Next project after Commenda

Hi,

I am Aman, and this safe space is where I am most raw with my thoughts, hop on if you'd like to interact with them :))

It’s been a while since I left Commenda to think about my next project but before moving forward, I want to take a step back and reflect on the last one.

Chapter Commenda

At Commenda, I got the chance to work closely on product and see how ideas translate into real systems used by people. It was easily one of the most challenging things I had taken on since college. For a long time, that challenge kept me sharp I was learning fast, building constantly, and working with a team I genuinely enjoyed being around.

But at some point, without realizing it immediately, I became too comfortable.

The problems started feeling familiar. The urgency wasn’t coming from within anymore. I could still get things done, but I wasn’t pushing myself the same way. And that’s a difficult place to be in because from the outside, everything looks fine, but internally you know something has shifted.

This didn’t happen overnight. It showed up gradually in delayed decisions, unfinished ideas, and a lower standard for what I considered “good enough”. Over time, it became clear that I wasn’t operating at the level I wanted to.

That was the signal I needed to leave.

Looking back, there are a few lessons from my time at Commenda that I want to carry forward:

• Urgency: I’ve noticed I struggle to generate that urgency internally unless there’s external pressure.

• Finished > unfinished: Even with limited clarity or missing variables, you have to find a way to get things done. Shipping is the ultimate act of execution, and finished projects consistently outperform unfinished ones.

• Communication defines companies at scale: and when it fails, everything else follows. I’ve been guilty of this myself at multiple points during my time at Commenda.

• Focus: It’s not about the dog in the fight, but the fight in the dog. In early stage startups, focus is everything, anything that doesn’t move growth forward is a distraction. Urgency, combined with speed, is what makes the difference.

These are just a few. I’ve had countless learning experiences during my time at Commenda:

• Next Project After College
• The evaluation of good
• You probably don't care enough
• Personal standards for work[notes]
• The triage master
• The pragmatic programmer[notes]
• The Missing Piece of the Puzzle

I also made some of the closest friends during my time there, which is a huge win in many ways. I loved the team and genuinely enjoyed collaborating on product development. But it felt like the right time to move on to choose a project that would push me again.

Back in college, I had a simple rule: every project should be at least 20% harder than the last. Commenda was, in many ways, more challenging than anything I had done before. Now, it’s time to take on something even more difficult.

Next Chapter: Scout

There's something about containerizing processes into an interface that excites me. Interfaces are the medium through which we interact with the real world, and they shape our understanding of it, something that's becoming increasingly true as our lives grow more digital.

At Commenda, I discovered that I love the process of product development and communicating understanding through interfaces. There's a particular difficulty in solving problems through design that I find genuinely interesting.

Now with LLMs, I feel there's a lot more we can accomplish through interfaces, because they're no longer static. With AI, we can literally spin up interfaces at runtime which has made me rethink some of the old patterns. The way I visualize this in my head might be a little silly, but I'll put it out there anyway:

Every company right now is in a race to deploy personalization through various means, some through chat based interfaces, others through widgets and tools. My bet for the future of the interface is a maze that shows you doors based on who you are. I think the way we've been designing traditional interfaces is becoming outdated.

Convenience will increasingly become table stakes, though some interfaces will always require an understanding of the underlying system and processes to be baked in and that's exactly the kind of problem onboarding presents.

Onboarding sits at the intersection of my love for user satisfaction(how a product makes people feel) and interface experimentation. It'll be an interesting challenge to solve, and this is my next project.

Why Scout?

One of my all time favorite TV shows is a spy comedy called Chuck.

The premise is simple: a nerd gets a computer program embedded in his brain that helps him navigate different situations, accelerates his learning of any skill, and makes him superhuman.

I've extensively written about both learning and interfaces as two of my predictions for the future:

Multidimensional Interfaces

Accelerated Learning

Bringing these two threads together, my vision for the future looks a lot like Chuck, where every company will deploy dynamic interfaces that make it easy for users to reach their destination or accomplish their defined set of tasks.

If you're reading this, I'd love for you to try the product. Email me at amantulsyan35@gmail.com or DM me on LinkedIn or Twitter, and I'll happily walk you through my experiments :)