Coffee with One
@coffeewithone
co-founder & ceo @octolane_ai (YC W24) - Self-Driving AI CRM that writes, updates, and moves deals | [email protected] | prev. @DukeU | http://coffeewithone.com
@octolane_ai is the world’s first Self-Driving AI CRM. Not a System of Record. A System of Action. ✅ Your follow-up is already written ✅ Your pipeline updates itself ✅ Your day prioritized before it starts ✅ Replaces 7 tools. Feels like one This isn’t software. This is…
Day 532 of shipping everyday until we replace Salesforce with @octolane_ai - The Self Driving AI CRM. 🛠️ What we shipped (past 20 hrs): 1. Inline editing no longer jumps to the top row 2. Gmail inbox query bug, squashed 3. Duplicate activities — removed 4. Multi-tag cells now…
What we’re building, and who I’m building it with, will stay with me forever. Building with this team has been one of the greatest accomplishments of my life. Also, thank you @vitorviesi for helping @octolane_ai ship a beautifully crafted product experience. Learning so much…
“He acts before the market, trusts before the metrics, and stays through the hard parts.” The article also reminds us why @ycombinator is what it is today: 💡Acceptance rate under 1% 🦄 90+ $1B+ companies 📈 $800B+ in market value created Incredible write-up by @dasha_shunina…
That's what @garrytan, President & CEO of @ycombinator, said about him: “His perspectives are exactly what our founders need”. Meet @kul, twice-exited YC founder who just launched a new fund investing exclusively in YC startups. forbes.com/sites/dariashu…
Of all the gifts @ycombinator gave us, the greatest was crossing paths with Kulveer Taggar. A human being who redefined what it means to truly show up for someone. @kul has helped my co-founder @halim__rafi and me navigate through some of the hardest moments building…
I wrote about how @ZeusLiving (YC S11) survived the pandemic in a thread that went viral with over 2M views. Here's the update and what I'm up to next. 2021: Zeus survived COVID 2022: Chewed glass & made the portfolio profitable 2023: Sold Zeus to @theblueground (40,000+ homes)…
SFmaxing: 1. Wake up in Mission Bay, laptop already on your chest 2. Café Réveille: see Cursor’s founder grabbing coffee 3. See 3 YC friends at LuxFit, accidentally raise $50K mid set 4. Tartine lunch = user call + debugging on hotspot 5. Inbox zero with Superhuman 6. get…
Europemaxing: 1. Wake up 2. Get coffee with friends 3. Have lunch with same friends 4. Go for a walk 5. More coffee with friends 6. Do nothing
911, I’d like to report a murder 💀🔥
Sadly we have a history of missing the early fundraising winners. We missed HomeAway and had to settle for Airbnb. Didn't get GrubHub and had to be ok with Doordash. No Braintree for us but we scraped by with Stripe. It's tough out there!
Startups live or die by focus, and First Harmonic helped us lock in on the right ICP early with ruthless focus and execution. That one decision saved us years of wandering. At Octolane AI, so much of our traction comes from staying focused on who we’re really building for and we…
I’m excited to announce the public launch of First Harmonic. We are a small team of former operators who invest in early-stage companies and run what I believe is the world’s best go-to-market program for seed-stage founders. We have run six cohorts of the program to date with an…
First thing we did when setting up our codebase: installed @infisical. That moment was pure magic when we deleted our .env file, secure by default!!! Huge congrats to @matsiiako @dangtony98 @maidulll and the entire @infisical team on the $16M Series A! 🚀 Let’s gooooo!!!!!!!!…
Big announcement today. @infisical has raised a $16M Series A. Here's how we got here and where we are going...
Not from our team
overheard in sf: “can we just skip the formalities and get the SOC 2 certificate?”
overheard in sf: “can we just skip the formalities and get the SOC 2 certificate?”
Small teams win not just because they move fast. They win because the process itself sharpens the blade. Constraints aren’t blockers. They’re a gift. They force clarity. They turn noise into signal. And FOCUS becomes... obvious.
Always bet on small teams. We're still 3. No bureaucracy, fast decisions, and ai fills the gaps. Constraints are a magical thing. Embrace them.
Day 528 of @octolane_ai - Self Driving AI CRM In the next 30 days, I’m doing 200 customer interviews. Just to ask one question: How much time did we save you? Because that's all that matters. We're building Octolane to replace the hours lost to updating fields, writing…
Funny how “System of Action” is suddenly the hot new framework. April 4th, 2024 - YC Demo Day. We stood up and said: “Instead of a system of record, we’re building a system of action.” Not as a thesis. A product. We bet our entire company on it. Today, I read @BessemerVP's…
Founders and friends I admire called me within minutes. Others reached out over text, email, Linkedin and even Slack. Some messaged just to say, “I’m flying to SF this week, let’s work together.” One friend stayed on Zoom, co-working with me until I finally went to bed. A few…
I miss my mom so much right now. I wish she were here to see everything I’m going through, and what our team is building through it all. When I was little, she’d quietly cut fruit and place it by my study desk without saying a word. Then she’d leave, just so I could keep…
I miss my mom so much right now. I wish she were here to see everything I’m going through, and what our team is building through it all. When I was little, she’d quietly cut fruit and place it by my study desk without saying a word. Then she’d leave, just so I could keep…
Dropped out of Duke and moved to SF with my best friend @halim__rafi to build. No playbook. Just conviction. Now I’ve got a view, a bed frame (finally), a standing desk still wrapped in plastic, and users lining up saying - “I’ve been looking for this. You’re building exactly…
It’s 2:30 AM in San Francisco. From where I sleep, I can see the moon, framed perfectly above the city’s hills, and a wide stretch of this place we’re trying to build from. The glow hits my bed every night, and I’ve come to expect it. It's a quiet kind of company. Like a silent…
Back in October 2023. We were damn sure we wouldn't make it to YC. It was midnight when we had our @ycombinator interview. Exhausted, we finished the call with hope and uncertainty. 6 AM the next morning. I woke up to an email from Harj, sent just 10 minutes earlier. Thought I…