Sometimes the market tells you to start with Phase 3 instead of Phase 1
I launched veralabel.dev about a week ago, and I wanted to share one lesson I've learned as a solo founder.
My original plan was to launch in phases. Phase 1 was focused on medical AI, with the long-term vision always being to build a platform for collecting multimodal datasets and languages for AI training.
As I started talking to people in the industry, reality hit.
Some companies already had internal tools that were years ahead of where I was. One person told me they had an NVIDIA-powered model capable of recognizing diseases across virtually every part of the body. On top of that, I began to appreciate the legal and regulatory hurdles that come with medical AI.
For a moment, it was frustrating.
Then I realized something: this didn't invalidate the vision—it only changed where I should begin.
The end goal had always been the same: help build the datasets that power the next generation of AI, especially data that represents African languages, cultures, and contexts. Starting there makes far more sense than trying to compete immediately in a space where others already have mature internal systems and significant regulatory experience.
So VeraLabel starts with the foundation: data.
I'm still early, and there's a long road ahead, but I'm excited to see where this journey leads.
I'd love to hear from other founders—has the market ever convinced you to change the order of execution without changing your overall vision?