment, especially hours that would allow me to put in the time to work on Tale. With no money and only the knowledge of what I needed to pitch, I set out to work and learn what I was missing. I reverted to what I knew most: manual labor (in hindsight, I would not recommend it). With little hope of quickly finding a job in finance, I began working overnights with my brother on a jackhammer from 6 pm-2 am, with my first shift on my birthday. But little did I know that the investment I was looking for would come from the tunnels themselves.

On the first nights, I was frustrated by the stark contrast from winning startup competitions to suddenly jackhammering below the Washington D.C. streets, but I quickly found the experience quite worthwhile. I was reminded of my privilege to receive an education and do what I love. I also had endless access to feedback while using my co-workers as beta testers for mockups and ideas during our 11 pm lunchtime. Funny enough, many of my co-workers met the criteria for our ideal customers.(Nugget of advice: get feedback in every way possible) After a full night's work, I returned to my grandma Gloria's apartment, now empty. I would wake up at 9 am for Tale, go to work at 5 pm, and repeat for six months.

After a while though, my tasks continued to pay off, my network grew, I steadily saw progress in our traction, we incorporated, and I was quickly trying and failing different validation methods while interviewing everyone I could. I hired our first developers and tried our first crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, which scaled to almost $2k in the first 4 days but failed due to setting a high goal in a short time (a nugget of experience set an easily obtainable goal with plenty of time to reach it). For me the most important aspect of bootstrapping was learning. It can be painful, but if I had the money at the time, I would have made A LOT of bad decisions and been much less resourceful.

In early Autumn, I received an invitation to visit the owner of the construction company I worked for. He'd heard of the recent grad toiling on his laptop during breaks in the dust-filled tunnels. I was finally able to do the full pitch I loved. I had one eye sealed from concrete, and after riding jet skis for the first time, I expanded on my dreams for the future in legacy tech, which I believe will be the next .com boom.

A week later I was invited to the office where I was given a key to work and signed my first check for 50,000 dollars. A year later, Tale's raised over $100k in capital, set to be on the app store one year from the day I began construction. Morale of the story, work harder than anyone sees, take consistent action for your startup and most of all never give up on your journey.