Building Kanvise
Episode 1: 2:24 A.M.
It is 2:24 in the morning, and I should be sleeping.
Instead, I am sitting in front of my laptop with more tabs open than I care to admit, wondering how building a startup somehow turned into doing twenty different jobs at the same time.
People think founders spend all day building products, but they do not, at least not all the time. A lot of the work happens in places nobody ever sees. Tonight, for example, I was not building. I was collating our outreach list and moving from one spreadsheet to another, listing tutors, listing tutorial centres, figuring out who to email first, who to call, and who would be willing to spend thirty minutes helping us validate what we are building.
It is not glamorous, but it is probably one of the most important things I will do this week.
Products should not be built from assumptions. They should be built from conversations.
Somewhere in between all of that, I spent some time on Codeout. Not because I want to become a software engineer. That ship has sailed. I genuinely suck at coding, and I am okay with that. I am there because I want to understand how developers think. I want to understand the language my teammates speak every day. I want to ask better questions, make better product decisions, and know enough to bridge the gap between the people using our product and the people building it.
That feels like a much better reason than trying to convince myself I will become the next great engineer.
The rest of my evening disappeared into Kanvise.
Sometimes I talk so much about Kanvise that people assume I am one of the developers. I am not. I am our Product Marketer. Most of my work happens before a feature is built and after a feature is built. Before, I am thinking about users, positioning, product strategy, and whether we are solving the right problem. After, I am thinking about how we communicate that solution so the right people actually understand why we built it.
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Somebody has to obsess over the product. Somebody has to obsess over the people. I enjoy obsessing over the people.
We are finally in a place where things are beginning to feel real. We have our company email. We have our domain. Our MVP should be ready in about two weeks. They are small milestones in the grand scheme of things, but when you are building something from scratch, they feel huge.
Somewhere between strategy sessions and validation lists, I also realised I needed to rethink something else: my content.
For the longest time, I thought staying quiet online meant I was focused. I thought, “I will just build in silence.” Turns out, silence does not build trust. People do not just buy products. They buy into people. Customers trust people. Future teammates trust people. Investors trust people.
I have slowly started realising that building in public is not about showing off. It is about letting people watch the journey while it is still messy, not after everything has worked out. Now. While we are still figuring things out. While we are still asking questions. While we are still making mistakes.
If everything goes according to plan, this will become the first entry in a series. Not because I think my life is particularly interesting, but because I think there are not enough honest stories about what building actually looks like. The late nights. The spreadsheets. The customer interviews. The product debates. The tiny wins that somehow feel bigger than they probably are. And yes, the difficult decisions too.
I will save one of those stories for another day.
For now, I am just grateful. Grateful that we are building. Grateful that I get to work with people who genuinely believe in what we are trying to create. Grateful that Kanvise is no longer just an idea in a notebook. It is slowly becoming real.
I am tired tonight. Not burnt out. Just tired. There is a difference. Burnout makes you question whether you should continue. Being tired usually means today mattered.
So I will sleep. Wake up tomorrow. Send the emails. Schedule the validation calls. Refine our strategy. Keep building.
And hopefully, somewhere in between all of that, remember to write Episode 2.
Until then, we are still building.
