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Every founder dreams of being first. Almost nobody talks about what it costs once the rest of the world finally shows up. It's a quieter kind of hard, and it's the one DeMario McIlwain has been living for four years.
DeMario was teaching prompt engineering before ChatGPT existed and became the first in the US to put AI avatars on a learning platform. The press came, the magazines came, and for a minute being first felt like the whole game.
Then the category caught up.
The $20K he paid to license that tech turned into a $5 a month tool anyone could grab, and the edge that made him special quietly became a commodity.
So, he did what early founders have to do: he kept pivoting. He stayed human-first even when the pressure was to automate everything, and he got honest about the fact that being first isn't the trophy everyone thinks it is.
If you've ever been ahead of your market and watched it pass you anyway, you already know this ache. The lesson isn't to stop being early. It's to understand what being early actually costs and build for the day everyone else catches up.
Being first isn't the finish line. It's the start of a whole different kind of work.
🎧 Listen now to hear how DeMario is turning chaos into a compass for whatever comes next.
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