The Night I Almost Didn't Launch

Okay, so the whole idea of PresenceOS depends on one thing: the matching algorithm.

That's the core.

Everything else matters too — onboarding, profiles, UI, posting intents, notifications, all of that. But if the matching itself isn't good, then what exactly am I launching?

And that thought genuinely started burning me.

Because on one side, I had already decided I'm launching on Monday. But on the other side, I knew the core feature still wasn't where I wanted it to be.

So for the last few days, I was stuck.

Sometimes I thought, "Let's just launch and improve from user feedback."

Then I'd go work on something else.

But after some time, my brain would come back to the same thing again:

"The matching is still not good enough."

I was upset, confused, and honestly not able to focus properly on anything else.

So finally, I just said:

"Okay. Let's do it today."

I started around 1 PM. And I worked until around 4 AM. Just fully focused on the matching system.

The real problem

The biggest problem wasn't exactly the algorithm itself. The bigger problem was understanding intent properly.

For example, these two intents:

"Looking for a backend engineer to help build my B2B SaaS analytics platform. I have the product and early customers, need someone strong on Python and PostgreSQL."

And:

"Backend engineer with 6 years of experience in Python and PostgreSQL, looking to join an early-stage B2B SaaS startup."

These two people should obviously match.

One person needs backend help. The other is literally looking for that opportunity.

But before fixing the logic properly, the system wasn't understanding the direction clearly. It treated both users almost like they were just "exploring."

So even good matches were getting weak scores.

Before the fixes, this type of match was around 51%.

After improving the direction logic and rebuilding parts of the structured matching system, it jumped to around 91%.

And honestly, when I saw that number with real intent examples, I finally felt relieved.

What I realized about users

But during all this, I also realized something important:

People are writing short or unclear intents sometimes — but that's not their fault.

I can't blame users for not knowing how to use a completely new type of platform.

That's my responsibility.

I need to educate users properly, guide them, and help them understand how to write better intents so they can connect with the right people.

And honestly, I think people will learn it over time.

So, launching

So yeah, I'm finally feeling confident enough to launch now.

Of course, the system can still improve a lot. I already know there are 100 more things I want to make better.

But I'm completely okay launching V1 with this level of accuracy.

I'm happy to get feedback and improve step by step.

And honestly, the last 2 days before launch felt like complete win-loss-blunder energy 😭

Anything could have happened. The system could crash. The launch could delay. The matching could completely fail.

But somehow, after this long day of rebuilding the core feature, I finally feel ready.

So yeah.

Let's launch PresenceOS.