Why I took a one-way flight from MIT to San Francisco with $10 in my pocket

“Welcome aboard JetBlue Airways flight 9128 non-stop service from Boston to San Francisco. Our flight time will be 6 hours and 12 minutes. At this time, make sure your seatbelts are correctly fastened and that small portable devices are set to airplane mode…”

These were some of the last words I heard in Boston, after four years of being able to walk across the Harvard Bridge to be instantly surrounded by a creative, passionate, and loving community. Along with my team at Fireflies.ai, I spent summer of 2016 in Boston building and refining our product offering. We were lucky enough to work out of the quickly up-and-coming Seaport in the beautiful office space of Pillar.vc, a new venture capitalist fund.

Posting for a press release in Pillar.vc’s space

We decided to take a leap of faith, and move our AI startup to San Francisco. I arrived in the city with a prototype, an amazing team and no idea what to expect. Here’s a gem from the first week: me literally on the streets of San Francisco trying to get work done.

Not posing. Actually pretty embarrassed about this photo.

Why would we make such a trade-off? We left a familiar community and a quality standard of living to face the challenge of an expensive, jam-packed and startup saturated city. There’s only one reason: growth.

San Francisco is the global hub of entrepreneurship, and the fastest place to grow our business. Just within the first week in the city, we found fifty people willing to try our product on a regular basis and give us feedback. The community is extremely welcoming and there is a plethora of amazing resources. Although I was uneasy at times during the first few days, the city became more comfortable very quickly.

Our mindset in San Francisco has been very much do or die. If we did not execute with urgency, we would have run out of money for shelter, ramen and soylent and ended up on the streets. Thankfully, we had a complete product in private beta, and we had the chance to attract users and listen closely to their feedback. We were on our feet constantly — meeting users, mentors and investors. We were building sprints and refining marketing strategies every night to make sure we were always putting our best foot forward. Through implementation, we were learning email marketing campaigns, user retention, and consumerization growth strategies. Being obsessed with tracking analytics closely helped us to maximize our day-to-day operations.

For me, the only time that matters is now — the upcoming week, the next day, the following thirty minutes. The way that I tackled San Francisco was similar to my first semester of freshman year at MIT. I was drinking directly from the firehose and learning as much as I could as quickly as possible. I will continue to do this incessantly until we find our niche and can plant seeds that we will nurture and grow. Thankfully, we have the support of our friends and family. I’m more excited than ever to play a role in the future of technology.