Young and Loud Festival 2025: Our City, Our Future!
November 5, 2025
Sailing through 2025: A Year in Ship Mode at the 8 Venture Studio.
December 28, 2025
When this Build Log series began, I confidently said we would ship the product in six sprints, like I had looked into a crystal ball. We clearly did not. We moved far beyond sprint six, and it has been eight whole sprints since the last episode. But I promised to tell the story exactly as it unfolds, so here it is. Our estimates were wrong. Reality was louder. The journey got messier, and honestly, far more exciting than we planned. In the end, we built a flying plane.
Building while flying.
To hit key milestones we had committed to with a major stakeholder, we started shipping features in increments. The product was partly in users’ hands while the rest was still being stitched together. It felt like trying to repair an engine while the plane was already in the sky. Right in the middle of this, our designer got pulled heavily into his final-year project work. He started spending more time with his supervisor than the product team. We vibe designed for the most part without the designer in an attempt to move with speed. Looking back, the results reflected.
Where Feedback Hit Us Hard
To understand how real users were interacting with the product, we introduced a “think aloud” test. The instruction was simple: use the app and say everything you’re thinking. That session was brutally honest. It exposed how clunky the learner experience was. I was not surprised. The design of that part of the product felt like a bunch of endless intrusive thoughts. And I know why. We designed it by committee without the designer. Everyone had something to add during reviews. Since AI was not present in the review meetings I had to respond to design decisions it made. I am obviously not Big Shaq so man was really hot. The CTO remarked, “I blame you for this.” The good part is that the feedback from the test became our compass. It showed us exactly where the plane was wobbling.
Taking the Devs Out of the Building
As biz dev started onboarding users, we spent a lot of time in the field. I decided the devs will have to spend time out of the office too. I took one of the devs to all the onboarding sessions I attended. That changed everything. When developers see users struggle in real time, not through Jira or Linear tickets, they feel it. The frustration. The confusion. The hesitation. After one onboarding session, both the dev and I left quietly. But later that night, he showed up with unprompted fixes and ideas. Missionary energy. He even synced with our remote backend engineer. By the next morning, they had already implemented one of the biggest fixes from that session. The plane was shaky, but the crew was leveling it in real time.
Tiny Wins That Kept Us in the Air
Despite the chaos, we kept seeing small wins, quick fixes, more users onboarded, clearer user flows, faster responses from the team. These tiny victories became the fuel that kept us moving forward. Each improvement stabilized the product just a little more.
Then… a Competitor Appeared
Just when we thought we had our turbulence under control, we discovered a competitor we had somehow missed during our early market research. They had suddenly surfaced and were trying aggressively to occupy the exact space we were building for. At that moment, it became clear: we were no longer just building. We were defending territory. War is on.
Returning to Where It All Began
By the time we neared the end of development, something poetic happened. We found ourselves back in the Movenpick Ambassador Hotel lobby, the same place where, seven months earlier, this whole idea lived only in a notebook. No team. No traction. Just a laptop, a sketch, and belief. Now, we were back, with a real product, thousands of users, and a stack of OpenAI bills that could fund a small vacation. The plane was still flying, but at least now it had wings.
This is not a landing, just the end of the Log. To the entire team, technical and non-technical, thank you. Everyone carried part of the weight that made this possible. This may be the final Build Log for Jesi AI, but it is not the end of the journey. The sky is still wide. The engine is warm. And the plane is still in motion.
