Business strategy

3 failed startups that reshaped Yorby's founders

Perfect Interview AI, Content Marketing Blueprint and Monty AI taught Yorby's founders hard lessons about customers, crowded markets and quitting.

8 October 20262 min read6 min listen

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Written for builders and creators.

If you're building an AI product that feels easy to launch, you might actually be building a business that's impossible to scale. There's this specific kind of trap in the current AI gold rush.

Editor's note

Why this matters now

Perfect Interview AI, Content Marketing Blueprint and Monty AI each gave Andrew Meng and Thomas Kim a reason to keep building. Each was eventually abandoned.

The interesting part is how they judged those businesses. Their marketing database attracted people searching for a specific problem. They still missed the excitement of videos going viral.

If you're weighing up a product that has stalled, that distinction deserves a look. Slow growth can still be the right kind of growth. Their hindsight makes this episode useful, even when you disagree with the decision they made.

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What it says

Distilled from the original. The notes above and below are the editor's own.

An early sale did not settle the business question

Andrew Meng and Thomas Kim say Perfect Interview AI reached about $2,000 in monthly recurring revenue within a month. Meng's existing audience helped bring people to the interview-practice tool.

The founders still struggled to sustain it. They describe limited interest in the subject themselves, customers leaving, and difficulty deciding whether the business was worth more work.

A marketing database needed a different audience

Their Content Marketing Blueprint collected examples of apps growing through social media. Videos about those examples brought viewers searching for marketing help.

The founders say that focused traffic looked disappointing beside the viral reach they had experienced before. In hindsight, they think they gave up on the database too early.

The distinction matters if you sell to businesses. A video answering a buyer's specific question can bring valuable customers even when its view count looks modest.

A crowded category left little room

Their next attempt, Monty AI, was an AI meeting notetaker. The founders describe entering a category full of similar tools and struggling to make the product stand out.

They say monthly recurring revenue stalled around $2,000 to $2,500. An idea that was relatively easy to build also attracted plenty of competitors.

The work has to hold your interest

Meng and Kim discuss two motives for starting a business: spotting an opportunity to make money and caring deeply about the problem itself.

Neither motive guarantees a good product. Their own lesson was that interest in the work affected how much effort they put into improving it when growth became difficult.

They also acknowledge the harder question: when do you truly dislike a business, and when are you looking for a reason to stop because it has become difficult?

Review the reason you want to quit

The episode offers three separate failure stories. They are useful for examining customer retention, choice of marketing channel and competition before making a decision about your own product.

The founders' current work on Yorby comes after these attempts. Their hindsight is valuable, but it should remain a set of experiences to compare with your evidence.

Editor's note

What to do with this

Before shelving a product, separate the reasons. Are customers leaving? Is the market crowded? Do you dislike the work? Have you given the channel bringing in buyers enough attention?

Write down the evidence for each answer. Then compare the early failures with the Yorby pivot. The change in what the founders chose to sell is easier to understand once you know what they had already tried.

Find more from the show in our startup-growth playlist.

The original

What We Learned from 3 Failed Startups in 2 Years

How Does This Get Big? · 24 August 2026