# Chapter 10: The Push ## Chapter 10: The Push January. Balance: $1,510. Rent due in eight days. Alex covers January—one month grace. After that: revenue, funding, or something. The prototype is live. Sixty-seven users. Sarah Chen forwarded it to Oregon colleagues—four teachers want to pilot with 120 students starting next week. The biggest test yet. Server barely handled 67 concurrent users. 120 might break it. Database upgrade: $80/month. "If it crashes when teachers are watching, we're done," Alex says. David upgrades. Doesn't think about February. Balance: $1,430. --- Oregon pilot launches. David watches the dashboard. Users climb: 12, 28, 71, 89. Server response time spikes. Timeouts. Three error screens. David's hands shake. He refreshes. The graphs render. Slow. But they render. Peak: 124 concurrent users. It holds. --- First week metrics: - 124 students - 34-minute average sessions - 67% return rate Teacher feedback: "Engaged." "Unusual." "Too early to tell." Not transformative. Not revolutionary. Just... engaged. Balance: $1,210. Rent due in three days. --- His mother calls. "Can you pay rent?" "No." Silence. "How much?" "Sixteen hundred." "Your father and I will cover it. This is a loan. And David—this is the last time. If you don't have money by March, you need a real job." Her voice cracks. Terrified, not angry. "I understand. Thank you." "Are you eating?" "Mostly rice and eggs." "You need vegetables. Call me next week." "I will. Love you." The transfer arrives. $1,600. Balance: $2,810. Eight weeks until March. --- January: The numbers grow. 180 users, 220, 287 by month's end. Teacher feedback: behavioral observations. Students asking to use it. Engagement. "Unusual." Not revolutionary. Not transformative. Just... engaged. David pitches fifteen investors. Twelve auto-responses. One rejection. Two interested. One stops responding. Seedling Ventures schedules a call: February 2nd. Everything riding on thirty minutes. --- Late January. 11 PM. David should sleep. Instead he opens the product. Types: *"Why do I need to learn calculus?"* An interactive demo loads. Car in tunnel. Moving 60 mph. Where is it after 30 seconds? A slider: "Your guess." He guesses 0.5 miles. *"Good! You just used calculus—rate of change to position."* *"But what if speed changes?"* The speed becomes a curve. He can manipulate it. Accelerate. Decelerate. Watch position change in real-time. Five minutes of playing. Then: *"Notice the relationship?"* *"When the curve goes up, distance increases faster,"* David types. *"Exactly! You discovered the fundamental theorem of calculus."* Options branch: Physics. Economics. Biology. Programming. This is it. Not lectures. Discovery. A kid asking "why do I need this?" gets to play first, discover patterns, then learn formulas. Learning calculus while learning physics, coding, thinking. Multiple skills. Organic. Curiosity-driven. David writes the investor pitch until 2 AM. The experience, not features. Discovery, not delivery. Will investors care? Or just want revenue numbers? He doesn't know. But now he can show them what's different. --- February 2nd. Seedling Ventures call. David hasn't slept. Ran on two hours last night, fixing a rendering bug he found at midnight. The Zoom opens. Jessica Martinez—partner at Seedling. Mid-forties. Sharp. Behind her, two other people David wasn't expecting. Michael Chen, another partner. Sara Rodriguez, analyst. Three people. Not one. David's stomach tightens. "Thanks for making time," Jessica says. "We've been following your progress. Intrigued by the approach. Walk us through it?" David shares his screen. Opens the prototype. His hands are shaking slightly. He hopes they can't see. "Traditional education asks students to memorize," he says. "We start with curiosity. Let me show you—" He types into the demo: *"Why do I need to learn calculus?"* The interactive loads. Car in tunnel. Variables. The clean interface he spent hours perfecting. "Students manipulate this themselves," David says. "They discover the relationship between—" The screen freezes. David's heart stops. The car animation is stuck. The slider won't move. The browser is thinking. Thinking. Thinking. "Sorry," David says, voice tight. "Let me refresh—" He refreshes. The page reloads slowly. Too slowly. Thirty seconds of Jessica, Michael, and Sara watching a loading spinner. Finally, it loads. David tries the slider again. It works this time. The car moves. Numbers update. "See," David says, trying to recover. "They discover rates of change intuitively before we—" The screen goes white. David stares in horror. White screen. Nothing. Browser crashed. "I'm so sorry," he says. His hands are shaking visibly now. "This was working an hour ago. I don't know what—" "Is this a common problem?" Michael asks. Not mean. Just assessing. "No. I mean—we've had server issues with scaling, but the demos have been solid. This is—" David stops. He sounds defensive. Desperate. Alex jumps in from off-camera. "I can pull up the backup instance. Give us thirty seconds." Those thirty seconds feel like an hour. Jessica waits. Professional. Neutral. The other two are typing. Probably notes. Probably: *"Demo crashed. Technical instability."* Alex gets the backup running. David shares the new screen. "Okay," David says. Trying to sound confident. Failing. "Let me try this again." This time it works. The calculus demo runs. David talks through it. Shows the knowledge graph. The connections. The curiosity-driven flow. But the energy is gone. The magic moment ruined. He can see it in their faces. Polite interest. Not excitement. After fifteen minutes, Jessica stops him. "This is interesting. Can you talk about traction?" "Three hundred users. Oregon teachers. Thirty-one minute average sessions. High engagement." "Revenue?" "None yet. But we have a school district interested. Willow Creek. 800 students. Free pilot, then paid contract if it works." "And your runway?" David hesitates. Should he lie? Stretch it? "Six weeks," he says. "Maybe seven." Silence. Michael speaks. "That's not a lot of time." "I know. But we're close. This pilot could be the proof point we need." Sara jumps in. "What if the pilot doesn't convert? What's your backup plan?" David doesn't have one. Can't say that. "We believe in the product. The engagement metrics show students want this. It's a matter of finding the right school willing to pay for it." More silence. Jessica exchanges a glance with Michael. Some unspoken conversation. "Okay," Jessica says. "Here's where we are. The mission resonates. The approach is interesting. But the demo crashing mid-pitch is concerning. And six weeks is not enough time to prove this out." David's chest tightens. This is a rejection. He can feel it coming. "However," Jessica continues, "I do think there's something here. What if we did a bridge round? Small. $50k. Six months. Convertible note at a $5M cap. That gives you runway to run the pilot and prove schools will pay. If you get to sustainable revenue, we'll lead your seed round." David doesn't dare speak. Afraid his voice will crack. Alex off-camera: "What's the minimum traction you'd need to see for the seed?" "Three to five paying schools. $20k minimum annual revenue. Proof that the model works." "That's doable," Alex says. Jessica looks at David. "But I need to be clear. This is conditional. The demo crashing today makes me nervous. If there are technical stability issues, or if the pilot fails, we're out. This bridge is a bet on execution. Can you deliver?" Can he deliver? David doesn't know. Six weeks ago he was in the gray. Two months ago the prototype failed user testing. Every step forward reveals new problems. But Jessica is offering $50,000. Six months of breathing room. A chance. "Yes," David says. "We can deliver." "Alright." Jessica types something. "We'll send a term sheet by end of week. Get it signed and we'll wire the funds. But David—" She looks directly at him. "Fix the technical issues. If you're pitching schools and the demo crashes, you're done. Understand?" "Understood." The call ends. David sits in silence. Stares at the blank Zoom screen. "That was close," Alex says, coming into frame. "Close to what? Success or disaster?" "Both." David opens the browser console. Scrolls through the error logs. There—a memory leak. He's been running the demo dozens of times while testing. The browser couldn't handle it. A bug he should have caught. Would have caught if he'd slept. If he'd tested properly. Instead, he almost blew the entire pitch. "$50k," Alex says. "That's huge." "If we can fix the bugs. If the pilot works. If schools actually pay." "One step at a time." David nods. But his hands are still shaking. They almost lost it. One crashed demo away from Jessica saying "thanks, but no thanks." And now—now they have six months to prove this works. To get paying customers. To show that ten months of suffering wasn't for nothing. The pressure is enormous. The margin for error is zero. But they have $50,000. They have oxygen. "We should celebrate," Alex says. "This is good news." "I need to fix the memory leak first." "David—" "I almost blew it, Alex. I almost crashed the only pitch that mattered. I can't—" He stops. Takes a breath. "I need to fix this. Then we celebrate." Alex doesn't argue. David opens the code. Finds the leak. Fixes it. Tests it twenty times. Thirty. Fifty. Doesn't crash. Around 7 PM, he finally closes the laptop. "Okay," he says. "Now we celebrate." They order pizza. The good kind. Not the cheapest option. Actual toppings. While they wait, David sits with the reality of it. They got funding. Barely. By the thinnest margin. One crashed demo away from failure. But they got it. $50,000. Six months. One more chance to prove this vision is real. Not because he pitched perfectly. But because Jessica saw something worth betting on. Even after the demo crashed. Even after the disaster. She believed enough to take the risk. Now David has to prove she was right. The term sheet arrives three days later. David reads it seventeen times. Signs it with a shaking hand. The wire transfer hits on February 15th. $50,000. Six months of runway. Conditional on execution. Alex nods off-screen. "We're in," David says quietly. But this time, he knows what he's in for. The pressure. The expectations. The constant fear of technical failures. The knowledge that one more crashed demo could end everything. Still. They're alive. For now. --- $50,000. Six months. Conditional on revenue. Not a full seed. But oxygen. David pays back his parents. Balance: $48,710. Six months to prove this works. --- Funding closes February 28th. $50k. David repays his parents: $1,600. Balance: $48,490. His mother calls. "You got funding?" "A bridge round. Enough to keep going." "I'm proud of you. Don't waste it." "I won't." --- Mid-February. Email from Principal Anderson, Willow Creek School District: *"800-student pilot. Grades 6-8. Free trial starting March 30th. If it works, paid contract for next year. $8-10 per student. Interested?"* David reads it three times. This is the path to revenue. *"Absolutely."* --- February 18th. District call. Anderson: "What makes this different?" David demos the calculus path. "They discover patterns before we teach formulas. Thirty-one minute sessions. Not forced. Chosen." Hayes (tech director): "State standards?" "We don't align directly. But when a kid spends 45 minutes following curiosity from calculus to physics to programming—they learn. Because they want to." Anderson: "Four-week pilot. 800 students. Starting March 30th. Free. If it works, $8/student annually." $6,400 first year. Not profit. But proof. "We're in." --- Five weeks to scale for 800 concurrent users. Five weeks to prove this works. --- February: Server upgrades. Security audits. New interactive demos. Oregon metrics steady: 31 minutes, 71% return, "unusual engagement." Still no deep learning insights. Just engagement. David works 14-hour days. Climate simulators. Music visualizers. Historical timelines. Each following the pattern: Curiosity → Interaction → Discovery → Knowledge. Math + coding. Science + systems thinking. History + data analysis. Won't know if it works until March. Until 800 students show if this vision is real. --- February 28th. Evening. David sits at his desk. The funding closed this morning. His parents are repaid. The servers are upgraded. The district pilot is scheduled. Everything that can be ready is ready. Now he waits. His phone buzzes. An email from one of the Oregon teachers. Subject: "Interesting observation." He opens it. *"David—I've been watching my students use your platform for six weeks now. I wanted to wait before saying anything. Here's what I'm noticing: My students who usually struggle are asking different questions. Not 'what's the right answer?' but 'what happens if I change this?' One student spent three weeks exploring climate science through your simulators. He failed my last test. But yesterday he explained the greenhouse effect to the class better than I could have. He didn't memorize it. He discovered it. I don't know what you're building, but it's reaching kids differently. - Mr. Thompson"* David reads it twice. Six weeks. That's how long it took. Six weeks of consistent use before the learning showed up. Before the difference became visible. Not immediate feedback. Not instant transformation. Slow. Organic. Real. A student who fails tests but understands deeply. Who can explain concepts because he discovered them himself. That's the vision. That's what the platform was built for. David saves the email. Adds it to the folder labeled "Why." The district pilot starts in four weeks. Eight hundred students. Four weeks of use. If Mr. Thompson's observation is the pattern, they won't see the deep learning until late April. Until after the pilot technically ends. But if it's real—if students are actually learning differently—it'll show. In time. David closes his laptop. The apartment is quiet. Alex has gone home. The city glows through the window. Tomorrow he'll keep preparing. Keep building. Keep hoping the vision holds. But tonight—for the first time in weeks—David feels something that isn't just anxiety. Not confidence. Not certainty. Just... possibility. The kind that comes from seeing one student fail a test but understand the material. From knowing that learning and testing aren't the same thing. From building something that values discovery over memorization. It might work. Or it might not. But at least now, he has time to find out. David turns off the lights. The balance: $48,710. The pilot: four weeks away. The answer: coming soon. He sleeps better than he has in months. --- *End of Chapter 10*