Cristian Frunze
Founder of Ken
My experience moving from Eastern Europe in San Francisco as an 18 year old
Exactly 2 months ago, I moved out of my home country of Moldova..Destination - San Francisco..Despite the recent negative media perception of SF, I love it..The people are nice and creative, the weather is just perfect, everything is so colorful, diverse, and the food is also not so bad...However, the most impressive thing I notice about San Francisco is it’s entrepreneurship & startup culture. I’ve never seen anything like it before - not in London, not in New York, not in Dubai, and definitely not in Chisinau (Moldova)..I’ve never seen someone:..All this in one 2-day hackathon..Yet, it’s what everyone does here..In Moldova (or in Europe as a whole), we:..To be honest, I think the Silicon Valley playbook is exaggerated and overplayed. I’m grateful I have the perspective to do both - be quick, flexible & bootstrap....San Francisco is a city of diversity - you can see it in it’s colors, buildings, and especially people..I’m enjoying my time here and will continue to do so (at least) until May 2025..PS: Always open to morning coffees or evening walks if some of you want to meet me in San Francisco..
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How I balance my work-study-life
I run a fast-growing AI startup of 8 teammates, an educational nonprofit with 100k students, and I’m a college student at the same time..My secret to managing it all?.I don’t sleep..Ok, I’m only half-kidding..Even with college, I still have about 5 working hours per day, and 12h during weekends..That’s still 9h more than the average 40h workweek..Then, my favorite productivity technique is the daily highlight..I set up 1 or 2 most important things to get done today. And then don’t stop working until I finish them..When you can only do 1-2 things per day, it’s amazing how many tasks can be automated, delegated, or just irrelevant..Focus and Priorities - that’s the secret..
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This startup mistake made me stressed and unfocused for the first time
One of the biggest mistakes I was making recently in my startup was thinking way too much about my competitors..Every second day, a new company sprung up with a cool new approach, a new cold email influencer discovered a fancy silver bullet, market leaders finally catching up, Google & Microsoft crackdowns over all of this. Half of the AI companies at events here in San Francisco competing for the same market...In my previous 2 companies, I didn’t think too much about competition - I was either one of the first or unique enough to be the only one in the market..Now, this was affecting my productivity, product roadmap, and even my anxiety levels. I was looking more and more on LinkedIn reading everything about outbound..And then I realized - by listening to every guru possible, I was becoming average. I was thinking like them..Not that they are inneffective. They might work very well..But my philosophy when I started Ken was to be unique. To do things differently..But if I listen to the same information as everyone else, I have no way but lean towards that...So what am I doing now?.I’m just turning off all social media posts by installing News Feed Eradicator. Putting ad block on everything as well..Not even updating my “Competitors” Google Sheet haha.Everything that we do will be something we discover ourselves..A problem that we actually have, not that someone says we do..A solution that we will figure out ourselves, not what someone is selling us..Not focusing on shiny new tactics and cool tricks & scripts, but on actually asking our clients:.“How can we make this better?”.That’s a way better guiding point than what new silver bullet appears on LinkedIn (the market will be oversaturated in 3 weeks either way)..
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Why positioning my startup is hell
It’s being so hard to position and brand Ken appropriately. It’s genuinely tough to answer the question of “What are we?”.Because we have our own unique ways of doing things, we can’t really be put into a category...Are we a SaaS product?.Yes, we’ve built our own sofware, but there is also so much human work for each client that it can’t be purely SaaS..Are we an agency?.Yes, we provide services done by our team, but there is so much software & AI involved that it’s really not your average agency..Are we an AI company?.Yes, we use AI for everything, but our goal is to preserve the humanity and authenticity of people in outbound. Nothing is fully done by AI..Are we an outsourced outbound team?.Yes, we take all of the outbound work from our clients, but half of my team is developers..What do we even do?.Lead generation is too broad. Our approach is much deeper..Outbound can mean anything to anyone..Cold emails is just a communication tool, not our primary activity..AI Personalization is just a fraction of what we do...Anyway, you got the point - it’s so different it’s tough to figure this out..Sometimes I’m even thinking we’re trying to reinvent a new business model that combines all of that. And then trying to simplify it into something everyone can understand..Or… Maybe I’m making a huge mistake by reinventing the wheel..I’ll keep you posted. It’ll be fun..
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