This Halloween, AI is the real nightmare facing startup founders

As October draws to a close, and the world prepares to dress up in Halloween masks and costumes, it seems like the right time to speak about fear.

All startups have their scary moments. But at MAGIC AI, our horror story this year wasn’t about a ghost or goblin. It came from something much closer to home: uncertainty.

As a company, our resilience was put to the test a few months ago. It was incredible how fast we were scaling. We had new customers, new integrations, and new opportunities. Everything seemed to be going great.

However, behind the façade, the company was growing too fast for it to be sustainable. Our systems were pushed to their limits, people were exhausted, and our product roadmap was changing faster than our infrastructure could keep up with.

That is the horror story of modern AI: speed without stability.

The failure was not a single event, but rather the slow ascent of disorder. It was small bugs in places that had always worked, unpredictable data pipelines, and communication channels overflowing.

Our team was excellent, but human. And I realised that the frightening thing was not the technology breaking, but the possibility of losing clarity, culture, and purpose in the race to keep up.

We had to stop, breathe, and decide on making some uncomfortable choices. We delayed our launches, changed our processes, and took time to create better internal frameworks. It wasn’t a show. It wasn’t a walk in the park – still, it was indispensable.

That time taught me that that fear in business is not always a prompt to turn back. It’s often a signal to listen. When your team tells you they are stretched, listen. When your gut feeling is that something is not right, listen to it. ‍ ‌‍ ‍‌

We figured out that the most effective way to handle terrifying moments is not to run away from them, but to see them straight. This will show you a system being opened, a process that needs to be refined, or a culture that needs to be strengthened.

We came out of that difficult period more united, more intentional, and more responsive to our growth without losing our balance. Which is why this Halloween, I’m thinking about a different kind of fear. The one that acts as a driving force for change.

At one point or another, every entrepreneur will find the unknown overwhelming. However, if you deal with those moments in a truthful, humble, and human way, then they stop being horror stories, and become your origin tale.

About Varun Bhanot

Varun Bhanot is Co-founder and CEO of MAGIC AI, the cutting-edge AI mirror that makes high-quality fitness coaching more accessible. Under his leadership, MAGIC AI has raised $5 million in venture funding and earned multiple industry accolades — including being named one of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2024. As a new father as well as founder, Varun shares candid insights on balancing parenting and entrepreneurship in his bi-monthly guest column, Startup Daddy.

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