When I was building ONIT Athlete, we needed a custom application. I did what every founder is told to do: I hired a high-end development agency and wired them a $100,000 down payment.
They told me to wait. Five months went by. Five months of burning runway, radio silence, and corporate excuses.
When they finally handed over the first MVP, it was absolute trash. It wasn't what we agreed on, it was riddled with bugs, and it completely missed the vision. We spent the next several months on soul-crushing monthly update calls trying to get them to fix basic features. It never came to fruition. That $100,000 down payment and nearly a year of critical market momentum was completely lost.
After selling ONIT to Alexis Ohanian, I made a decision: I will never let an agency hold my business hostage again.
I took development into my own hands using modern, AI-native architecture. Since then, I’ve built and launched multiple live platforms in real time that are scaling into major commercial brands today.