Week 27 - Kicking Off: My Raw Reality

It's not the financial challenges that have been the toughest, but the emotional ones. I've been rejected so many times that I've lost count, all while seeing my peers achieving their goals and making money. It's hard not to feel envious when everyone else seems to be doing well and bragging about their latest successes on social media.

I've thought about starting a blog to share my journey as an entrepreneur for months, but I never had the will to begin. Ideally, I should have started in Week 1 of 2024, but here I am, kicking off on Week 27. A lot has happened in these past six months of full-time (or sometimes wanna-be full-time) work at FinKratt . I've made many mistakes and have plenty of regrets about things I did and didn't do. I can't lie—it's been harder than I expected.

It's not the financial challenges that have been the toughest, but the emotional ones. I've dealt with a lot of frustration. I've been rejected so many times that I've lost count, all while seeing my peers achieving their goals and making money. It's hard not to feel envious when everyone else seems to be doing well and bragging about their latest successes on social media.

Although I'm not doing terribly financially, my funds are running low, and income is nearly non-existent. I've calculated how long I can sustain this, but the numbers look grimmer every day. If FinKratt doesn't raise funds soon, I might have to find a job.

Why This Blog?

This isn't one of those braggy, feel-good LinkedIn blog posts about how fantastic everything is going. I'm not going to tell you to "just pursue your dreams" and other such nonsense. Honestly, I'm not doing great. However, I'm not doing terribly either. I have a wonderful girlfriend, a lovely furry cat-princess, great friends, a supportive family, and I live in the greatest country on Earth. So it's not the end of the world, but some days it does feel like it.

I want to use this blog as an escape mechanism for my current struggles on this entrepreneurial path. Probably most of you don't know that I like writing. I don't write fiction, but I enjoy writing about non-fiction topics like politics, law, and philosophy. I've written short letters for newspapers in Chile, posted some pieces on Medium, and even had a personal website for a while. However, I haven't written in a few months, and this is my first time writing about personal things.

So please bear with me as I plan to write new articles weekly or biweekly for the next few months, as I work to secure funding for FinKratt and grow our vision.

Recap of the Last Six Months and Before

Since this is my first blog post about my journey, and I should've written 26 posts before this one, let me catch you up on what has been going on these past six months, and maybe a bit from before as well:

2023:

Before jumping into FinKratt, I worked at a company in Estonia with a decent salary that allowed me to save 50% of my income by living way below my means. From the moment I started there, I knew I would quit within a few months or at most a year. I had nothing against the company; I just wanted to do my own thing.

I was bothered by seeing many friends and family living paycheck-to-paycheck. I knew this was a problem that could be solved, and it was more psychological than financial. So, I joined efforts with my former team lead from Wise, and we started FinKratt.

2024:

January:

I slowly began working full-time on FinKratt. I went to Chile and worked from there. Progress was slower than I wanted, but I still did my best and created a structure for what would become our prototype.

February - March:

I travelled to Singapore with my girlfriend and worked tirelessly to launch the prototype as soon as possible. Things went mostly according to plan, and we launched by late March.

April:

We launched in both English and Estonian and received more submissions than expected. However, feedback was clear: people liked the concept but wanted an app, not a PDF report. We needed to develop an MVP. The problem was that neither my partner nor I were technical people, so we needed a technical co-founder ASAP.

May:

We attended Latitude59 in Tallinn to get feedback on our concept and gauge potential investments. This was a harsh reality check. VCs don't care unless you have a superstar background or an MVP with proven traction. Since we had neither, finding a technical co-founder became our top priority.

June:

We kept searching for a technical co-founder and found the right person in the most unexpected way. It was awesome! FinKratt will share more about this soon.

July:

Now, in the first week of July, I’m writing this blog post from the Investeerimistfestival in the middle of the Estonian countryside, while panicking about the huge number of things I still need to do to launch the MVP quickly.

What's Next?

So yeah, as you can tell, we have a plan to launch our MVP as soon as possible (I won't disclose our internal date because it might change). We've kicked off a high-intensity work schedule to achieve this.

We're not here just to get rich (by the way, I hate those money-chasing influencers on LinkedIn). We're in this for the long game because we really want to make a difference. I'd love to see a dramatic decrease in the number of people living paycheck-to-paycheck and be able to say: "You see? I f***ing did that!"

So stay tuned for updates on FinKratt and my personal journey as I try to navigate these crazy times.

P.S.

If you were wondering about the picture I chose for this blog post, it's a wristband they gave me at the American embassy for the 4th of July. When I got home, I realised it read "Made in China." It made me laugh and think about my own journey so far—full of twists and ironies, just like this damn wristband.