Hello, again! | Ahnaaf's 22nd Update | May 2023
After a comically large timeskip, here we are!
Written on a shaded park bench overlooking Lake Ontario, trying to find solace from the summer heat.
If you're new to my update, welcome!
I'm a 17 y/o neurotech developer and mechatronics student exploring my curiosity. Currently, I’m looking for opportunities to work in the climate or neurotech space. If you’d like to get in contact with me, feel free to email me!
Previously, I was a co-founder of NeuraDAO (along with Anush Mutyala and Nicholas Singh), where we tried to build the future of neurotech R&D.
If you’re reading this, thank you so much for continuing to be a part of my journey! It means a lot to me as I go on almost 3 years of writing this newsletter!
My last newsletter was in October 2022 (if you can believe that it’s been that long!) and since then a lot has happened.
My life since October 2022 in summary:
I got invited to the Gairdner Gala (terrible picture but whatever)
We sunset NeuraDAO in November.
Performed a choreographed dance in front of my entire school + parents.
I committed to Queen’s University for Mechatronics Engineering. this sunk most of my time :(
Looking back, it’s amazing how fast time can fly once you settle into a routine and turn on autopilot. Optimizing your entire life to check an admission officer’s boxes is one of the most draining experiences I had.
Thankfully, it’s all over and I can finally put my energy towards something more fruitful.
Sunsetting NeuraDAO
After about a year of working on NeuraDAO, the founding team made the difficult decision to sunset the project.
Thank you to Anush, Nick, Ines, Amy, Christian, Aleem, Tyler, Vincent, Renee, Bryan, Erik, Shady, Eugene, James, Brandon, Michael, Nadeem, Charlie, GR15 donors, Molecule, VitaDAO, PadawanDAO and everyone else who helped us build NeuraDAO. I can’t thank you enough for being such a monumental part of my journey.
As for why we sunset NeuraDAO, the short answer is that we didn’t want to build it anymore.1
The long answer is that as young people, it doesn’t make sense to spend so much of our resources (time, energy, money) on a single project. We were at the stage in our life where we should be exploring our curiosities with 30-60 day projects and trying to level up our different skill sets.2
We barely knew what a company was. Companies are all about people, HR, PR, signal, etc. While you can read endless threads on Twitter about being a founder, you can’t pass up the experience of actually working in a company and having to deal with organizational problems. Unless you know what it’s like to have a 1-1 with a treasured teammate who wants to leave the project as they’re not happy with the work, it’s hard for you to understand what a company is.
NeuraDAO was trying to be a company, so as founders, we got swept up in all the shit that you have to deal with as a company. I was mainly occupied with putting out fires in the organization and building signal for our seed round, instead of building our product.
When the founders tried to build side projects and explore our curiosity (as we normally would), it was clear that if we wanted NeuraDAO to succeed we had to be in it for the long haul.
We weren’t.
As three teens who couldn’t predict the next 3 months, we couldn’t dedicate the next 5-10 years of our lives to this startup as we tried to pivot our way to success.
Lessons Learned.
I’ll keep this short as there are so many startup gurus out there who write about the same thing.
For me, the main lessons that I learned were to: maintain your focus and constantly improve your decision-making processes.
As I said before, my time at NeuraDAO was spent putting out fires, and fundraising. While that is important and necessary for a startup, I now believe that NeuraDAO never needed to be a startup in the first place.
NeuraDAO’s concept was confusing. We were positioning ourselves to be a holistic network for neurotech where you can fund, publish, and contribute to research. That isn't exactly a startup, it’s more akin to a movement, hence the DAO. However, we were treating NeuraDAO like it was a company and started doing company things (raising money, building signal, etc). We lost focus of our greater vision to become that decentralized network of neurotech researchers; our free-flowing movement (DAO) was buried in bureaucracy.
While building, I felt like I was constantly in whiplash from one task to the next. There was rarely any time to deeply think about some decision for NeuraDAO. When I did have time, my mind was usually occupied with school or something topical (having a clear headspace nowadays is just beautiful). The lesson is simple, if your decision was going to affect the direction of your project, clear your headspace, and spend days thinking about the n-th-order consequences of your decision.
Livin’ the highschool life.
Despite being on pretty much autopilot for the past 6 months, I’ve been quite happy. I’m not balancing the responsibilities of a highschooler and a founder anymore, I’m just a student. Before I was living this weird double-life where I could go to ETHAmsterdam where my thoughts and opinions matter, then go back to school and have to ask to go to the washroom.
Don’t get me wrong, I hate high school and loved being a founder, but it’s nice to have less daily stress and be able to just play video games for an evening. Life right now is peaceful and simple. It’s filled with friends, school and whatever adventure we feel like going on.
Earlier in May I danced (in a group) in our school’s end-of-year dance showcase in front of the entire school as well as parents. I’ve never danced before on a stage, it was dope! Practicing for that dance was honestly some of the most fun I’ve ever had in high school.
Currently, my physics class is running a boat race, where the class builds a human-sized cardboard boat and we race it in our pool. Building the boat has been a pain in the butt but it’ll all be worth it when we win. I will be taking many pictures for you guys!
What's Next?
I want to change things up and get back to work. Peace and simplicity are nice, but apparently, I’m a big fan of chaos.3
I feel stagnant after spending so much time purely studying to get into university. That’s why I’m so excited for this summer, as I’ll be diving headfirst into my next project/internship.
Goals for June
Find an internship or a project to build.
Plan a unique experience for this summer
Read 0-1 by Peter Thiel
I will keep you guys posted on my progress, check my Twitter for more updates. If you’re still reading, I appreciate you! Send me an email, we should catch up.
When I initially met Niloo, one of the first questions I asked her was why she sunset her previous startup. Her response was, “For the same reason as any other startup, the founders didn’t want to do it anymore.”
As I was writing this newsletter, I went to a TKS alumni reunion where Navid reiterated almost exactly what I’m saying here which was quite gratifying. Some of my reasoning for sunsetting NeuraDAO was articulated by Navid at that reunion.