About this Series: This is the intro to a five-part series on why (and how) I've been intentionally inviting a broad array of student voices into the early developmental phases of my new learning app, MuseKat. The series includes four case studies:
Case study 1 - Co-designing a meerkat with high school artists at the High School of Art and Design
Case study 2 - Battle testing startup economics with grad students at NYU and Columbia
Case study 3 - Getting elementary-aged learners to evaluate AI at PS 281
Case study 4 - Breaking my app with neurodiverse student interns through Tech Kids Unlimited
I'll be sharing a post each day on my blog, as well as invitations to collaborate with me for phase two of this work. Let's dig in.
Most founders hide their prototypes until they’re polished. I let 500 kids and a grad student class break mine in real time. It's not enough.
When I started building MuseKat in January, someone asked me early on if I was going to blog about my experience in building the app. I said, “Absolutely not.” But then, about a week later, I did it anyway, which was a very scary experience for me.
I spent 15 years in tech getting told (either implicitly or explicitly) that there were certain things that would always be out of reach for me if I didn’t know how to code.
And since I’d never before expressed an idea into a piece of software, I was nervous about how it would be received on the other end.
Showing my work publicly made me feel a bit like a kindergartener showing Picasso a crayon drawing of a rainbow. (On paper, it’s a no-contest comparison about who’s the better artist.)
But that’s not how it came across to my network.
In fact, I was surprised by how much support I received even as a non classically trained engineer who "vibe coded" her first app. So I started sharing more, at demo days, meetup groups, and podcasts.
Naturally, at one of my first public demos, one of the first questions I received from an audience member was:
“If you built this in a weekend, what’s to stop someone else from building this too? Why are you sharing this?”
Of course. This is the canonical question of building in public. Why share if someone else might steal it? Why share your process unless you’re inviting someone else to duplicate it?
It’s true that in this AI age (where ideas are cheap and prototypes are cheap and execution matters more than ever), I’ve noticed a shrinking back of in-public builders. People seem more afraid to share, lest someone else recreates a better version of the very thing they coded the next weekend, or invites indie hackers to intentionally sabotage or break what you built. So people are holding ideas back, retreating into smaller spheres of influence, or hiding out until just the right moment for the big reveal.
As one VC put it on LinkedIn recently: “Your launch becomes another startup’s lunch”
"I’m thinking about my next startup, talking to lots of AI founders and VCs. Here’s what I’m seeing:
This market moves brutally fast. No one has seen anything like this before.
A startup announces a round, ships a product.
Within weeks: five clones.
One is cheaper. One is open source. Another is already running ads.
Your launch becomes their lunch.
Speed isn’t an advantage anymore. It seems like a liability unless you have real lock-in."
- Zain Jeffers
Don’t think for a second that I haven’t panicked about someone with a better business brain and stronger engineering chops recreating what I’ve already built. I’ve worked in this industry long enough to be very clear-eyed about my own strengths and weaknesses.
But in a way, that’s exactly why I had to share it: To find other people who care enough to help me on those weaker spots.
What I’ve found, five months later, is that the benefits of building in public far outweigh the risks of keeping things private. The slow, consistent external signaling to my network keeps me top of mind for lots of people. It makes people more likely to think of me as the “kid learning app person,” to send a potential product idea or competitor my way, to refer a friend as a beta user.
Surprisingly, even at this early stage, it’s already attracting other like-minded people who want to build with me. And in a company of one with no one else waiting on me to deliver results, it’s often the only way I can hold myself accountable to keep doing the work. In a way, my network is becoming the moat around my own ideas. I’m essentially banking on the goodwill of my network to support me in my endeavor vs. launch their own rival product.
But it’s not enough. The questions being introduced as we introduce AI into our daily lives at warpspeed are unlike anything we have seen before. There are too many questions we can’t answer on our own.
Things are moving too fast for any of us to keep up alone. It would be irresponsible to build in a vacuum.
When the pace of AI development starts to outstrip our collective understanding, staying silent isn’t just risky: It's borderline unethical.
There's a lot to be worried about in some of the predictions outlined in the AI 2027 research think piece, which outlines two stark global trajectories as we approach the threshold of superintelligent AI. In the end, both possible outcomes paint a chilling picture of what might happen when human input becomes obsolete.
This sounds like scary sci-fi reality. And as a mom raising two young girls at the precipice of this impending prediction, I ask myself this question almost daily: How am I supposed to talk to my kids about AI?
I'm not alone. What hit even harder were the real parents I've spoken to while building MuseKat.
“I don’t think my kids understand the difference between an AI and a person.”
“My 8-year-old keeps asking about ChatGPT, but I don’t know where to start.”
“We watched a documentary about AI and just thought: Well, that’s scary.”
It's like we all know we are raising the AI-native generation but also aren't sure what to do about it. And in a world where only 18% of teachers are using AI in the classroom, a substantial part of this learning will need to happen outside of the classroom. But how?
I started MuseKat because I believe that AI enables us all to embark on learning journeys outside of traditional learning environments. But even something as playful as my app (where a friendly, AI-powered meerkat tells kids stories about the world) raises big, thorny questions:
How do we keep kids safe?
What does ethical AI look like for families?
And at what point does an AI character start to feel too human, blurring the lines in a kid’s mind between tool and person?
Are all screens bad for kids, or is there more nuance than that?
Are all mobile devices bad for kids, or is it primarily social media?
If we don't teach AI in schools or at home, won't they just learn it anyway?
What will kids take away on their own without supervision?
Is it more important to prepare kids for the AI age, or to prepare their parents?
I can’t solve these on my own; it feels delusional and borderline unethical to presume otherwise.
That’s why, for the first cycle turn of MuseKat, I did the thing that I always said people should do if they are starting an education company: I invited students into the build cycle with me.
Over the past semester, while I’ve been hard at work getting a beta version of MuseKat live in the App Store, I’ve also been actively seeking out active participation from students in classroom spaces all over the city. I've spoken at colleges and elementary career days. I've partnered with high schoolers and young adults, I've interviewed dozens of parents of young kids, and I've really done my best to listen to their stories.
For this series, I wanted to share about four unique student-led activations. I'll share each one as its own case study on this blog this week.
Design: Partnering with a group of high school juniors and seniors at the High School of Art and Design on early design concepts, logo iterations, and character development for my app.
Business Case Battle Testing: Sharing real-time snapshots of my startup progress with MBA residency programs at NYU and Columbia to gather in-the-moment feedback from people in the thick of business school brains.
Gamification Ideation: Inviting 500 elementary aged students to iterate with me on real-time gamification concepts for how to better “teach” Miko the meerkat to share audio stories.
QA Testing: Soliciting active QA testing on the early app experience from the point of view of neurodivergent young adults (ages 16-23) with Tech Kids Unlimited design agency program.
In each case, we have hit on tricky question in real time about AI use – some I’ve been able to answer, others I haven’t. I’ve benefited immensely from the diversity of perspectives, and I’ve been able to introduce things from the front lines of cutting-edge technologists in many classrooms that haven’t yet shaped AI policies of their own.
In this series, I’ll share a bit more about how I set up each of these scenarios and why it’s been so impactful for me as an early-stage startup builder to be so immersed with different facets of the public as I build out this product, hopefully setting the stage for whatever happens next.
Help Me Design Phase Two: Getting from 0 to 1 has taught me a lot about what students expect to hear from AI-powered solutions, and now I've got a few better ideas for what's possible in future iterations. But I need your help. If you work with elementary-aged learners and are interested in being a design partner for phase two, let's talk.
Doing another micro-series on my blog this week.... This week's topic? Building WITH the Public Each day this week, I'll be sharing a new case study on why and how I'm inviting in student voices to the process of building my learning app, MuseKat. As I've spent the past five months on the first cycle-turn of a new learning app business at the advent of the AI Age, what I'm learning is -- it’s not enough to build in public. We need to build WITH the public. Over the past three months, I've intentionally been activating student voices from elementary schools to grad schools. Each experience has taught me a lot about the value of getting out there to engage with more inclusive audiences from day one. Here's the intro post to the series: https://hardmodefirst.xyz/[series]-building-with-the-public-intro-post
Most founders wait too long to leave the lab. You’re building trust early by showing up where your users already are. That sticks.
This is how strong brands start. By being useful before being polished. Letting real people shape the product gives it a soul from day one.