It’s been a week since the start of fall. The leaves haven’t turned quite yet, but the chilly air has already made its unwelcome entrance, and what better excuse to stay warm than a quick summer recap? Earlier in June, I put together a short list of things I wanted to tackle, and looking back, I’m pretty proud of staying somewhat on track.
I spent the bulk of my summer working at a startup focused on Physical AI, and it was honestly quite a memorable and amazing experience. Although I had just closed down my little side "startup," I still got to learn a lot about how a functioning startup operates day-to-day, with the perk of not losing sleep. However, one of the biggest takeaways I had this summer working at a hardware-focused startup, ironically, was that SaaS isn't quite dead.
I think SaaS has gotten a bad rep because tools like Claude Code have gotten much more accessible and better. There has been an influx of B2B SaaS startups, and while the number of low-grade startups has increased, the core need for B2B SaaS is still there, if not growing. This influx has increased noise, but working this summer, I valued our SaaS vendors. Although we could've created every tool we needed in-house, and a lot of our tools we use are indeed made in-house, there is a bulk of mission-critical tools that need a team dedicated full-time, and I think that's where SaaS plays such a huge role. I view SaaS tools as almost a team that has been contracted, and while not all tools need to have this level of support, there is still a healthy amount of tools that work better as a SaaS.
Sometimes it is nice to leave the office and confine yourself in a flying metal tube. I had a fair share of trips this summer, including flying to Chicago, London, Venice, Milan, and San Fransico, as well as countless weekend road trips. From the deep dish in Chicago, the pub and Hugo Spritzes in London and Lake Como, and YC Startup School in SF, each trip had its own charm and one unfortunate theme: delays. My bad luck with jetBlue continues to haunt me; all but 2 of my flights were on time. One of which was my flight back to Boston from Milan, which got cancelled, and I had the great pleasure of spending an extra night in Europe and then another night in Chicago with my rebooked flight on United. Despite all of that, I am almost to Mosaic, so I have unfortunately gone too deep into the jetBlue ecosystem.
I also spent a ton of time at CorePower and [solidcore]. I am still trying to figure out why I love this form of working out so much. The cycle always starts like this: I excitedly book a class, start dreading class as I make my way over, contemplate life during the mid-plank, but then after a quick shower, I'm the happiest man alive. I used to wonder why these fitness studios had borderline cult followings, but somewhere between the dark rooms and the endless pulses, I think I drank the Kool-Aid.
Looking back, between shipping code, navigating gate changes, and shaking through 50-minute reformer routines, the summer flew by faster than expected. Fall is officially here, and while the temperatures are dropping, I'm heading into the semester recharged, carrying plenty of lessons, a couple thousand airline miles, and maybe just enough momentum to survive whatever comes next.