Octolane Week 51: SF Earthquake & O1 Pro mode

Week 51 at @octolane_ai - building AI Salesforce

Headcount: 5 (All full-stack engineers)

I was dead asleep in the San Francisco apartment when the earth suddenly shook beneath us in my dream. My phone rang—I woke up-my co-founder was on the other end: “I think there’s an earthquake happening.”

Sure enough, I glanced at the glass of water by my bed, and it rippled back at me. Calmly, I got up, crossed the hallway, and told him and his wife, holding their month-old baby, “We might get another quake—we need to leave the building now.”

They hurried out, exactly as they were, and I said I’d follow shortly. I took a moment to splash water on my face, still groggy but alert enough to know what I had to do. We live on the 31st floor, and yes, I took the stairs all the way down—an unexpected workout before dawn.

A series of minor quakes nearby had rattled San Francisco, and just three hours ago at the time of writing this letter, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit Ferndale, about 68 km away from us. After confirming that everyone I cared about was safe—my co-founder Rafi, his family —I stepped out for my usual coffee at Blue Bottle.

The city hummed with anxious conversations about aftershocks, yet my mind drifted elsewhere: the O1 Pro mode launch of our product at Octolane. This release would be a huge leap forward for our AI CRM platform, making it more powerful, more essential—our step towards something great.

Just then, my phone buzzed with a tsunami alert. Hearing all those simultaneous alarms go off around me at the cafetria felt like something out of a disaster movie.

Sam Altman later tweeted something like:

“O1 is powerful, but not so powerful that the universe needs to send us a tsunami.”

I had to laugh—leave it to him to put things in perspective.

While at the blue bottle, I called my mom to say I love her. She’s still upset I am not finishing college. Growing up, education was her one sure path out of hardship. I get it. She wants what’s best for all of her 4 sons. But here I am, youngest one in the family, building an AI startup in SF. I’m doing the best I can.

Later, I found my co-founder and his family nearby. They’re first-generation immigrants who left everything behind to build Octolane with me. All it took was a single phone call from me and a shared belief.

In that moment, I saw him and his wife holding their newborn—cradling the child as if it were the most precious gift bestowed by the creator of the universe. The baby was bundled snugly in a soft blanket, pressed close to their hearts as if to protect all that matters most in this world. That vision alone gave me hope for humanity. I’m endlessly grateful for the people who believed in us early on—like Y Combinator—when Octolane was just an idea and I was still tackling Linear Algebra in college.

Nothing about this journey is guaranteed. But maybe that’s what makes it worth it.

Some recent wins:

1. I’ve made new founder friends—one runs a startup called Stably AI (led by Jinjing and Neil - YC W22) and helped automate our entire Q/A process with AI. Happy to intro if you’re interested.

2. We posted job openings, and so many extraordinary people applied, saying they’d been following our journey and wanted to join this mission. We picked two new engineers but decided to slow down onboarding—quality over speed.

3. Progress isn’t overnight. We’ve been at this for almost a year, and three major breakthroughs happened last month because of the steady work we’ve put in, day after day.

Some low points:

1. Our waitlist passed 2,000 companies, and we’re not ready to bring them all on. Our product still isn’t where I want it to be. We’re building everything in-house—meeting recorder, email sequencing, data enrichment, CRM—trying to do it right, not just fast.

2. I’m still searching for a UI/UX lead who truly gets our vision. In the meantime, I’m hacking away in Figma myself. I’m no designer, but I’m learning. With LLM integration, we can invent entirely new user experiences—so I need a partner who can help bring that vision to life.

3. My routine’s off. Late nights, early mornings. My state of mind affects the whole team. I’ve got a massive to-do list today, and a midnight call with a UX person in Poland. After that, I’ll try to get some sleep. We do what we must.

I’m proud of how far we’ve come, but not satisfied. January 1 is our big internal deadline—Octolane will evolve from a “System of Actions” to a “System of Agents.” More capabilities, more power. I know we’ll keep pushing forward. Let’s keep going.

2 Asks:
1. Please help us spread the word—forward this newsletter to anyone who might find value in it. And if you haven’t yet, consider subscribing at coffeewithone.com/subscribe.

2. We want more people to understand what it’s really like to build an AI startup at a pivotal moment in history, right here in Silicon Valley, as a first-generation immigrant determined to challenge the giants like Salesforce.

If there’s ever anything I can do for you, please don’t hesitate to reach out!

That’s it for today! Going back to building now!

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