Insights from Silicon Valley: what it takes to build something meaningful

Just back from Silicon Valley, thanks to Techscaler, and my mind is still buzzing. It wasn’t a startup fairytale filled with instant success and big wins. Instead, it was a powerful reminder of what it really takes to build something meaningful: resilience, community, and a willingness to navigate the unknown.

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Wearing 15 Hats, Embracing the Challenge

If there’s one truth that Silicon Valley hammered home, it’s this: being a founder means wearing 15 different hats every day, all while racing against time. Whether it is development, sales, finance or PR, a solo founder demands you to be a lateral thinker to solve a diverse range of problems. There’s always another task, another problem to solve, another opportunity to chase. It’s relentless, sure, but it’s also part of what makes this journey exhilarating. The challenges are real, and so is the thrill of tackling them.

Wearing my development hat, I quickly realised that to fully immerse myself in San Francisco, I either had to find a CTO or pick up the tools myself. So, I attended several AI events and demos such as Toolhouse, a complete cloud infrastructure to equip AI models with actions and knowledge. This required me to think deeply about our own technology stack and choose a development approach which aligns with our needs and technical capabilities.

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While the events and networking were a significant source of inspiration for me to improve my own technical capabilities, the agility and growth mindset of the other founders was perhaps the driving influence. On our first day all together, we took turns to demo our products and tell the story of our own journey. I was inspired by the confidence of other founders who taught themselves how to code, even years into their careers, and were building technically innovative and visually beautiful software.

I haven't done much proper programming since Higher Computing in 5th year, back when I would spend dozens of hours in MS Visual Basic to just create a simple buggy game. Now, with AI-assisted coding tools like Cursor and Replit’s agent, prototyping ideas feels almost effortless. The cognitive load has shifted—from worrying about low-level implementation to focusing on how well I can imagine and communicate my vision to the AI.

Then wearing my product development hat, I had the pleasure of meeting credit unions, such as Redwood Credit Union, to understand how they are using AI technologies internally to improve member experiences. I was blown away at the rate of technological adoption in the US credit union sector, and this experience reaffirmed my belief in the opportunity available for community finance providers to benefit from innovative and safe AI integrations.

The Unbalanced Reality of Foundership

I won’t sugarcoat it: being a founder is an unbalanced choice. It’s all-consuming, it demands sacrifices, and it can feel isolating. The San Francisco ecosystem escalated this experience to a dizzying scale. But here’s the flip side: I’ve never felt more alive. There’s a sense of purpose that comes from tackling big problems, from pushing boundaries, and from knowing that what you’re building could make a real difference. It’s a choice that asks a lot, but the rewards are just as significant.

Although the opportunity cost of taking breaks seems too high as a founder, the cost of not taking time to recover and relax is even higher. To stave off burnout, a few of the founders ventured out to Yosemite National Park. This escape forced us away from screens, long work hours, and the breakneck speed of innovation in San Francisco.

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This experience was literally a breath of fresh air. Every time I looked up at the towering cliffs and waterfalls of Yosemite, I felt a momentous feeling of being really small, in the best way possible. Suddenly, I had no room to think about AI agents or venture capitalist valuation models, but instead made some friends, swam in mountaintop lakes and soaked up the Californian sun. This opportunity to disconnect turned out to be the perfect way to reenergise and be clear minded for the week ahead at the SaaStr conference.

Finding Strength in Community

One of the most valuable parts of the Silicon Valley experience was connecting with other founders. There’s a comfort in knowing that, while we’re all on different journeys, we’re facing many of the same challenges. It’s this paradox of the startup world: you’re building your own unique path, but you’re never truly alone.

This left me keen to get involved in the growing ecosystem back home. At the Glasgow Venture Labs' Launch Event, I shared my experiences with nearly 40 aspiring entrepreneurs ready to dive in, eager to start building. It was inspiring to witness that energy and to remember that, while the road ahead is full of ups and downs, there are many many others going through a similar experience.

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The Future is Being Built Now

One of the key insights I took away from Silicon Valley is that the days of clunky and inflexible B2B SaaS are numbered. We’ve all used these linear, rigid apps—designed for broad business categories but never quite fitting any one firm perfectly. What I saw instead was a glimpse of the future: generative UIs that adapt in real-time to what a company and an individual user actually need. It’s about UI on demand, rather than the static, one-size-fits-all dashboards we’ve been used to.

At Niovant, we're embracing this shift head-on. We are building an AI-native experience, not just wrapping flashy features around AI models. The focus is on intelligent agents that handle complexity so humans can focus on creativity and strategy. It's liberating to think about a future where there's no traditional UI—just an AI that gets it, that knows what you need and delivers insights and actions without friction.

Silicon Valley showed me that the next wave of innovation isn't about adding AI to existing processes—it’s about reimagining the processes entirely. It’s about building platforms that are born from AI, where insights and actions are the product, not just an add-on. It’s an exciting shift, and it’s changing the way I think about what we’re building.

A Call for Real Conversations

Between this vision and the realities of execution as a solo founder, a gap exists which feels daunting at times, but that’s part of the journey. Silicon Valley taught me to keep the focus on progress over perfection, to celebrate the small wins along the way, and to always keep moving forward.

If you’re building in this space - let’s connect. Not just for networking, but for genuine conversations. Let’s share the real stories, the challenges, the small victories, and the lessons learned. Scotland’s startup ecosystem is growing, and what it needs most is authenticity—people willing to share both the struggles and the triumphs.

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