The unexpected path from Silicon Valley's hottest AI companies to betting everything on solving home search collaboration—featuring ankle injuries, Burning Man, and the decision that changed everything.
Kristian Elset Bø
Author
This morning, I woke up to see my story featured in the Norwegian newspaper Shifter. The headline? "Leaves Billion-Dollar Venture in USA and Bets Everything on Own Startup."
It sounds dramatic. And honestly, it kind of was.
But like most interesting career decisions, the reality is more nuanced than a headline can capture. So let me tell you what actually happened—and why I'm more excited about what comes next than I've been about anything in my career.
December 2023. I got a call from the founders of Wordware, one of Y Combinator's hottest AI startups. They wanted me as their founding engineer.
The offer was incredible: equity in a rocketship company, a chance to build at the cutting edge of AI, and the opportunity to work with some of the smartest people in Silicon Valley.
Reality Check: When a YC company with serious traction calls and asks you to join their founding team, you don't think twice. You say yes and figure out the logistics later.
There was just one problem: I didn't have a US work visa.
So I did what any rational person would do—I flew to Costa Rica to work in the same timezone while waiting for my O-1A visa (the "alien of extraordinary ability" visa, which sounds cooler than it is).
Three weeks in Costa Rica, countless hours of paperwork, and one very patient immigration lawyer later, I got the approval. In January 2025, I landed in San Francisco.
Here's what nobody tells you about joining a hyper-growth startup: it's exhilarating and exhausting in equal measure.
Wordware was exactly the rocket ship I'd signed up for:
But almost immediately after arriving in San Francisco, something felt... off.
It wasn't the work. I quickly discovered I still had what it takes to thrive in a fast-moving startup environment. After a few years at a more established company (Mesh, which acquired my previous startup Scales), I was worried I'd lost my edge. Turns out, you don't forget how to run when you take a break from sprinting.
It wasn't the team. The Wordware founders are incredibly talented, and the team culture was exactly what you'd hope for in an early-stage company.
It was the realization that I wanted to run my own race.
The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. It's to look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself.
San Francisco has this unique effect: when you're surrounded by ambitious founders building the future on every street corner, it's hard not to feel the pull to start something yourself.
Then, just before summer 2024, Wordware announced a major pivot.
The original product was a workflow builder that let you create AI applications using plain English instead of code. Think Zapier meets GPT-4—you could build complex AI workflows without being a developer.
The new direction? An autonomous personal agent called "Sauna" that would organize your life around email, calendar, and work—more intelligence, less manual setup.
Plot twist: This pivot turned out to be incredibly well-timed. Just this week, OpenAI announced updates that would have directly competed with the original Wordware product. The founders' instincts were spot-on.
But pivots mean starting from scratch. New product, new positioning, new go-to-market strategy. And that's when I had to ask myself the hard question:
If I'm going to work this hard and start from zero, shouldn't I do it for my own company?
I've been thinking about home search for years—since I wrote my master's thesis at NTNU. The problem has always been the same:
Buying or renting a home is one of the biggest decisions you'll make, yet the tools we use are stuck in 2005.
I tried to build a solution in 2022, but the economics didn't work. Manual data extraction was prohibitively expensive, and I'd need different systems for every country.
Then LLMs happened. Suddenly:
The Insight: The best startups aren't about having a completely original idea. They're about recognizing when technology has finally caught up to a persistent problem, creating a window of opportunity that wasn't there before.
I left Wordware in summer 2024. We parted as friends—I have nothing but respect for what they're building, and I'm genuinely excited to watch their continued success.
"But didn't you leave equity on the table in a billion-dollar company?"
Yes. Technically. But let me put it in perspective:
The math is simple: a small slice of someone else's pie vs. the whole pie of something you believe in deeply. For me, the choice was obvious.
I spent the summer in New York building Homi's beta. In six weeks, I:
Then I made a decision that seemed smart at the time: I went to Burning Man.
Founder Lesson #247: Maybe don't go to a week-long festival in the Nevada desert when you're in the middle of launching a startup. Just a thought.
Long story short: I broke my ankle. Not catastrophically, but enough that I needed surgery. So I flew back to Norway for the operation and recovery.
The ankle injury forced a pause I didn't want but probably needed. It gave me time to think about the bigger questions:
Where should I build this company?
I love Norway. It's home. The quality of life is exceptional, the support systems are incredible, and I genuinely want to contribute to the Norwegian startup ecosystem.
But I'm also pragmatic about where Homi has the best chance to become a category-defining company.
The US advantages:
The Norway advantages:
The Reality: If I can get venture funding and traction in the US, the scale advantages far outweigh any Norwegian benefits. If I can't, building sustainably in Norway is a very solid Plan B.
My current thinking? Build in the US, maintain strong ties to Norway, and come back someday to contribute to the ecosystem with experience and resources.
Let me give you the two-sentence version:
Homi is a collaboration platform for home search. It combines the organization of a CRM, the visual browsing of Pinterest, and AI-powered insights to help individuals, families, and real estate professionals make better home decisions.
Think about your last home search:
For most people, the answer is: poorly. Group chats, bookmarks, memory, and hope.
Homi provides structure:
It's the product I desperately wanted when I was house hunting. Now it exists.
Right now, I'm a one-person show, bootstrapping and learning fast. The product is in beta with early users in both the US and Norway giving incredible feedback.
Short-term goals:
Long-term vision:
Why I'm Optimistic: Every person I've shown Homi to has said some version of "I wish I had this when I was house hunting." That's not validation—that's product-market fit waiting to be scaled.
Headlines say I "left a billion-dollar company to bet everything on my startup."
But that's not quite right.
The real story: I chose to work on a problem I've thought about for years, using technology that finally makes it solvable, at a moment when the market is desperate for better solutions.
I chose to own 100% of my upside and downside instead of fractional equity in someone else's vision.
I chose to build something that compounds over decades rather than chasing the next milestone in someone else's company.
And yeah, I broke my ankle at Burning Man in the middle of all this, because apparently the founder journey isn't complete without some absurd plot twists.
On leaving a "sure thing":
There's no such thing as a sure thing in startups. Wordware could become a massive success or could pivot again or could face unexpected competition. My startup could succeed or fail. The only certainty is that I'm betting on myself.
On timing:
Paul Graham says "The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas." He's right. I didn't force this—I've been living with the problem for years, and the solution became obvious when technology caught up.
On solo founding:
It's hard. Really hard. Every decision is yours, every failure is yours, every late night is yours alone. But also: every insight, every win, every moment of "holy shit, this is working" is yours too. For me, that trade-off is worth it.
On geography:
The US vs. Norway question isn't about patriotism or lifestyle preferences. It's about where Homi has the best chance to become what it can be. I'm choosing ambition over comfort, and I'm okay with that.
This post will probably reach some people who are on the fence about starting their own company. Here's what I'd tell you:
Do it if:
Don't do it if:
The best time to start a company was three years ago. The second-best time is now—but only if you've spent those three years understanding a problem deeply enough to know why now is different.
I'm building Homi in public, sharing lessons and insights as I go. If you're:
I'd love to connect.
You can try Homi at homi.so, follow progress on our blog, or reach out directly if you want to chat about startups, real estate, or why Burning Man is a terrible time to launch a company.
The journey from Wordware to Homi wasn't a rejection of Silicon Valley or a romantic return home. It was a calculated bet that I can build something meaningful by solving a real problem for millions of people.
The outcome is uncertain. But for the first time in a long time, I'm exactly where I want to be: building something I believe in, on my own terms, with nothing but upside ahead.
Wish me luck. 🚀
Want to follow the journey? Sign up for early access at homi.so or follow along on our blog.
Founder of homi and real estate enthusiast.
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