“we spent the better part of 18ish months building that not in public really, launched it and found ourselves in a pickle where we had gone the sort of typical VC route, hired a lot and then we launched the thing and essentially ran out of money to be able to see it through to grow it”

The VC route plus heavy hiring left no oxygen to iterate post-launch

Josh built Maybe v1 over 18 months in stealth on VC money, hired aggressively, then launched and immediately ran out of runway before growth could catch up. Raising and hiring ahead of validation compresses the window from launch to dead — there's no oxygen left to iterate. A solo operator should invert this: ship small, in public, before the money clock starts ticking.