2025 year-in-review

I wrote in my 2024 year-in-review that it was the happiest year of my life. I wish I could say the same thing again, but 2025 was rockier and full of big transitions.

Here are the big events of 2025:

• Launched a new product MetaMonster with my longtime business partner
• Made it to the state robotics competition with the TechTigers, the high school team in Detroit I worked with
• Broke up with my partner of 5 years in an amicable, but still painful breakup
• Packed up all of my things and moved from Detroit to Atlanta to be closer to friends and family
• Began making plans to move to Mexico City in 2026
• Went to two different SEO conferences, and made some really great new friends in the SEO world, several of whom have become some of my closest friends outside of work
• Traveled to Seattle to visit friends and spend time hiking and camping
• Broke my ankle in October, right before I was supposed to got Mexico for a two-week immersion language program

Let’s get into it.

What went well?

Robotics

One of the highlights of the year was seeing our robotics team take a massive leap forward for this year.

For context, I’ve spent Jan - April the last 3 years coaching a high school FIRST robotics team in Southwest Detroit made up primarily of bilingual, Latino students. Detroit is a powerhouse of FIRST robotics, but the best teams are all in the suburbs. These teams will often have 50+ kids and tens of thousands of dollars in funding, plus tons of support from parents and volunteers.

In contrast, our first year we had 3 kids, and maybe $8k in funding. And it costs $5k just to enter the competition every year. Plus almost all of our mentors were (like me) brand new and learning as we went. The first year we barely fielded a robot at the two local competitions we attended. Then in our second year, we slowly improved and made it to the playoffs at our second competition.

This year we were clearly a top robot at both of our local competitions, comfortable made it to states where we won the Rising All Stars award for a young team that’s improving quickly, and came within just a few points of making it Worlds, which would have been a first for a Detroit public school. Even better was seeing the growth and excitement in our students, especially from our two seniors, who graduated this year co-valedictorians.

Moving to Atlanta

After my breakup I packed up all of my things and moved to Atlanta for 6 months. I had been thinking about leaving Detroit for a while, and Atlanta was high on my list. I have family there, and several of my closest friends from college live there now.

I was worried when I first made the decision that I was being rash leaving Detroit behind, a city I really loved living in, and all of my friends there. But it was absolutely the right decision. I got to spend 6 months surrounded by some of my closest friends, got some much needed distance from my life in Detroit, and generally felt like it was exactly where I was supposed to be during this time.

Building relationships in the SEO space

I made a bunch of new friends this year, and two of my now closest friends are SEOs that I met last year because of MetaMonster. I went to two SEO conferences, had a blast at both, and came out with a number of strong relationships with people I adore. While MetaMonster hasn’t had the growth I had hoped for, I am super grateful for these new friendships and have a much stronger network in the SEO space than I did at the beginning of the year.

Made more money this year

I haven’t looked at the exact numbers because I’ve been putting off prepping for my taxes, but I more than doubled my consulting income from 2024 while still having plenty of time to work on MetaMonster.

The big change this year was working as a Fractional CMO for the first time with Scout. I never thought of myself as a marketer, until one of my longtime friends saw the marketing work I was doing for MetaMonster and reached out to ask if I could help them revamp their marketing.

I really enjoyed the work, although the downside was that even weeks where I technically had free time I often found Scout consuming most of my headspace. If I want to do this kind of thing longer term while focusing on my own projects, I need to figure out how to keep it more contained.

What didn’t go well?

MetaMonster hasn’t added any new customers since August

The biggest career frustration from this past year was MetaMonster’s stalled growth. We hit 7 or 8 paying customers at the peak, but only 2 were really active, and we’re now down to 5 and haven’t added a new customer since August. The timing coincides with when we revamped our UI and pricing model, and I got busier with consulting work and started to slip on marketing a bit.

We’re making a big push over the next few months to see if we can get the business going. We’re revamping the UI, reducing functionality while making things simpler to use, more opinionated, and frankly better. I’m also wrapping up my consulting work at the end of February, and planning to focus full-time on marketing for the next few months.

I think we made a similar mistake that I’ve seen a lot of AI native startups make. We started focusing too much on the AI, and not enough on the problem we were solving. When we revamped the platform in August, we thought we were releasing something incredibly powerful. We put the prompts front and center in an AI-powered spreadsheet-like experience, expecting users to be excited to edit and create their own prompts to automate SEO work.

But what we actually found is that people just wanted something that worked out of the box. And our prompts, which were meant more as starting points, were clunky and didn’t work well end-to-end. The more we thought about it, the more we realized an endlessly flexible AI-powered spreadsheet wasn’t ever going to be as useful as more opinionated software. So now we’re betting everything on going in the other direction.

Broke my ankle

I was super excited to go to Mexico for two weeks of Spanish immersion classes in October. It was a chance to meet the teacher I’ve been working with for the last two years in person, and I was going to be there for Halloween and Dia de Los Muertos.

Then two days before I was supposed to leave, I took an awkward fall bouldering with an old friend and broke my ankle. I had to cancel my trip, do two months of physical therapy, and it’s still not 100% back to normal.

The experience really put into perspective how lucky I am to normally be healthy and mobile. Getting around without one leg fully functional is incredibly hard. I felt super lucky that I could get a lot of things delivered, but it was still challenging. I’m hoping to start climbing again soon, but will do so carefully, and won’t be taking my mobility for granted moving forward.

Stopped cooking as much and let my diet and exercise slip a bit

Between the breakup and breaking my ankle, my diet and exercise definitely slipped a bit last year. Nothing too hard to fix, but definitely something I want to keep an eye on so it doesn’t become a new habit.

Moments of learning

My breakup

I don’t want to talk about this too much here, but it’s impossible to honestly reflect on 2025 without acknowledging that my long-time partner and I broke up in June. It wasn’t a total shock to either of us, and I’m proud of how we both handled it, but it was still incredibly difficult.

In early June, I expected to be in Detroit for the foreseeable future. But after the breakup I made the tough decision to pack up and move to Atlanta to be closer to friends and family while I made longer term plans to spend time in Mexico learning Spanish.

I learned a lot about myself throughout the process, and am still reflecting on the experience to identify how I can do better in future relationships. But truthfully, there’s a limit to how much I think either of us can learn. We both tried really hard to make it work, and have nothing but love and respect for each other, but it just wasn’t the right timing or fit in the end.

Thinking of myself as a marketer

On the career side, one of my biggest shifts this past year was starting to think of myself less as a product builder and more as a marketer. This is a shift that’s been slowly coming to a head for years. At Krit, I spent most of my time focusing on sales and marketing. In my partnership with Austin on MetaMonster, I’m focused on growth. But it took my friend Bryan reaching out about hiring me to help run growth for his startup to really make me go, “oh, maybe I am a marketer.”

I still have a ton to learn as a marketer. When I don’t have the budget to hire and staff systems, I struggle to consistently produce content and distribute it across multiple channels. I’m not super data driven, sometimes to a fault. And there are still a lot of channels I just haven’t experimented with much.

My strengths are definitely product and content marketing. And I think I will remain a builder to a degree. I built a new product in 2026 that I’ll be rolling out soon, and I want to stay a technical marketer who can ship experiments and tools that help contribute to growth. But I am more a marketing co-founder these days than anything else.

Moments of awe or wonder

Robotics

There were so many moments of awe and wonder for me with robotics this year. Seeing my senior programmer teaching a freshman how to code, or when he came to me mid-competition to point out a tricky bug in the code we hadn’t been able to diagnose. At first I told him, “no that can’t be right, it doesn’t work that way.” Then after he insisted I thought about it again and realized, “holy shit you’re right!” Even better, I got pulled away and by the time I came back he had fixed it himself.

Or just riding the bus with all of the students to states, and feeling like a core part of the team. It was a really magical season, and I’m so proud of all of them.

Seattle

I had originally planned a trip to Seattle with my ex, and after we broke up I kept the trip and decided to do it solo. I spent a week staying with my two good friends who moved there recently, then my friend Alex and I went backpacking for a few days, and after I rented a car and drove around the Olympic peninsula by myself car-camping and hiking.

The trip was sad at times, but full of way more joy. And as someone who is extremely extroverted and has struggled in the past to enjoy time alone, I was really proud of how satisfying I found it. Plus the landscape was absolutely magical.

Moments with friends and family

There were so many moments this year where I felt the love of friends and family so strongly. Staying with Austin after my breakup, or Alex and Alex in Seattle. Spending lots of time with my parents. Living with Sanchit in Atlanta. Getting closer with Sunaina, Sushen, and Braxton. Driving a car to Charleston to surprise Andy’s wife Megan for Christmas. Meeting Tony and Jade. Late night pool hangs with Heather and William. Reconnecting with Thad and Kristmar. Being there for my cousin KD’s daughter Charlotte’s birthday, or singing goofy Christmas karaoke with everyone. It was a great year with friends and family.

Goals

How did I do on my 2025 goals?

• Get product business to ramen profitable ❌
• Go on 5 backpacking trips - 3/5 ❌
• Complete 1 photo project ❌
• Workout 3x per week ✅
• Build a consistent mindfulness practice (4x per week) ❌

It was rough year for goals, I only hit a single goal this year and even that one is a little sus. The backpacking goal I would have likely hit without my ankle, and that isn’t counting my 5 nights camping in the Olympic Peninsula. Which, while not backpacking, definitely is in the same spirit. But yeah, definitely a tough year.

What are my goals for 2026?

• Get product business to ramen profitable
• Improve my Spanish level from B1 to B2
• Go on a trip to South America
• Workout 3x per week
• Build a consistent mindfulness practice (4x per week)

My goals for 2026 are all about getting one of these dang products to a sustainable point and strengthening my Spanish. Plus I’m going to continue to try to establish a mindfulness practice so I can be a better partner when I find the right person.