Chapter 4: The First Month

The coffee shop is half-empty at 9 AM. Too late for the morning rush, too early for the laptop crowd.

David arrives first. Orders a drip coffee. Finds a table by the window where he can watch the door.

His laptop bag feels heavier than usual. Inside: three years of corporate belonging, now just a tote bag of personal items. The coffee mug. The fidget cube. A notebook he never used.

Alex walks in at 9:03. Hair still wet from the shower. He scans the room, finds David, waves.

They haven’t seen each other in person for—what? Four months? Six? The last few times they tried to meet up, something always came up. Sprint planning. Quarterly reviews. Seattle trips.

Alex orders at the counter. Returns with something complicated—oat milk latte with extra espresso. Sits down across from David.

“So.” Alex’s smile is careful. “How are you holding up?”

David wraps his hands around his coffee cup. The ceramic is warm. “I’m good. Actually good.”

“Yeah?” Alex studies his face. “You don’t look devastated.”

“I’m not.”

The silence stretches. Outside, a bus hisses to a stop. Passengers board. The bus pulls away.

“Okay,” Alex says slowly. “I’ll bite. Why aren’t you devastated?”

David opens his laptop. The product spec from yesterday is still there. Eight thousand words. He’s added another two thousand since he got home last night.

“I want to show you something.”

He turns the screen toward Alex. Watches his friend’s eyes scan the document. The title: “Learning Companion - Full Product Spec.”

Alex reads for two minutes. Three. His expression shifts from polite interest to actual focus.

“You wrote this yesterday?”

“Started it at my desk. Before they deactivated my access. Kept going at a coffee shop after the exit interview. Finished around midnight.”

“Ten thousand words in one day.”

“About that.”

Alex scrolls down. Past the problem statement, the user personas, the technical architecture notes. “David, this is—” He pauses. “This is really detailed.”

“I know the idea isn’t perfect. There are gaps. The monetization strategy is weak. I haven’t validated any of the assumptions. But—”

“But you want to build it.”

It’s not a question. David nods anyway.

Alex leans back. Takes a sip of his latte. “Okay. Walk me through it. From the top.”

David feels something unclench in his chest. Not “this is a terrible idea.” Not “you should focus on finding another job.” Just—walk me through it.

He starts talking.

About the education system that sorted him and Marcus like products. About spending six years building features nobody needed while the real problems stayed unsolved.

About thirty-eight ideas gathering dust because he was too afraid.

About the layoff feeling like permission. Like the universe hitting him with a brick.

Alex listens without interrupting. When David finishes, they sit in silence for a moment.

“You know the statistics,” Alex says finally. “Nine out of ten startups fail.”

“I know.”

“You have—what—six months of runway with severance?”

“Four, realistically. Less if I’m not careful.”

“Your mom is going to lose her mind.”

David’s coffee has gone cold. “Yeah.”

“And you still want to do this.”

“Yeah.”

Alex sets down his cup. “Then I’m in.”

David blinks. “What?”

“I’m in. As a co-founder. If you’ll have me.”

“Alex—”

“Look, I’ve been at TechCorp for four years. Every quarter they promise the work will get more interesting. It never does. I’m building recommendation algorithms for ads nobody clicks. My manager just told me I’m ’exceeding expectations.’ I wanted to throw my laptop out the window.”

“You have a good job. Stable income. You didn’t just get laid off.”

“I know. But I also know that if I don’t do this now, I’ll be fifty years old wondering what would have happened if I’d been brave enough to try.” Alex pauses. “We were roommates for three years. I know how you think. How you work. We’re good together.”

“This could fail spectacularly.”

“Probably will.”

“We could lose everything.”

“Yep.”

“Your parents—”

“Will be disappointed. Same as yours. We’ll survive.” Alex grins. It’s not a comfortable grin. It’s the grin of someone jumping off a cliff. “So. Are we doing this?”

David looks at his laptop. The product spec. Ten thousand words about something that doesn’t exist yet.

His mother’s voice echoes in his head: Your father and I didn’t sacrifice everything so you could throw away stability.

His father’s quiet disappointment when David told him about the layoff: What will you do now?

The statistics. Nine out of ten. Probably fail.

He thinks about sixteen-year-old David on those library steps. Carrying that small, quiet yearning. Wondering if there was another way to live.

“Yeah,” David says. “We’re doing this.”

Alex extends his hand across the table. David shakes it. Neither of them says anything. The handshake lasts maybe three seconds.

It feels like stepping through a door that locks behind you.

Three weeks later.

Two IKEA desks assembled at midnight. Two monitors. One whiteboard: “MVP Complete: May 15.”

Alex moved in last week—not officially, but his laptop lives on the second desk now. They work fourteen hours a day because they can’t stop.

David’s severance plus Alex’s savings: eight months of runway if they’re brutally careful.

Eight months to learn if the vision is real.

At TechCorp: processes, committees, risk reduction. Here: just building.

Alex on backend. David on frontend and ML. They argue, compromise, change minds, argue again.

Messy. Inefficient. The most alive David has felt in years.

2 AM. His mother texts: How’s the job search?

Behind him, Alex debugs API timeouts.

They haven’t told their parents. David said “exploring opportunities.” Alex said “figuring things out.” Both lies by omission.

Still interviewing, David types.

The algorithm he’s building adapts to learning styles—visual, auditory, kinesthetic. The problem: it guesses. They need real users. Can’t get users without a working product. Can’t have a working product without users.

“We’re building in the dark,” David says.

“Then we’ll find out and adjust,” Alex says. “That’s more than most people do.”

David wants to argue. But Alex is already back to debugging.

A LinkedIn notification: someone from TechCorp got promoted. David dismisses it.

Three weeks in. Balance dropped from $47,000 to $43,200. Rent, food, desks, coffee sessions—hemorrhaging faster than expected.

Severance pays out $2,500 every two weeks. Helps. Won’t last.

He opens a spreadsheet. Rent: $1,600. Food: $800. Utilities: $150. Total burn: $3,500/month.

Current savings plus remaining severance: $58,200. Realistic runway: ten months. Maybe twelve if ruthless.

Ten months to build, test, find product-market fit, generate revenue.

Or be thirty, broke, explaining to his mother why he wasted his prime years chasing a dream.

Outside, 3 AM darkness. Normal people asleep with normal jobs.

David could still go back. Update LinkedIn. Two weeks to offers. Different company, same cage.

He looks at the code. Not done. Might never work. But his.

He starts typing. One line. Then another.

Alex falls asleep on the couch at 4 AM. David covers him with a blanket. Makes more coffee.

The algorithm tries to predict learning preferences from behavior. Visual, auditory, kinesthetic. Simple in theory. Impossible in practice. Full of assumptions and guesses.

But it’s a start.

First light at 6 AM. Grey. Cold. March.

David saves. Closes the laptop. Two desks, cables, coffee cups. Alex asleep. Boxes still unpacked from eight months ago.

This is his life now.

His mother texts: Your aunt’s friend’s company is hiring.

Still looking, he types. Lying comes easier.

Before sleeping, he opens the product spec one last time:

“An education system that asks what you’re curious about, not just what you’re supposed to know.”

Somewhere is a kid like Marcus. Losing a race they never wanted to run.

What if there was a way out?

David closes the laptop. Falls asleep on the floor, jacket as pillow.

Wakes five hours later. Alex making coffee: “Ready for authentication flow?”