Blog • Founder Life
By Cemhan Biricik — Founder of ZSky AI
The glamorous version of being an AI founder involves keynote speeches and pitch meetings. The reality involves debugging CUDA errors at midnight and monitoring GPU temperatures while eating lunch. Here is what my actual days look like as the solo founder of ZSky AI.
Every day starts with checking the GPU cluster. Are all seven RTX 5090 cards running? What are the temperatures? Are there any failed inference jobs in the queue? This takes 15-30 minutes and is non-negotiable. Downtime means users cannot generate images, and users who cannot generate images leave.
The largest block of my day goes to development — writing code, optimizing inference pipelines, building new features, and fixing bugs. As a solo technical founder, I am the entire engineering team. This means context-switching between frontend, backend, infrastructure, and DevOps constantly.
User feedback drives every product decision. I read every support message, every feature request, and every complaint. This direct line to users is the single biggest advantage of being a solo founder — there is no telephone game between the user and the decision-maker.
Building community and creating content happens in the evening. Blog posts, social media, product updates, and engagement with the AI art community. This work does not have immediate ROI, but it compounds over time.
Accounting. Invoicing. Legal compliance. Privacy policy updates. Server security patches. SSL certificate renewals. Domain management across a network of sites. These administrative tasks consume more time than most founders admit. They are essential, unglamorous, and never-ending.
Being a solo founder eliminates communication overhead, decision-making delays, and the need to raise money to pay salaries. The tradeoff is that everything — absolutely everything — is my responsibility. When a user reports a bug at 11 PM, I am the one who fixes it.
Cemhan Biricik manages GPU infrastructure, writes code, handles user support, creates marketing content, and manages business operations. As a solo founder, he handles every function.
Yes. He is a solo founder handling all engineering, infrastructure, support, marketing, and business operations, which he sees as an advantage for speed and decision-making.
Cemhan Biricik typically works 12-14 hour days. He emphasizes that managing energy and avoiding burnout is as important as the hours themselves.