Here’s a look at how 2024 went for me. Thank you to James Clear for the inspiration. Read some of my previous Years in Review: 

2023 Year in Review 
2022 Year in Review
2021 Year in Review
2020 Year in Review
2019 Year in Review

It’s interesting how much can change in a year. 2023 was the worst year of my life (so far). And 2024 has been the best (so far). Here’s a review of what happened: 

What went well? 

We successfully pivoted Infinity (hallelujah!)

We got stuck in deep pivot hell last year. Implosion felt imminent at multiple points. I’m proud that my co-founders and I stayed together and didn’t give up. Today, I couldn’t be happier with what we’re building. We’re training our own foundation video model focused on expressive, talking characters. Every day I wake up and think: What a grand adventure I have the privilege of being on! There’s truly nothing else I would rather be doing. 

Here are a few lessons I learned from my pivot hell journey. I don’t know if they apply to anyone else but, in case it’s useful, here goes: 

Change your environment. I give YC (and specifically Jared Friedman) a lot of credit for getting us out of pivot hell. Doing YC put us into a new environment and got us into new brain wave patterns, which ultimately got us to what we’re building now. I had a similar experience of needing to change my environment to get unstuck in the past. After my PhD graduation from MIT, I stayed in Boston and tried many things (like the Harvard iLab accelerator) but couldn’t get myself unstuck. Ultimately, the solution was moving to Silicon Valley. I started my 1st successful company a few months later.  

Let the team go sooner. We tried to pivot with our team. This was a bad idea. It made us sad. It made the team sad. We did it for multiple months before we ultimately let people go. In hindsight, we should have let everyone go right at the start. We were cognizant that we needed to focus on ourselves and what we wanted to do (since we were the ones who would be committed to it for 10+ years), but it’s hard to do that while you’re trying to take the team on the journey and make pivoting a decent experience for them. 

Lean into joy. For many months we were actively trying to think of “good” startup ideas. It was only once we started focusing on what we loved and had fun doing (even if we didn’t see the big picture yet), that our new idea emerged. To his credit, we had our first meeting with Jared Friedman (YC) when the current video idea was about 2 days old. Rather than shutting down our larval idea, Jared encouraged us to keep cultivating it because we were excited. I’ve learned that there’s unarticulated wisdom in joy so, when in doubt, lean into joy. 

 

I moved to San Francisco!

I lived in Los Altos for the past 5 years and would shudder whenever I needed to come up to the city. I used to hate San Francisco. I moved to SF for 3-months of YC assuming it would be a temporary move. But I loved it so much that I decided to stick around. SF is coming back. AI is bringing it back. The energy shift is palpable. I feel it. My friends feel it. In a 0.5mi radius of my apartment there are the HQs for Anthropic, OpenAI, Midjourney, and more. The future of AI is being built in SF and there’s no substitute for being here in person. 

Lesson: Surround yourself with the people you want to be like. 

 

I bought an apartment!

I like SF and believe in its resurgence so much that I put my money where my mouth is and bought an apartment in East Cut. This is my first property and I bought it primarily as an investment. I’ll make a dedicated blog / vlog about the decision-making process at some point. In the span of 6 days, I went from touring 2 apartments to putting an offer in for one and getting it accepted. I could not be happier. I used to need to see all of my options before I could make a decision. As I grow older I have learned to trust my own intuition of what is “good” (I wrote about this here: #9. Develop your own taste in people)

Lesson: Learn to trust your internal compass without needing to see all the options. 

 

I got pregnant!

A lot of my startup friends are surprised and ask what made me want to have a baby at this point in time.  Honestly, it’s not really that I want to have a baby right now. But I definitely want to have kids in my life in 10 years. So at some point, it becomes time to have a baby now. Plus, I feel like I’ve delayed life for the past few years. I wanted my startup to work so badly that I put everything else on hold. But I don’t think life works that way. Personal life and professional life need to progress together. And, in fact, it’s impossible to know a priori when a good time versus bad time is. The period you think is perfect could actually be terrible and vice versa. Since I’ve passed the financial stability threshold to be able to pay for childcare and household help, it makes it a good time. I’m happy and thankful.  

Lesson: Don’t delay life. 

 

I started a YouTube channel 

For the past decade, I have wanted to create more content. At the end of every year I am disappointed in myself for not doing so. Last year, I started an AI podcast interviewing other AI founders and researchers. 

This year I started a YouTube channel and vlogged weekly about the YC experience. It’s not comfortable to put myself out there. But my mantra this year has been: “If I work hard and put myself out there every day, I will reach my full potential.” Both are necessary ingredients for success.

Lesson: Don’t overthink pressing “post.”  

 

What didn’t go well? 

Not doing a dance or music performance. 

I had set the goal for myself to do a dance or music performance at some point in 2024. I didn’t achieve this. I am back to taking weekly dance classes (ballet and hip hop). But I didn’t pick up my instruments once in 2024. I have fear around how to get back to the same talent-level I used to be at with music, and it’s holding me back from even starting.