Builder in Residence - Business Builder | Kenny Grant

dayshifting

2026-08-28T11:34:00.000Z

now that summer is wrapped in vancouver, i’m shifting back towards the 4am start time. gm!

Notes from this week

Interviewed 5 founders/business owners. Three were struggling with AI transformation. The major areas = shared context and workflows. Nothing was sticking, which sounds like a skills and adoption problem, not a tooling one.
The other two were trying to scale GTM: one with zero paid customers, the other with early pilots but no PMF or clear ICP. Growth dollars exist after understanding customers, positioning, and dialing in product.
Four of the five felt behind on AI adoption. They want to go deeper but have no idea how to budget for it. “What token formula per employee should we use?”
Friends who code for a living aren’t writing code by hand anymore. They review, and change what needs changing.
All my builder friends are diverging on the word “focus.” Some are doubling down on the AI spray and pray game. Going wide, building literally anything and everything. Others are killing every side quest to pour everything into one product. To be a missionary.

Hugging Face started as a companion app for teens. Wild, given yesterday’s news. TC screenshot:

My takeaways on Hugging Face acquisition

Proof that you can hard pivot and just catch large waves and win bigly. Does that mean going deep on mission or ICPs and all that jazz is meaningless?
Betaworks as business model.. Deep research I ran w/ Claude yesterday confirmed: the product studio model doesn’t work? What does work is deploying capital around a thesis.. what Betaworks calls “camps.” Their Hugging Face exit alone returned everything they’d put in over 19 years, and then some

^^ look at the rest of the portfolio in progress..

wheels down

2026-08-27T01:31:00.000Z

Flight was basically just smoke. Mostly brainstorming how companies or organization can best manage shared context with permissions and versioning (staff, contractors, agencies, partnerships, etc)

peach city commits

2026-08-25T18:05:00.000Z

Penticton has a strong coffee shop game! Have a few terminals running refactoring this website, improving design, and a few small bugs. Wrapping up plans for September

the peach city

2026-08-25T04:09:00.000Z

checking the sights and sounds in the ticker

road tripping

2026-08-24T05:10:00.000Z

yesterday

2026-08-21T14:44:00.000Z

The founders day event was inspiring and overall vibe was there’s far more happening in our back yard than I knew. Outdoor events are tricky, with the stage and seating area being directly in the blaring sun. This worked in our favour, as 80% of the founders skirted to shade areas, which led to far more networking and candid conversations.

soundbytes from yesterday

What will the VC want to hear? I have my first pitch tomorrow morning with <retracted>

First time founder

I'm a solopreneur selling digital products to other solopreneurs and feeling isolated.

Digital nomad founder

Do we even need CTOs or technical co-founders anymore?

Founder from Alberta

Our first client fired us, and it was appalling. Embarrassing would be an understatement. Our Lovable MVP broke. We desperately tried to patch a hot fix, but I need to find or poach a tech leader to somehow rebuild this before end of quarter.

Martech founder

If we don't wrap a successful pilot, and secure the raise, then i'm retiring... which wouldn't be the end of the world.

Second time founder working in civic tech

Before the founders event, went full ham on trying to capture Strava PB and came up short. 5 seconds from kom record and 11 from season goal 🫠. Dew usually starts on the back side of Stanley Park in late Aug (like any day now), and foot traffic becomes too intense for daytime attempts… extended weather not looking too promising.. maybe 1 or 2 more shots on goal? Claude despite best cheerleading attempts states i’m losing 1-2% on my roller maxxing pace, as a minimum per year, and this might be the top. what a jerk!

founders day 2026, vancouver edition

2026-08-20T17:08:00.000Z

It’s back! Just wrapped a few meetings and in the back of an uber (tesla of course ha) on my way to Founders Day. Will try to push a few updates with photos and observations. Pretty stoked to run into some old friends i haven’t seen in a minute. Let’s gooo!

whoosh

2026-08-19T18:53:00.000Z

This whoosh! screen shine and keyboard cleaner has been the best purchase under 20 bucks everrrrr

Used to use the magic apple cloth but it greased out. Perfect addition to your laptop bag. A++++++

Built a meta tags checker tool, and manually creating some replacement og images in figma. Maybe next I’ll create a generative open graph image tool.. trying to showcase more wip.. screenshots below

aug 19

2026-08-19T15:59:00.000Z

I love bringing ideas to life

PSA

2026-08-18T22:36:00.000Z

Always start with the marketing brief. Even if the client, agency, or founder says you don’t need to.. just do it

Don’t outsource day0 inputs to ai agents.. The context doesn’t carry, and you’ll be forced to come back to the brief

Pen and paper first

2026-08-17T22:33:00.000Z

If you token max, don’t forget to allocate 20-25% of your time towards manual creative outputs. Otherwise, you’ll brain rot -> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S294988212500091X

Today I’m inventing v0 of a Junastar deck and prepping for Founders Day this Thursday. Which means practicing what I just preached.

My process: brief first, always. Then pen and paper for the first draft. That’s where the story, the emotion, the flow, and the “what the hell is this thing” anyways gets figured out . Only then do I bring in Claude design systems for a first version, and finish in Figma Slides.

Doing it this way forces me to deeply understand the topic and the nuances between pages and the audience. When I skip straight to whatever Claude or ChatGPT pumps out, it clouds my judgement, intuition, and my idea antenna. Same as teaching. You don’t really know a topic until you’ve had to write or present it yourself. Reps build the clarity, confidence, and user empathy. You know the thing cold, and the audience can feel it.

TLDR don’t skip creative writing days or that morning pages routine.

Sunday update

2026-08-17T00:05:00.000Z

Refactored a personal project. Wading through an old Figma file hits differently. The goal is to actually build the iOS MVP in September.
Refactored this website with a dozen design improvements. The experiment of working without Figma is over, or at least going hybrid. I still haven’t cracked how to make design passable without a design tool, at least to my own bar, and I know it’s something I need to work on. There’s a misconception that teams are shipping great work without Figma or Paper. Maybe for 80% quality. Anything that needs to be 90 to 100% isn’t happening freehand from command line.
Experimenting, and so far failing, with larger context management projects. Talked to a few other builders this week. Everyone is struggling with this.
The plan is to keep tightening this site without a huge overhaul. I suspect I’ll end up there anyway: waking up mid-Sept saying yuck, and starting over. In the meantime, focusing on different types of AI reps, processes, and agent trees to find what I like best.
While everyone is tokenmaxxing and trying to increase surface area, I’m reducing mine. Going deeper with a stronger foundation, higher quality. Red hot coals versus spray and pray fleeting flames.
Captured 2 KOMs this morning, attaching a video below

cleaning up site

2026-08-13T19:21:00.000Z

This website is driving me bonkers. Originally planned to carve out three or four days in September; however I need to just do something so that I can even visit my website. Most of my interactions with this website are from terminal. Let’s see how much damage I can do over the next 24 hours.

unrelated. my friends golden says hi

src

2026-08-11T16:48:00.000Z

PSA your company or product website is your source of truth. While you may have a brand new launch or product or thousands of pages sitting within Google Docs, Notion, Obsidian, etc What the world knows about you is what is available to the internet eye. It’s even more important in an agentic world That scrapes your website, misses nuance, and has 10 other parallel agents checking potential competitors. Ensure your website is up to date. And lean into what makes you a unique snowflake!

whats next

2026-08-10T18:25:00.000Z

wrapped a few major Health and fitness milestones with 3 PBs. chatting with a few different founders. August is shaping up to be token-heavy, which feels like a dangerous metric and rather meaningless. excited to share a slew of new ships and text on where I think we’re headed next.

ten weeks ago i said i was withholding a bunch of projects “for now.” still withholding.

biggest struggle atm is what or how much to share in public.

aug 2026

2026-08-05T02:21:00.000Z

perhaps the last daily log for now? starting a new repo for a quick n dirty new kenny.is website. messing around with some new models, and have this playing in the background

Watch on YouTube

sunset vancouver

2026-07-20T04:23:00.000Z

thinking different

2026-07-08T18:52:00.000Z

pushing this post as i’m restarting ai outputs after an extended break (sick).

one topic i’ve been exploring is how to think different… how models are predictable and those that are ai pilled have offloaded deep thinking to the models, to blindly march toward reinforcement completion.

new perks

2026-06-26T23:56:00.000Z

new company perks:

quarterly flower budget
home depot renovation budget
mattress, bedding, and blackout blinds budget
yearly thrift books budget
offsites with no laptops or tokens
classes on cooking, gardening, and home renovation
classes on being human: emotions, conflict, relationships, love, somatic experiences

dogfooding the new claude design system

2026-06-19T19:27:00.000Z

Scotland kickoff in 2.5 hours and i’m cramming on a few experiments with figma and claude design systems.

A long time mentor/friend shared this video after we had a lengthy discussion on scorecards and comparison.

Watch on YouTube

Another friend from Singapore launched a new biz focusing on helping founders grow calmly versus growth at all costs. They just received new business cards, and I love seeing friends launching and chasing new ventures. Happy friday.. gooo Scotland!

ideamaxxing in lower rhr destinations

2026-06-17T18:17:00.000Z

Vision questing, ideagazing, and deep work happen best off grid in minimal designed + low resting heart destinations. 35k feet is my ideal place for deep work, but i’m not flying anywhere to reach that peak state. i’m just over in west vancouver. A few quotes circled from journal.

You have to be a bad actor, and see them, before you can become a good one.

Everyone is a flower grower

2 weeks left in the q

2026-06-16T19:25:00.000Z

Vancouver is world cup cray at the moment. Today, i’m teeing up a 2 week sprint to close out the q. Working on a new design system with claude for a new brand. Following that, spending a few hours tidying up this website css/styling/design love

new collective, who dis?

2026-06-10T20:04:00.000Z

starting a new dicovery collective called junastar! i’d rather show than tell… but things hit the feels and became real once that red starburst certificate of incorp hits your inbox. Mucho excitement.

new energy.. so for today i’ll start cleaning up my digital house (this website), figma reps + some design cycles + write a newsletter draft.

Watch on YouTube

bring people into the theatre

2026-06-03T20:07:00.000Z

creative maps only take you so far

feel your way

Re - acting and the creative act

“total immersion into possibility. It’s infinitely interesting, there’s no bottom to it. A lot of it just great, deep, belief”

8:28 is like flying

Watch on YouTube

wispr flow empty screenshots and middle screen real estate

2026-06-03T02:00:00.000Z

ahh, already feeling soo much better about wispr flow

june 01

2026-06-02T02:20:00.000Z

Quick reflection before kicking off several 30-day challenges. May had a bunch of highs and lows.

Highs = Lost 8 lb, increased VO2 max by 6 points and daily steps to 14k. Wrapped a number of personal and offline projects that I’m withholding for now.

Lows = last commit to Boom was over two weeks ago, newsletter over a month

My biggest takeaway for this month. Crushing offline or non digital to-do list items feels heavier. The good kind of heavy. More uplifting and carries momentum

wrap, and the world cup is heating up

2026-05-30T01:36:00.000Z

Officially wrapped two projects today, as well as a bunch of personal DIY offline projects.

It’s been neat to watch Vancouver slowly decorate itself in time for the World Cup. Not entirely convinced locals are that excited but when it officially kicks off in two weeks I know it will mirror that of the 2010 Olympics.

On the builder side of things, today I submitted name requests for a company inc, which is always a lot of fun and thrilling bc things start to become real. More on that later.

Observation: there’s a lot of hype or focus on distribution first, especially from all of the marketing camps and marketing ai agent startups. Distribution for the sake of distribution. It’s one way of operating. <retracted>. if time allows it, I’ll write a few words and put some slides together on where we’re going or what has me excited. The questions I hear constantly within my circles from other builders not knowing what to build, which hills to stand on, and this obsession around distribution. More later

Speaking of obsession, I caught the breakout film Obsession earlier this week and highly recommend going in cold without a trailer.

3:03

2026-05-27T22:03:00.000Z

Web Summit Vancouver 2025

2026-05-13T04:40:00.000Z

This afternoon checked out Web Summit Vancouver, met up with a few founder friends and a bunch of faces that I haven’t seen in a minute. Hoping to chat with a few people and friends of friends from Singapore and Southeast Asia that made the big trek. Attaching a few photos below.

Planning and Execution

2026-05-08T22:58:00.000Z

“Planning and execution. That’s all there is.”

The room was absolutely packed. My friend Nate had invited me down to Palm Springs and treated me to a surprise evening at the Purple Room, a drag queen musical. Our dinner table was right near the front, and Jeremy, seated to my right, caught my attention early as he dropped various business knowledge bombs between numbers. He was in his 60s, a successful entrepreneur who’d felt the full weight of the wins and losses that come with a long career of company building.

His point was that when a project or venture goes sideways, it’s almost always one of those two. Sometimes the plan was wrong from the start. Sometimes you executed flawlessly against a plan that was never going to work. Sometimes the plan was right and the execution fell apart. Occasionally it’s both.

It’s been 11 years since that conversation. I’ve replaced post-mortems with a simple stress test: did we have the right plan, and did we execute the plan?