It’s been a week since we launched jesi AI 1.0. Naturally, based on all the Silicon Valley movies I’ve watched, my expectations were completely reasonable. I expected:
- 1 million users.
- 10,000 paying subscribers.
- Interview requests from TechCrunch and TechCabal.
- Inboxes overflowing with desperate emails from investors.
Well… we almost got there. 😄
The Reality Check
Instead of tech-world domination, reality handed us some different (but exciting) milestones:
- 100 v1 new users created accounts.
- 5 users upgraded to a paid plan.
- Someone from Mexico signed up (we are still trying to figure out how they found us!).
- A few beautiful “Congratulations!” and encouraging messages (though I’m still waiting by the phone for that tech reporter)
- Our infrastructure bill decided it wanted to scale faster than our new users.
I feel incredibly happy and grateful for how far we’ve come. At the same time, I feel the heavy burden of figuring out how to grow these numbers before we run out of cash.
That said, our team learned more in seven days than we did in months of pre-launch planning. Here are the 5 lessons we took away from week one, summarized quickly so I can get back to growth hacking:
Lesson 1: Nothing Beats Real User Stories
Our biggest validation didn’t come from sign-up metrics. It came from hearing teachers tell us that jesi AI solves a genuine problem.
One teacher told me:
“I teach two classes. Every Sunday, I have to write lesson plans, and it’s draining. Eeei, so you had a cool app like this and you didn’t tell me about it?”
Another simply said:
“I love it.”
Messages like that remind you exactly why you started building in the first place. Even if we never become a tech unicorn, we already provide real value to real educators. jesi AI is stable, teachers love it, and that is the exact foundation every startup needs to scale.
Lesson 2: Users Will Break Your Assumptions
During our pre-launch meetings, we decided to push the “parent account” feature to the post launch sprint. We assumed parents would just create learner accounts and share the login with their kids. They didn’t. Instead, confused parents flooded us with calls because they didn’t know how to onboard their children. Within hours, our product managers, developers and designers scrambled into a huddle and redesigned the entire experience. By the end of this week, we will ship a dedicated parent onboarding flow.
To my fellow builders: no amount of brainstorming in a meeting room beats watching real people use your product. Go to the market, you are already late!
Lesson 3: Customer Support is the Product
We poured all our energy into launching the product, but we didn’t prioritize supporting the users once they arrived. Suddenly, questions bombarded us from everywhere: WhatsApp, phone calls, frantic screenshots, emails, and colleagues. We realized instantly that we needed a centralized system to help people navigate the app.
The team adapted quickly and integrated WhatsApp directly into the app to streamline support for both our users and our operations team. Lesson learned: support isn’t a post-launch task. It is a core part of the product launch experience.
Lesson 4: Distribution is Harder Than Building
Building software is hard. Getting people to use it and pay for it is a different beast entirely—a lesson I learned fast during launch week. It didn’t help that our digital marketing lead became unavailable just days before the big launch. Suddenly, I had to write copy, review designs, draft emails, coordinate posts, and figure out distribution.
Let’s just say, if our social media has felt a bit quiet, it’s because I have officially resigned from my temporary role as Head of Content. 😂 I now have a deeper appreciation for digital marketers.
Lesson 5: Launching is Just the Starting Line
Many founders treat launch days or demo days like the grand finale. They aren’t. Launch day is simply the day your users start telling you what to build next. A week in, it is crystal clear to us at Jesi AI that every bug report, confused user, feature request, and compliment drives our product development. We are throwing out our original roadmap and letting our users shape what comes next. While our “to-build” list is already exploding, our devs need a quick break from their black screens to go touch some grass.
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We are only one week in, but jesi AI is already a significantly better product than it was on launch day.
To our first 100 v1 new users (and our unexpected friend in Mexico): thank you for taking a chance on us. To the team: rest up tonight. Tomorrow, we get back to the grind—growth hacking, improving user experiences, and answering your WhatsApp support messages.
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Launch blog post: https://jesiai.substack.com/p/introducing-jesi-ai-10-ai-that-helps
Tell a teacher about Jesi AI: https://www.jesiai.com