0. A Unique and Crazy Experiment

After being a co-founder of 5 semiconductor and enterprise software startups (2 success, 3 fail) in Silicon Valley, and investing in 100+ of global tech startups since late 90s, and having spent over a decade as an enabler of the global tech entrepreneurship ecosystem, I decided to start a new tech startup from absolute scratch and document the journey in a masterclass format.

“I intend to create a unicorn tech company, and publicly show how its done at the same time.“

As a seasoned veteran, I have some unfair advantages and I hope to overcome my weaknesses through this crazy experiment. Let’s get started:

1. Go Big or Go Home: The startup is at zero (+epsilon) currently as all I know it will utilize AI to disrupt an industry. But I know it will be $10 millions in 6 months, and a unicorn in a year or two.

2. Unfair Advantages: Lifelong friends, partners and other enablers (most to be announced as appropriate) will make this a smooth and efficient journey.

3. Those who can’t, teach: Usually so. But here I am doing it, so learn.

4. My Current Ecosystem:

   1. Shareholders: I intend to have up to 1,000 shareholders. Because I want to co-create with you. So I pay you subscription shares to learn and also help me co-create. Learn by witnessing the journey, learn by doing some basic (and only 30 min/week) stuff. Get paid to learn. My shareholders will get the eventual service or product free, will get $600 worth of shares when we launch (January 1, 2024) in exchange for learning and spending 30 minutes a week with me.

   2. Subscribers: Don’t have 30 minutes to contribute but want to learn? Then read the free newsletter. Twice a week. Inside journey of the founder written honestly in a masterclass format.

   3. Premium Subscribers: Don’t want to be a shareholder and do some work? But still be a part of the private community, attend monthly Q/A sessions, get a substantial discount of the eventual product/service, invest at a discount in the future and read the exclusive parts of the newsletters? Then for the price of six cups of coffee you can be a premium subscriber.

   4. Institutions: Get in touch with me if you like to support this experiment in any shape or form. I will announce my OG institutional supporters in July and we don’t take cash so the support (and the quid pro quo) will need to be creative. One example: I will collaborate with a large AI-specific venture fund on tools, platforms, etc. in exchange for an early window for potential investment.

5. Recent Specific Learnings and Some Random Ramblings

• The name of the masterclass is AddShortcut. We will name the company something else.

• I am thinking about fintech, education, healthcare these days. But am open to suggestions at our Slack Community (shareholders and premium subscribers only). We will spend the month of July ideating and desk validation of ideas through markets and customers. It is best to start with the customer (we will do a B2C most likely but with some twists) and her pain points (pain is where it is at, no vitamins). As I told many founders countlessly in the past (and I will eat my own dog food): traction is EVERYTHING. If I can’t get my shareholders (1,000 hopefully) to approve the idea, then such idea has NO traction and has to die.

• I hate supply-driven stuff as it is really super rare to create something that creates its own demand (read my friend Tony Fadell’s book: Build) but I do have some cool software that can be purposed.

• I chose beehiiv for the newsletter platform after having used substack (https://treedao.net) and wordpress newsletter (https://buda.la/bulten) in the past for other efforts.

• I said weaknesses (plural) in my first paragraph. When one has so many public shareholders like we do here at our journey (normally a public company has this “problem”), it makes me publicly committed to doing my very best. One thing I learned at business school was a concept called “escalation of commitment.” Heck I am increasing my hunger (normally I was technically retired) by amping up the commitment. So thank you.

• How do we deal with a thousand shareholders? I spent the last two years herding cat the Stanford DAO (that’s decentralized autonomous organization for you) and the last decade on all things “volunteerism” (see this volunteer marketplace app if you don’t believe me). So I learned a thing or two about what we can do and how with some many people. Another benefit of being part of the masterclass for you - will learn how to herd cat.

• Will there be crypto? Probably. While decentralized stuff has super poor user experience, and the lack of trust is not all that pervasive; there are things we can and will incorporate in our startup.

• What do you mean by AI? While I have access to some cool infrastructure (ontological machine learning model beats the crap out of LLMs) we will most likely take the state of the art and apply to a large and established industry. I spent the last two years immersed deeply in AI in all aspects and cannot stand 95% of folks out there because they confuse AI with machine learning with statistics. Good for us.

Oltac Unsal

For my inaugural post I have a Learning from Friends section for Premium Members after the paywall and an embarrassing story featuring yours truly and Peter Thiel. While the free newsletters are the no holds barred masterclass, you will truly enjoy the premium content. I guarantee it. And remember, everyone who subscribes before July 1, 2023 gets free Premium Membership. Gifting this membership is a manual process and my team does it once a day for new subscribers. So don’t go buying the membership - you will get it for free ;-) within 24 hours or so. And if you are too impatient, find your way to our private community slack.

Subscribe to Premium Membership to read the rest.