From moving countries to selling kitchen tables, these are the 21 frugal hacks that have kept my bootstrapped startup alive — Celi’s burn rate is $5,318 a month. The monthly salaries of the developer and designer building Celi represent 94% of that spend. Subscriptions the rest. Celi has raised $0, meaning this build is being financed by capital contributions. Aka, I’m depleting my savings. Kind of.

A collection of quotes for soft people doing hard things — I’m a collector. As a kid, it was baseball cards and bar coasters. As an adult, it’s Latin social dances and quotes. Quotes, because I’m often in awe of how others are able to assemble words that capture exactly how I feel or what I need to hear, and I…

Building the right product takes time, time that most aren’t willing to spend — The title of this piece is misleading. I’m not building Celi slowly, I’m building it intentionally. Carefully. Deliberately. Building the right product takes time. That’s because the right product is a solution. It solves a problem that a majority experiences, has tried and failed to solve, and still wants to…

Identifying, addressing, and overcoming the greatest risks to Celi — In Celi’s deck, there’s a slide titled “Why not to invest in Celi.” It lists defensibility, carrying capacity, and cold start problem as risks and includes how we’ve indexed for each with peer-reviewed strategies and audits from those who have previously overcome these same risks. Though this slide is absent…

Dissecting Celi’s 91-person proof-of-concept beta test and detailing what comes next — Before we begin, is it corny or clever brand marketing to misspell celebrate as celibrate for all Celi-related communications? Example: You have 2 people to celibrate today! Clever 🧠 Corny 🌽 Celi’s proof-of-concept beta test has been live since April. Here are some stats at the 3-month mark: Monthly Active…

Maximizing welcome offers from Capital One, Chase, and Wells Fargo to earn an extra $640 in passive income this summer — Capital One, Chase, and Wells Fargo are each offering credit cards with welcome bonuses of $200 dollars. Each card requires a low spending threshold of only $500 to unlock its bonus. …

Book your next Airbnb stay with confidence after asking your host these 14 key questions before booking — I’ve lived in France, Italy, Germany, Colombia, and Argentina, with additional extended stays in Norway, India, Thailand, Portugal, and Turkey, and weekend trips to cities across several continents. With few exceptions, I’ve used Airbnb to book stays in each of these locations. Over the years, I’ve developed a set of…

Using a survey to confirm a problem, measure the desire to solve it, and learn what features potential users valued most. — Author’s note: At the end of this letter is a list of areas I need help in if you’re able to. Today I’m going to share all that I learned from using a Typeform survey to build my company, organized into the following three sections: Results Learnings Theses The Celi…

Using a Typeform survey to validate a problem and measure the market’s desire to solve it — Last week I asked you to help me avoid self-deception in my next experiment by taking the Celi survey. To the 314 of you that did, thank you. If you haven’t, you still can. But, do so now because the content below will spoil your survey experience. In November…