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ID:
2025-12-03-ken-miyachi-startup-perseverance
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Call/Meeting Summary: Startup Perseverance, AI Leverage, and Relationship Maintenance

Overview​

Ken and Gary discuss the challenges of startup life, the transformative power of AI in coding, and the importance of intentional relationship maintenance. Ken reflects on burnout, his edge as a founder, and how he's using AI to dramatically increase his coding productivity while wrestling with the sacrifices of intense startup focus on personal relationships.

Key Topics Discussed​

Startup Philosophy and Edge​

  • Perseverance as Core Edge: Ken identifies his main competitive advantage not just as hard work but as perseverance to get things done: "People think things are really hard, and it's like, if you just, sometimes, like, it just helps you, like, going after it."

  • The Techno-Capital Machine: Ken feels validated that his prediction about the techno-capital machine becoming more aggressive has proven correct: "I was right, which is... the techno-capital machine is going to get more and more aggressive... it feels good to be right."

  • Product Quality Focus: Currently prioritizing product improvement over sales: "You can try to sell stuff, and that's probably what we need the most right now. But if our product sucks, how am I gonna sell it?"

BitMind Technical Challenges​

  • Training Complexities: "Training is all-consuming... and it's expensive." The team was dealing with overfitting issues where models performed well on training data but didn't generalize to unseen data.

  • Recent Sprint: In the past week, Ken accomplished months' worth of work by adding audio features, scraping Nano Banana data, and fixing multiple bugs.

  • Daily Coding: Ken is now coding most of the day, having shifted focus from sales to product development.

AI as a Game-Changer for Development​

  • Transformative Capability: "I wasn't maybe the strongest programmer, and now I actually feel more capable than anybody... I'm one with the AI."

  • Using ChatGPT O1: Ken exclusively uses ChatGPT O1-preview, calling it "amazing" and "so good."

  • Productivity Multiplication: What would have taken months without AI, Ken accomplished in a week: "I don't even know how long it would have taken without AI, like, months, definitely on the months timeline."

  • Future Skill Prediction: Ken believes the most important skill for the future is "really understanding code, understanding the fundamentals, but then knowing when not to get too deep in the weeds... you can't outsmart or outperform AI on coding."

  • Debugging Revolution: Previously debugging someone else's code was "one of the most difficult tasks," but now with AI: "You can talk through it with a chatbot... it identifies where it is, what's going on, what the functionality is."

Work-Life Balance and Burnout​

  • Current State: "I'm exhausted. Burnt out's maybe not the right word, but I just feel like... I try to frame it as things that will be fond memories I'll look back on, of struggle."

  • Sarah's Situation: Ken's partner Sarah is interviewing for jobs. Ken notes "it's probably pretty easy to get bored if she doesn't do something" while acknowledging "what she likes to do is not doing anything."

  • Work Philosophy: "It's your job to work hard enough where the wife has to complain that you're not hanging out enough... That's definitely the case."

Relationship Maintenance Philosophy​

  • Thanksgiving Voice Memos: Inspired by Gary, Ken sent voice memos to friends and family during Thanksgiving: "I just sat down for like an hour... messaged with all my friends. Thought about what I missed and cared about them. It was actually really nice."

  • Rev Run Inspiration: Ken recalls the MTV show where Run-DMC's Rev Run would send daily group texts with inspiration, wondering about the modern equivalent.

  • Personal Touch Preference: Ken values personal communication over blasts: "What's nice about the voice notes is that it's personal... if you do a blast, then it doesn't feel as personal."

  • Sacrifice Acknowledgment: "I haven't seen my family that much. I haven't seen my really close friends... In some ways you can be like, hey, those are the sacrifices of life. But in others, it's like, damn, that is unfortunate."

  • Quarterly Check-ins: Ken plans to implement quarterly voice memo sessions to maintain relationships: "Maybe quarterly just sit down, voice memo people."

Gary's Daily Spirit Initiative​

  • New Voice Note Series: Gary is launching a daily encouraging voice note series via Substack: "I was thinking about you when I was coming up with the idea. I'm gonna send on most days a quick encouraging note to friends."

  • Distribution Philosophy: Using email/Substack for ease of sharing and subscribing, though acknowledging the trade-off with personal feel.

  • Intentional Scheduling: Gary suggests putting relationship maintenance on the calendar as a systematic approach.

Key Quotes​

  • Ken on AI transformation: "I feel like I wasn't maybe the strongest programmer, and now I actually feel more capable than anybody... I'm one with the AI."

  • Ken on perseverance: "You can find all these excuses of why it's too hard, or whatever, X, Y, Z, but... if you're stressed or feeling some type of way, I think oftentimes the best thing to do is just really try to get after it."

  • Ken on relationships: "I feel like traditionally I've been pretty good about maintaining relationships. And I haven't really been that good about it over the past few years."

  • Ken on communication tools: "Everyone has their phone and looks at their text. So a voice memo comes through text, and you kind of don't associate it with work... Google Docs, email... it's all kind of corp, production, business-oriented."

Action Items / Takeaways​

  • Sunday Dinner Plans: Ken and Gary scheduled to meet for dinner on Sunday (late afternoon).

  • Ken's Relationship Strategy: Implement quarterly voice memo sessions to maintain personal connections.

  • Gary's Daily Spirit: Launch daily encouraging voice notes via Substack starting the following morning.

  • Product Focus: Ken continuing to prioritize product improvements and bug fixes over sales temporarily.

  • AI Integration: Both recognize AI (especially ChatGPT O1) as a fundamental skill multiplier requiring new approaches to coding.

Reflections on Modern Communication​

The conversation revealed a shared struggle with maintaining personal relationships while pursuing intense professional goals. Both Ken and Gary recognize that modern tools (email, Google Docs) feel too corporate for personal connection, while text and voice memos preserve intimacy. The challenge is finding scalable yet personal ways to maintain relationships in an era where traditional methods (handwritten notes) are impractical. Ken's insight that "personal relationship communication" belongs in text/DMs rather than productivity tools highlights the importance of meeting people where they naturally engage.