Two years ago, Tekai was a Notion doc and a feeling in my chest. Today, it's a team I trust with my life and a product I'm proud to ship. To everyone who took a chance on us — you turned a spark into a fire. The best is genuinely ahead.
An anniversary letter · April 2026
Tekai turns
02
02
Two trips around the sun.
One team. One mission.
Two years ago, Tekai was a Notion doc, a half-formed conviction, and a 2:47 AM commit.
Today it's a team, a product, and a future we're genuinely excited to build. Here's our letter — ten moments worth remembering, and a few words from the people who've shaped what Tekai has become.
Chapter One
A timeline,
A timeline,
told in moments.
The Spark
In a small Hanoi apartment, an idea was born: AI should feel personal, useful, and genuinely human. Tekai's first commit was pushed at 2:47 AM. The coffee was cold. The conviction was warm.
First Hire
Our second engineer joined. Suddenly we were a team. The whiteboard filled up faster than we could erase it, and somebody finally fixed the office Wi-Fi.
A Real Office
We moved out of cafés and into a small office in District 1. The coffee machine arrived three days before the desks. We worked on the floor and called it agile.
Beta Launch
After 90 days of building in stealth, we shipped our first beta to 50 brave users. The Slack channel never went quiet again. We learned more in two weeks than the previous two months.
First Paying Customer
A small e-commerce team in Hồ Chí Minh wired us our first invoice. We printed the bank notification and pinned it to the wall. It's still there. It will probably stay there forever.
Seed Round
We closed our seed round on a Tuesday. The wire arrived during lunch. We celebrated with phở at the place across the street, then came back and stayed late writing code. Some things don't change.
Year One
365 days. 12 teammates. 47 customers. One chocolate cake. We took a retreat to Đà Lạt and it felt, somehow, like a graduation. Year one was about proving it could exist.
Product 2.0
We rewrote the core engine from scratch. Faster, smarter, more honest. The team pulled three weekends in a row. p99 latency dropped by half. Bug count dropped by more.
Ten Thousand
Five-digit users. We rang a bell. Then we bought a real bell. It hangs in the kitchen now, and we ring it every time someone ships something they're proud of. It rings often.
Two Years
Today. Two trips around the sun. A bigger team, a sharper product, the same quiet fire. Thank you to everyone who took a chance on us — and to everyone who's about to.
02
A few words from the people
who built this with us.
Chapter Two · 01 of 05
Chapter Two · 02 of 05
Engineering at Tekai has always been about the second order — not just shipping fast, but shipping things we'll be proud of in five years. Two years in, the codebase is leaner, the team is sharper, and the questions we ask are bigger. Onward.
Chapter Two · 03 of 05
Design at Tekai isn't a polish layer — it's how we think. Every pixel earns its place. Every animation has a reason. Watching the team grow from one designer to a real practice has been the joy of my career. Happy birthday, Tekai.
Chapter Two · 04 of 05
The product we shipped at month three would not survive a meeting today. That's the only metric I care about. We've gotten better at saying no, sharper at saying yes, and faster at knowing the difference. Two years down. Many to go.
Chapter Two · 05 of 05
What I'll remember from year two: the night we shipped 2.0 and watched p99 drop by half. The pull request that fixed a four-month-old bug in three lines. The intern who became a senior engineer in eighteen months. Engineering culture isn't a poster — it's the small choices, every day. Proud of this team.
02
Here's to
the next chapter.
With gratitude — the entire Tekai team.
tekai · 2024 — 2026