This is full of classic early stage business mistakes. - Married to the "how": app, app, app, app. It didn't have to be an app. You wanted to use technology to

This is full of classic early stage business mistakes. - Married to the "how": app, app, app, app. It didn't have to be an app. You wanted to use technology to make people happier. There's a lot more technology than apps. + talking to users: well done! + reaching out to potential customers!: really, well done! - not following up with customers: face palm. But that's ok, talk to another one and keep in touch! - not using customer agreements to raise money for product dev: you should have used the banks agreement to a trial to help fund developement. The bank could have sponsored the initial build! You could have raised a little money from people based on that. Gone to an accelerator, it didn't have to YC. - started a PhD: focus!!!! Argh. Now you're just going to half ass both. - couldn't develop product faster enough: perhaps you needed a more experienced developer? Maybe you needed different tech. Because you were basically building a business off the back of a favour, you were pretty stuck though. You can't fire a favour. - 9 months to launch an Alpha: this is too long to wait to get a simple mood tracking app into alpha. It didn't need to be anything more than that at this point. The fancy can come later. - let's use ML!: NO! You do not have time for the distraction. Unless you're going to use the Hype train to raise funds. - not useful, technical issues: fix them? + apply to YC: good, seeking mentorship is probably a good idea :). - only apply to YC: all your eggs in one basket is not a good strategy. - still struggling to articulate the idea: what did you tell the bank? That seemed to work. Mayhaps you're a little dissolusioned? Take a break tbh. Generally great approaches, I think if you were to try again a few times you'd make it. It's evident that you have some of the right mind set to make it work. I think you gained a fair amount of CV worthy skills and experience tbh.