Building systems for 350 million users teaches you things that no amount of theory can replace. Every millisecond matters. Every edge case happens. Every "that'll never happen" happens on Tuesday at 3 AM.
Scale Changes Everything
At scale, rare events become certainties. The one-in-a-million bug? You'll see it 350 times. The edge case that "nobody would ever do that"? Thousands are doing it right now. Scale doesn't just multiply your problems—it reveals problems you didn't know existed.
This experience shapes how we approach AI startups. We don't ask "will it work?" We ask "will it work when everyone uses it wrong?" Because they will. At scale, they always do.
The difference between a demo and a product isn't features—it's surviving contact with reality. Reality at scale is particularly unforgiving.
We learned to build systems that expect failure, embrace chaos, and still deliver value. Not because we're pessimists, but because we've seen what optimistic systems look like at 3 AM when they're melting.
AI that matters isn't AI that works in the lab. It is AI that works when your grandmother uses it backwards while her cat walks on the keyboard.