I learned to build automations before learning who needed them

ey everyone, I’m Kulani 👋🏽

I’m a computer science student working on my first startup

My journey started when I was looking for ways to earn extra income while studying i discovered AI automation through YouTube, started learning Make and then n8n, and really enjoyed building things that could save people repetitive work

Finding customers was a different story

I started cold emailing businesses about chatbots and got no replies. Can’t lie, it was discouraging. I thought knowing how to build something useful would make selling it much easier

Looking back, I was offering chatbots because that’s what I knew how to build not because I’d understood what those businesses needed

That experience led me to start building ProspectLens, a tool exploring how website evidence might help builders identify more relevant opportunities before reaching out. It’s early, and I’m still learning whether my assumptions match what people actually need

The biggest lesson so far has been that learning to build and learning to understand a customer are two different skills.

For those who’ve found their first customers: how did you work out whether your offer was wrong, your audience was wrong, or your outreach just wasn’t connecting?

Happy to meet other people figuring this out too 🙏🏽