Building a startup in 7 days while traveling 10+ cities in Japan 🇯🇵

Hey builders,

Do you remember times you just did something on a whim and then it ended up into a whole story arc?

That's exactly what I did when I was solo-traveling in Japan 🇯🇵

3 hours before the application deadline of the Buildspace 6-week startup program.

I sent my application.

Why not? I told myself.

Flash forward a few days later… I am now in Miyazaki, Japan visiting 1000-year-old shrines 👇 

I open my phone… 1 new email from the buildspace team. I am in 🤯

Now I need to find a startup idea and build it in just 6 weeks.

So I decided to start building: an RPG-like app to gamify your life

I even go semi-viral on Instagram and TikTok

I was pretty pumped but you know the problem with traveling a lot?

You don’t really have time to work.

Visiting new cities every 2 days. I barely built the app for the first 5/6 weeks of the program.

But the clock is ticking…. we are now 7 days before Demo Day.

I barely have a prototype to show, and user feedback is not great.

That’s when I decide to do the impossible: Pivot to a better idea. And rebuild from scratch 👇

Introducing Learniverse AI

I realized that what I wanted to gamify was not my daily life.

But my learning.

As a builder & founder, I am always learning new skills.

Copywriting, Web development, Marketing, etc.

I always felt it was annoying having to piece learning content together to adapt it to my use case.

YouTube videos + buy a Udemy course + find my own practice exercises

That’s what led me to Learniverse:

Imagine growing your personal knowledge skill tree, exactly like a video game.

• Learn about anything.

• Create personalized learning content based on your goals, learning style, and current knowledge.

• Instantly create courses, exercises, and quizzes on any topic.

So I decide to convert my waiting list to Learniverse and start advertising on Twitter

Signups double in a week.

Key lessons from building Learniverse:

I’ve been building online startups for 6 months now.

And with every project, I learn incredibly valuable lessons.

Here are 3 of the most important lessons I learned:

1- Knowing when to kill an idea and pivot is one of the most important skill for a founder

The best founders have a successful startup hit rate of 1 out of 5. Quickly identify when the project lacks traction and move on.

Build fast → Launch → Measure → Pivot or kill the idea if low traction

2- Measure traction with trust (signups), usage (average use time), or value (revenue)

Decisions taken on metrics are almost always better. Take a metric: trust, usage, or value and every action should be to increase the metric. Focusing on the highest ROI actions is hard. But it pays off the most.

3- Follow your gut

Sometimes you have to follow what your gut is telling you. And if it’s telling you to pivot to a problem that you are genuinely more excited about solving… Examine the metrics you have, but if you know your gut will continue to direct you towards another problem. Then follow it with no hesitation.

Launching in October 👀

v1 of Learniverse is coming in October!

Sign up below for a special gift

Check it out 👇

Join Early Access I’d love to hear your feedback

P.S. I'm on Twitter too if you'd like to follow more of my stories. I’m building startups full-time