Back to all posts

How I Turned a Layoff and $900 Into a $150K ARR Startup

I got fired with $900 in my bank account. A year later, I'm running a $150K ARR startup with my cofounders. Here's the full story.

4 min read
startupfounderbuilding-in-publichackathons

November 2025. I just got fired.

I was working at a Techstars Seattle 2025 startup building vision AI products. I was hyped. This was supposed to be my big break into the startup world.

Then I got the call.

I had $900 in my bank account. No job. No backup plan. Just a laptop and a decade of building random shit.

So I did the only thing I knew how to do: I started building.

The Hackathon Arc

Here's the thing most people don't know about me — I've been winning hackathons since 2020.

It started small. Local college hackathons in India. Build something in 24-48 hours, pitch it, maybe win some cash. I got addicted.

14+ hackathon wins later, including:

  • Jane Goodall Foundation x DocuSign (2022) — Built Panzee, won against teams from around the world
  • AWS Data Exchange for APIs — Built Migrasie
  • Perplexity AI Hackathon — Built Walter Wego

Hackathons taught me something most people learn way too late: you can build anything in a weekend if you stop overthinking.

The Cofounders I Never Met

In 2020, I met Varun and Arjith online. We were building communities, shipping side projects, doing hackathons together.

For five years, we built together without ever meeting in person.

Our first real project was CreedCode — a dev community we grew from scratch. It wasn't a business. It was just us trying to help other devs level up.

We finally met in person in 2025. By then, we'd already built the trust that most cofounders spend years trying to develop.

The $900 Experiment

After getting fired, I gave myself permission to just... build.

No job applications. No "safe" path. Just shipping.

In the span of a few months, I built:

  1. Zeke.so — my first real attempt at a product (now in maintenance mode)
  2. Bloom — another swing, another lesson
  3. Walter Wego — the Perplexity hackathon winner
  4. Million Ears — the one that stuck

None of them were overnight successes. Most barely got users. But each one taught me something I couldn't have learned any other way.

Then We Hit $150K ARR

Million Ears started as a simple idea: what if we could help adult children stay connected to their aging parents through AI?

Here's the problem we saw:

Older people are often technologically challenged. They're frequently far from their children. Phone calls feel like obligations. Important stories never get told. Memories fade.

Our solution: An AI agent that calls your parents on your behalf — not to replace you, but to have real, meaningful conversations. It asks the questions you'd want to ask. It captures the stories you'd want to remember. And you can query those memories anytime.

Think of it as ChatGPT for everything grandma knew.

Within months of going all-in, we hit $150K ARR. Just me, Varun, and Arjith. No funding. No fancy office. Just three guys who'd been building together for five years finally finding product-market fit.

What I Learned

1. Getting fired was the best thing that happened to me

I would've stayed comfortable at Visionify for years. The layoff forced me to bet on myself.

2. Hackathons are underrated

They're not just for students. They're training grounds for building fast, pitching well, and learning what resonates with people.

3. You don't need to meet your cofounders in person to trust them

Five years of shipping together online beats six months of coffee chats.

4. $900 is enough to start

You don't need funding to build. You need focus, a laptop, and the willingness to look stupid while you figure it out.

5. The idea that sticks isn't always the first one

I built four products before Million Ears. Each "failure" was a stepping stone.

What's Next

We're at $150K ARR. The goal is to 10x that.

I'm building in public now. Streaming. Tweeting. Sharing the wins and the losses.

If you're reading this and you're in a similar spot — just got fired, running low on cash, wondering if you should play it safe — here's my advice:

Build something. Ship it. See what happens.

The worst case? You learn something. The best case? You turn $900 into a company.

Follow the journey: @ferran9908

Check out what we're building: millionears.io

Share this article