Some of you have subscribed to this newsletter and then nothing happened for a while, I want to tell you guys what happened, and introduce my journey again.
It’s a bit personal. Treat it like you’re reading a short story 🙂
The reason why the whole thing was kind of messy was because, in 2024 May, I started the company AAL. But, I had a day job, and I always thought AAL was going to be my side gig, and I thought if it becomes successful, then I will quit my day job and focus on the side gig. Then I started to spend nights and weekends on AAL, putting together AI workflows, doing some tutorials here and there, picking up some AI rendering jobs, basically realizing my passion. Just very small stuff really and if I have to be honest with you, there wasn’t one clear goal at the beginning regarding where it was going. I just knew I liked teaching AI a lot, I liked using it to design and I like to talk to people about it. That’s really it.
Then something happened which made so much change. People started to follow me, started to ask me more about what I’m doing, they start to get curious. One of the people who asked to meet me to discuss more was Anne.
Anne was my classmate back in our bachelors, we went to the same uni but I was always very focused on my sports and was a bit of a loner, and Anne was a quiet calm soul who always has a sense of maturity in her, and I remember she always did well in school. We hardly spoke in the 3 years of bachelors and I never saw her again after graduation.
Until in late 2024, a got a message from her on Linkedin and we met up again to chat about AI and realized we are both gearing towards a future with AI at the centre. Our mindsets were in parallels. After I got licensed as an architect, I went into business. After she got licensed as an architect, she got went into computer science. Business led me to AI. Computer science led her to AI. AI led us to each other, it’s a love story.
All jokes aside, it was great synergy and it wouldn’t have been so in the past (can’t imagine the 18 year old us talking to each other at the frequency we do now) and within weeks of chatting, I decided to ask her to join me as AAL’s CTO, and she started full time on it.
AAL actually stood for ‘Add A Line’, before it became AI Accelerator Lab. Add-a-line was what my name sounds like and it also was a bit like, I wanted to make a statement, you know? But what statement? It wasn’t clear until, Anne came along, and I joked that AAL is now ‘Adeline & Anne Loves INNOVATION’ - actually I realized I wanted AI to become the solution to the problems that an architect faces i.e. solution to the long working hours, labourous tasks, all the BS that we didn’t go to school for. I really believe AI can solve problems for us, help us become more profitable, even happier.
Maybe we can find meaning in our jobs again, if we have lost them on our way.
And anyway, I think a job is not a job when you love it. Like right now, AAL is not a job, I love it. But I digress.
So long story short, what I’m trying to say is, it was messy at the beginning, but a year into AAL, last month I quit my day job because I realized, I may tell myself ‘if the side gig becomes successful then I can quit my day job’, but the truth I realized is, IF I WANT ANYTHING TO BECOME SUCCESSFUL I NEED TO GO ALL IN. So guys I’m going ALL IN with Anne, and it has been so for the last 1.5 months. It’s been great and we are restructuring things.
And it's the same case for you too. If you think your job is 'safe', there is actually no such thing. Review whether or not someone can replace you, and whether or not that someone can be a robot. In a lot of cases, not taking a risk, is a bigger risk.
We got 15 ish people working on projects with us now, we can tell you more about it later. Sometime it’ll be me writing to you, and it would be more about our journey in this AI environment, the things we experience as a startup in Hong Kong. Sometimes Anne will be writing to you, and when she does it, it’s going to be giving you guys technical goodies, good knowledge that you can take away for free regarding AI.
This community is also what’s inspiring to me. 200 of you guys here in this email chain. We got a whatsapp group, there are 50 cool people inside. I post a quick daily AI tip in the announce group btw. Join us if you want: https://chat.whatsapp.com/FLgNtBVBqBd229KfN7vRKT
So we are going to properly start this journey. AAL turned 1 in May. Let’s begin, shall we?
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