Cai's Startup Diary - Day 1

On June 5, my company held a meeting titled "Join us today for an important update on our site strategy," where they announced that the entire technical site, comprising 3,500 people, would be laid off, including my direct boss and manager. So, I am officially unemployed. Of course, I had already prepared for this. On February 17, 2025, I wrote this tweet:

As a developer with 12 years of experience, I deeply know what's coming next at this AI age. Although I haven’t been laid off yet, I’m already preparing for my future career. After losing my development job, I plan to start my own business using a "build in public" approach. However, I'm not a business person and have little to no knowledge of how to start a startup, find a co-founder, or connect with investors. That’s why I’ve decided to build my AI tools as open source and share them freely, to build relationships with users and establish my presence in the startup community. I want the world to know that there’s a guy, Cai, who is creating something that can help others. Eventually, I believe I’ll figure out how to turn this into a profitable business.

Now, it's 20250622 09:29, I'm here ready to start my startup journey. It will consist of the following main components:

Build in Public (short videos/articles (long)/tweets (short)) in both Chinese and English. My English isn't very good, so I need to improve my speaking skills and will continue learning English. Topics will include: AI, entrepreneurship, programming, personal productivity, how a one-person company operates (US Delaware C-Corp), startup diaries, entrepreneurial thoughts, and technical reflections.
SaaS or app development and release, focusing on efficiency tools for independent developers and entrepreneurs, while sharing my experiences.
Programming course creation: In this new AI era, outdated methods of teaching technology no longer apply. Many students are still learning old technical theories that are highly accurate but have very low practical value. This kind of highly correct but low-value knowledge is no longer suitable for today’s students as it is too inefficient. I plan to teach technology with new methods like "Head First" and "AI Ahead," making it easy for anyone, including children, to understand and learn programming languages. We could even cultivate "architectural thinking" and treat programming as just a tool to implement functionality rather than as an engineering detail.

These three components are my startup direction, and for now, content creation is my top priority. I believe in my own wisdom but also respect and other's wisdom. I'm sure i will make mistakes, but I will also meet people who can give me useful feedback to help me evolve, iterate, refine my path to discover the right direction. Although one-person company can pivot quickly, but one-person's perspective would limit decisions, I also need some others perspectives such as entrepreneurs, independent developers, or anyone who has valuable insights.

As such, my second and third points will be dynamically adjusted. Currently, my top priority is increasing efficiency in content creation. I need to expose myself frequently on social media, so I need efficiency tools to help me. I plan to build AI agents and workflows to enhance this process.

I will share my entire process and startup details publicly. I hope to help others and would appreciate any advice or feedback. Feel free to be direct and honest with me. Don't worry about hurting my feelings; I will actually feel happy about your directness. I will create a webpage to share the comments and tweets of those who played a key role in helping me.

Great, Cai's startup journey officially starts today!