Post Mortem

Aenternet 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 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.

All that said, learning how to build this has been a joy. I'm looking for work, I can brand, build and deploy most any kind of consumer software and would love to dig in on something new.

— B

Thank you for your patience as I've obsessed over getting this right. Making links fun again has been a far greater challenge than I expected. For more immediate details you know how to find me.

Your saves are local only, to your browser. they won't sync between anything, just an experimental affordance and eventual onboarding...

I am a web engineering amateur, if you are a CTO who wants to work on this with me hmu, you can see from this list I need help: