THE STORY BEHIND NERVE
I built this in 39 days
because I was drowning.
I'm Patrick Hillstrom. Dad of two, recently promoted, completely overwhelmed. I didn't set out to start a company — I set out to survive my own calendar. I built Nerve for myself. Then other people started telling me they needed it too.
39
Days since first commit
February 23, 2026
39
Registered users
and 71 on the waitlist
218+
Briefings delivered
real mornings, real decisions
6
Paying customers
before any marketing spend
The journey
February 23, 2026
The breaking point
Two young kids. A promotion I'd just accepted. A calendar that looked like Tetris and an inbox that never stopped. I wasn't dropping balls — I was dropping everything. I needed something that could look at my entire world and tell me what actually mattered today.
Week 1
First briefing
I sat down with Claude and started building. Gmail, Calendar, and Slack piped into an AI that could read my context and generate a morning briefing. The first one was rough. The second one caught a follow-up I'd completely forgotten. By day three, I couldn't start my morning without it.
Week 2
Agents take shape
One briefing wasn't enough. I needed something that could triage my email, prep me for meetings, and track the deals I was juggling. So I built specialized agents — each one handling a domain I didn't have bandwidth for. Every agent I added bought me back an hour.
Week 3
People started asking
I showed a friend what my morning looked like now. Five minutes, coffee in hand, and I knew exactly what to do. His response: 'I need this.' Then another friend said the same thing. Then a CPO at a fintech company said he wanted it for his entire team.
Week 4
From side project to company
Launched signups. First paying customers within days — no ads, no marketing, just word of mouth. Built multi-tenancy, a B2B pipeline, agent orchestration. What started as a personal tool became a product people were willing to pay for.
Today
39 days in
39 users. 6 paying customers. 71 people on the waitlist. 18 AI agents running my company while I keep my day job and put my kids to bed. Every feature in Nerve exists because I needed it that morning. If it doesn't work for my life, it doesn't ship.
What I believe
Built out of necessity, not ambition
Nerve wasn't a startup idea. It was a survival mechanism. I was drowning and I built the thing that pulled me out. That's why it works — it was never designed to impress anyone. It was designed to help me keep my life together.
AI should close loops, not create work
The worst AI tools generate summaries you have to read, dashboards you have to interpret, drafts you have to rewrite. Nerve's job is simpler: tell me what matters, let me decide, handle the rest.
Transparency over magic
Every action Nerve takes is visible. Every agent shows its reasoning. Every draft is editable before it sends. I don't trust black boxes with my life, and neither should you.
Speed is the product
I built the first version in a weekend. The entire platform in 39 days. That speed isn't recklessness — it's what happens when you build with AI instead of just building AI. Claude doesn't just power Nerve. Claude helped me build it.
This is what I use every morning
Free tier includes daily briefings. No credit card. No demo environment. The same product that runs my life and my company.