I’m late, BUT the view was worth it…

As per usual, the week was superrr interesting with tons of good things happening, and hopefully the immenseness of this view below sets a good standard for this last week and what was accomplished.

This is Week 7 of The Unicorn Founder and today I have loadssss of tangibles to showcase to you.

I’ve been accepted into Buildspace’s Nights & Weekends season 5 (kick-off was this last Saturday), dabbled in 3D design and development, got some sneak peaks on the startup, and have got way too many ideas needing execution.

This Week’s Update Overview:

• 🙋‍♂️ Tell me about Nights & Weekends: The place to build cool things, with cool people over 6 weeks all over the world.

• 🪄 Explain the 3D Design Stint: Okay, I admit 3D design is not top-priority but it does make things look soooo cool, and I want to be proud of how my startup looks, plus I want it to look cool.

• 🦄 The Startup Update: Previously I was in-between agency & startup work, but now it’s all-in with the startup work after I share the opportunity at stake.

• 💡 Let’s hear these Ideas: The majority of these are all about getting the first customers for the startup, making exceptionally swift progress on the product, and also just living a good life whilst doing this all.

🙋‍♂️ Tell me about Nights & Weekends

Imagine a place where you are surrounded by people from all over the world all working on creative, unique, and unashamedly ambitious ideas completely personalised to each person — welcome to Buildspace.

But nights & weekends is where Buildspace really gets to show itself off with their annual season of 6 weeks where anyone from all over the world can apply, have access to the ecosystem applicants, and go through a process of turning their ideas from zero to one — with a 3-day irl event at the end in San Francisco.

Think of it as an accelerator and accountability-partner all-in-one.

I have barely scraped the surface, but these guys are backed by YC and a16z — some very big boys in the startup industry — and so it’s the perfect opportunity to get exposure to that ecosystem from all the way down here in SA.

But the whole point of Buildspace is for people to build what they want and to be pushed to be consistent with building their thing.

I applied with my proptech startup — about 1.5 months ago, and woah so much has happened since — the timing is perfect… more on that coming.

🪄 Explain the 3D Design Stint

Okay, if you’re like me, when you see 3D stuff online it literally feels like magic — it’s soooo cool.

Especially when they have animations attached…

I have been using Spline as my main workspace and it has been phenomenal —wow, it just feels like I have the ability to build sooo many cool things without needing hammers, nails, and physical resources that are so far out of my reach (and budget).

These all have cool animations that I can’t show you here, but just trust me, they’re insane.

The majority of the work I did was tutorial-based just to get a feel for how to actually create these things and now I’m in progress of building my own creations from scratch.

🦄 The Startup Update

Alright, so how does all of the above even relate to building a unicorn ????????

I agree, from first look, it doesn’t seem like it’s all related.

But it is…

And — the main features on the website are all going to be 3D built… boom, all connected, thanks for coming.

Plus, there is $5k available from nights & weekends for the most consistent people in 10 different domains, AI being one of them, as well as software dev.

Sooooo, I could get a little injection of additional capital for the startup from nights & weekends — not counting the fact that I’ll be meeting so many cool people, which is HUGE value in and of itself.

More of an update

So, initially I was thinking about using the agency to get inside the real estate industry and understand it all better — which has served a phenomenal role in helping me get to where I am now: building a complete automation system for real estate agents

But, I also had a desire to perhaps build the agency alongside the startup, get some cash inflow, that kinda thing…

Then I started delving into the 3D design just out of curiosity, which ended up getting me deep into the luxury web design agency model… shiny-object syndrome become really prevalent in my mind.

And then nights & weekends kicked off and I realised: I need to go all-in on one single thing, and for me, that’s the thing that started this whole pursuit — to build a startup, ideally an ultra-valuable one, and do it with a speed unseen before.

So, that’s where I’m at:

• Putting the agency stuff on pause

• Continuing to develop skills that can contribute to building the startup

• Getting first revenue to come through

• And just focused on building a great product at the end of the day that ends up improving the world.

💡 Let’s hear these Ideas

Lastly, some ideas/takeaways/moving forward points for this week.

🤩 Some Ideas

• I literally make time to go to the beach — almost every day — and there’s also my gym schedule, some reading, writing, and walking as well.

  The point: I have an idea that you can build a unicorn startup whilst also building your mind, body, and soul — it just takes a bit more effort — let’s see how that all turns out.

• Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

  I’m taking the time to also develop skills (like web dev, low-code software dev, 3D design, etc. ) so as to be more effective in making progress each day — already I’m seeing rewards, so will continue down this path.

• Sometimes you just need to sit in front of the [screen] (replace with whatever your work involves).

  I have been finding that the best results sometimes comes from just pushing through layers and layers of work/information/obstacles/etc. that come up in the work I’m doing — I end up getting to the good stuff eventually, it just takes longer than I expected/wanted.

  But then again, sometimes the best results comes from getting away and just doing something else — refer back to point one ;)

📚 Takeaways

• Reflection really is a powerful thing because it allows you to see how the bigger picture is unravelling — which is often exciting — and just that tiny action in itself can be motivation enough to keep moving forward.

• Starting with simple, small steps and then consistently repeating that process really, really does lead to big steps being made over a span of time.

• Keeping myself grounded in a harmonious daily schedule has been fundamental in allowing me to keep the consistency going.

🎯 Weekly Moving Forward Points

• Going to refine and complete the startup website.

• Will be testing the product with the first few customers — the goal is to get 3 onboarded.

• And finally, ensuring the product, despite being beta, will be able to function at the bare minimum operations level, and then we build from there.

😌 Want to give honest feedback?

All you need to do is reply to this email to tell me your experience versus expectations.

I’ll see what I can do to improve either a) the experience or b) the expectations I am promoting.

Or just thank you for the really helpful feedback :))))

Did I miss anything? Hit that Reply button and let me know what you’d like to see.

Did someone forward this to you? You can follow the billion dollar company journey here.

Want to connect? Here is my LinkedIn.

Ciao, see you next week!

Ethan