Today is launch day for Project Read! We've been hard at work on this for nine months and are so excited! Here is what we’ve built and why:

#edtech #teachers #ScienceofReading When we started Project Read, our thesis was that generative AI would be an amazing way to help motivate children to start reading early. Our first iteration was a story creator that could make stories and illustrations. The stories were very creative and fun.

Hey all, announcing what my co-founder Viv and I have been working on for a couple of months. projectread.ai

We built a tool to create story books using OpenAI and Stable Diffusion. Then we built a Reading Coach to work with children as they learn to read.

We need to add a third co-founder to build out the voice interface. projectread.ai/cofounder

I'm going to write a thread each week on what our team is learning about the high school space.

Your comments are incredibly influential right now, so please please help us think about this right here.

***And please help me find students and parents to interview*** When I was an investor, a lot of my thinking was around what changed in the world to allow for new companies with a specific approach.

It could be a behavior change like getting comfortable with live classes, or it could be a technical change like the decrease in GPU cost.

When you build something new in your app, users often don't do what you expect.

Founders often guess what users want, without validating assumptions.

Experiments are the solution.

Here are nine steps to understanding your users and validating your assumptions with experiments: 1 - Make a doc with your experiments. Here's a basic one, please copy it and make it your own.

docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…

Your users will always have a rational explanation about why they came to your service.

Don't listen to them.

People are emotion machines, and your main job as a founder is to understand what people are feeling, not what story they are telling.

Here's how you can do that: First you need to really understand how our brains work:

medium.com/@salesforce/ne…

When you start your company, you have a blank slate.

You can build anything you want, talk to anyone you want.

But most startups fail to build anything people need.

Here's how to make sure you find the need: Buddhists have a concept called non-attachment.

The idea is that you work extremely hard to improve yourself and the world around you, but don’t become fixated on any one idea or approach.

Founders need to become masters of non-attachment.

Reading books is a luxury that few startup founders have time for.

This is a summary of Working Backwards, the most important book to read for startup founders this year.

Here is what you should take away from this book: The four main topics I found useful for founders are:

1 - Organizing Your Team

2 - Organizing Your Time

3 - Being Creative

4 - Building a Moat

It's easy to spend a lot of time building a mediocre startup.

Epic startups have magic, when a user understands what the product does and smoke comes out of their ears because they need it so much.

Here are the ten steps to find the magic for your startup: 1/Focus only on magic first and set a goal around it.

The one my founders and I work on is that 80% of people who experience your magic take the next step, like registering, free trial, etc.

Every founder I know wants to speed through seed stage and get that big Series A check.

That is a huge mistake.

Here's how you can build a much bigger company by making your time in seed count: Many many founders find good market traction with an idea. Very very few keep experimenting until they find insatiable demand and true product market fit.

The market is frothy.

You have FOMO about raising money because everyone is doing it.

What should you do?

My thoughts below: There are three things you should think about.

1 - do you already have the main investor for your stage? (more below)
2 - do you need the money?
3 - are other investors coming at you inbound?

A lot of founders chase venture fund logos and valuations like a sport.

It's a waste of time.

Here's what you really need on your cap table: First, if you haven't built your own startup in the same space before, you need one main seed investor who knows the space, knows early startups and helps you find product market fit (PMF).

A generalist won't give you enough guidance, so find a specialist.

The current funding market is terrible for founders.

Here's why it's damaging so many startups: 1/Normal market behavior is that seed companies are pre product market fit (PMF) and Series A companies have PMF.

Founders are their own worst enemies when trying to find product market fit (PMF).

Here are the five worst mistakes: 1/Not being clear on the metrics for PMF.

It's not rocket science but you need to be clear.