Cameron Koczon

I built something cool. aenternet.com I'm gonna post instructions on how to build your own, but first a post mortem and gentle warning on why this is just a prototype instead of a full launch for Svrf. Aenternet FKA Svrf is a library of my favorite links, 10k+ imported from my favorites on x, youtube, tumblr, instagram, etc then sorted into style clusters. It's very cool to see my own tastes and patterns reflected back at me from a giant database of my own history, like a snapshot of the centroid of my soul, all these beautiful links point back to ME, somehow. My intent was to launch this as a new ffffound or pinterest that anyone could use with their own bookmarks to see a library mirror of themselves, but the closer I've gotten to launch the more hesitant I've become to launch a community I love with AI, tech that I don't understand and will never be able to control or afford independently. It would not be responsible of me to launch on top of openai or anthropic without access to independent wealth or secret intentions of an exit. There are three possible ends for any funded startup: Failure, Acquisition, IPO. Do I think Ænternet could IPO, and would I want to enforce the growth necessary on the product to achieve it? Let's be real, this is an art house project with no business tapping into enterprise growth resources. Growth is expensive. AI is expensive. I've burned through member fees and more getting this far with zero users. What happens if it gets popular, the bills run heavy and deep pockets start to show interest? Yes I could raise a seed but that's just kicking the can. Do I just build something I love and sell it off like Svpply? No I will be avoiding that nightmare again thank you. Building with AI is a bit like inviting a dark wizard onto your founding team, they conjure miracles at great expense and will always have ambitions that supersede your own. So instead of launching this version, I am backing up and starting over again. I know what to do, it's going to be great, and barebones. Deeply frustrated to be looping like this but so it goes. /// end warning and post mortem /// Thank you for your time and attention and I hope some of this was useful and that you find Ænternet as beautiful of a failure as I do! I'm embarrassed to add but I will anyway: learning how to build with AI has been both a joy and an act of desperation in an effort to keep pace with the industry. I am literally an old dog learning new tricks. I've always been a great brand and product designer (sorry), but now I'm a great designer who can brand, build and deploy most any kind of consumer software. I would really like to be hired to do some hard work on a hard problem ideally with large libraries of data that need to be figured out. I've had quite a bit of practice doing this with both client and personal work in the last months and I want to keep doing it. At some point I'll tail with a bunch of process screenshots. DIY instructions to follow in a QT.