Nuel Sam | Kin Cycle

this is my sign. on Oct. 6, after applying to @jointhebridge I had my first interview call with @MaximMatias1 we didn’t advance to the second stage but that call left me with invaluable insights. one of them was to — as Max puts it — make noise on X. after that call, several other people I spoke to echoed the same advice: make as much noise as possible so people know what you’re building. later today, I’ll take that advice and share the story behind what we’re building at @meetmykin: how far we’ve come and how far we plan to go.

I've read maybe ~10,000 YC applications. 8000 for YC admissions/PG quite a few years ago and anther 2000 informally as an alum. There's a new and growing mistake and I want to share why it's more important than you think. By the way - I try not to ever say YC admissions works this way or that way. That's YC's job and they're always changing things and making up their own minds. But I will share my impression and you can see what you think - YC partners, please chime in as well if you like. The YC application is fundamentally an evaluation of a founder's potential. And much less an evaluation of a specific business. (Airbedbreakfast transitioning into Airbnb because Brian, Nate, Joe never give up and never stop listening to their customers) So, in your writing of the application, YOU need to shine through. This batch, I read ~200 applications. I'm guessing over half were significantly written, edited, or polished with AI. That half was easily in the bottom half of my informal rankings, almost every time. To be clear, most were NOT AI slop. I often couldn't tell at first they had used AI. Founders were pouring their heart and soul into their app - so I what I received was high quality. But I think the AI really hurt them. Here's why: Once polished by AI, I as reader lost insight into the personality of the writer. I love the YC application because the questions are the same questions I would ask in office hours or casually to a friend that wanted help with their startup. It pushes the founder out of their pitchdeck/VC talk style into simple worded questions that can be answered simply as well. And great founders shine through when they just write like they talk. The LLM writing made answers feel more like a corporate cover letter, with the personality drained out. The AI-assisted drafts also gave me a sense of mid work. The writing itself seemed like zero standard deviations from the mean. The LLMs had lopped off the outlier portions of sentences, paragraphs, and thoughts. Given the YC App is an outlier detector, a writing tool that lops off outlier writing is the opposite of what you want. And the AI writing was needlessly verbose. Which hurts when a reliable predictor of great founders is that they're deep thinkers and deep thinking shines through in the density of their writing. So... I did an experiment. I asked a bunch of these seemingly AI-assisted app writers to talk with me live. I just asked them the same YC app questions and recorded their answers. I then gave them back the transcripts. Unedited and unpolished. And... OMG! A good number turned from easy no to actual good applications. Magic! Remove AI >> Improve application. This happened BOTH with native English speakers and founders abroad. So this is my recommendation to all of you. Don't let AI touch your application, even for a second. And maybe try the dictation approach with a friend. My apologies to the YC admissions team if you already knew AI-written applications were crap and you were using this insight to help you easily move applications to the No pile. YC's Winter Batch Application deadline is Nov 2nd.

Agree. The founders I back are out of their depth all the time. The great ones don't know more than everyone else. They just trust they can figure it out when things get hard (h/t @drgurner).

Just look at this definition of ‘Danfo’ by @TereSagay_ 😅 Full article: teresagay.substack.com/p/onl…

Big multistage funds now decide which startups become consensus. If you're a founder, that leaves you two kinds of investors. Consensus investors show up once everyone already agrees on you. Pre-consensus investors back you before anyone agrees. At Incisive Ventures, we only do the second. That means we're in before the data proves you right. We judge the founder, not the traction. And we're the ones who stay in your corner when the big funds are still saying "come back when you have more." 300+ pre-seed investments over 20 years. If you're building something nobody believes in yet, pitch me. DMs are open.

Regarding the conversation on the TL about @TechCabal’s Moonshot being mostly fintech, here’s my take. A lot of people think it’s because Nigerians don’t have expendable income, so non-fintech startups can’t make money. I agree to an extent, but I don’t think that’s the main problem. People will always pay for things that make their lives easier. @Shuttlersng and @chowdeck are good examples. One solves your daily commute, the other feeds you when you’re hungry and busy. I think the real issue is that many non-fintech startups aren’t solving painful enough problems for people to pay for. Fintech naturally wins because moving money is a problem people deal with every day. Build something people genuinely need, make it reliable, and people will find the money to pay for it.

plenty of African founders are already building for the US. we just want to win at home first. we're building @cencori with global ambitions, but we're not in a hurry to seek validation from Silicon Valley. Africa is a market worth winning. we'll come for the US too. and when we do, we're coming to compete.

as a speedrun scout i’d love to help with anyone’s application and/or put in a check if i love what you do if you’ve applied or are thinking about applying, shoot me a dm :)

After tech, what next? Ever had that thought before?

I just need to make enough money I have a lot of ideas I want to execute for Africa Practical and well thought of

Just sent you an email that I think you’ll find very interesting, Sir. It’ll be a pleasure to have you onboard as we shape africa’s female healthtech space. looking forward to talking soon.

On August 3rd, I was talking to a female friend and giving her suggestions on how to handle her debilitating period cramps. Mid convo, she jokingly said my suggestions would’ve been more useful if they came before her period started and that I could start tracking with her so we do better next time. I realised that I wanted to do that, for her and the other ladies in my life. But there was one problem: I couldn’t find an app that supported the shared experience I had in mind. So I decided to build one. But before writing a single line of code, I sent out a questionnaire. I needed to know if other people felt the same way. 4 days and 283 responses later, I knew. Fathers wanted to show up for their daughters. Men wanted to support their friends and partners. Women wanted to know they weren’t alone — that people in their circles could know exactly what they needed without them having to explain every detail. But I discovered something else: African women deserve menstrual-health technology built around their lives, realities, and experiences. Not a product that has Africa as an additional market oran afterthought but something built here, for here. That conviction became @meetmykin, born on August 7. Ten days later our mvp was live in beta. Within two weeks, we’d hit our 80-person target for beta testers. Since then, we’ve spent nearly two months testing, talking to users, and learning how to make Kin better. Now, we’re ready for our next chapter. Thanks to @unclebigbay143’s platform and the nice guys at @bachs_hq, we’re crowdfunding to improve our product, implement what we’ve learned from our users, and bring Kin to more African women. We’re building more than a period tracker. We’re building a better way for women to navigate their cycles with the support of the people who care about them. And we’d love for you to be part of it. So, if you believe that African innovation can solve African problems and that 300M+ women across the continent deserve tech built just for them, here’s how you can help: • Contribute to our crowdfunding campaign: bit.ly/buildKin • Share this story with someone who should know about Kin. • Give us your honest feedback. If you’re an angel investor interested in the future of African women’s healthtech, let’s talk. The future is African and we’re building something that we strongly believe should exist in that future.

If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is. Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire Tags: fire, flame, isolation, laughter, loss,sacrifice

I'm writing $50K checks to early stage founders this month Who's raising?

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