Overview
On January 19, 2023, I texted a buddy of mine from high school and said hey, let us build something. ChatGPT had just dropped, he was obsessed with AI, and I had always been drawn toward climate and sustainability work. So we figured, why not combine the two?
We landed on ESG management for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), basically helping companies track and report their environmental and social impact, and just started building. No grand plan, no roadmap. Just two guys and an idea. That text message was how Bloom Technologies began.
Contribution
Product
Team
Ruthvik Jonna
Aditya Naidu
Date
January 2023 - May 2025
Process
After we landed on the idea, we threw ourselves into it. We competed in pitch competitions, applied for grants, and took every meeting we could get. We raised over $36,000 in non-dilutive funding, meaning no equity taken, off the strength of what we had built, and it felt like validation.
The problem was, we had confused enthusiasm from judges, professors, and mentors for customer demand. When we finally went out to get real users on the platform, the response was humbling. People thought it was interesting, but nobody wanted to pay for it. The same rooms that had cheered us on were not converting into actual customers, and that told us everything we needed to know.
Outcome
We had raised real money, built a real product, and learned a very real lesson: validation from the people around us is not the same as validation from customers. It stung a little, but honestly it was the best thing that could have happened to us.
So instead of walking away, we took that lesson with us and went back to the drawing board. That is where the next chapter of Bloom began.