In this episode of The Making Of Hosted by Jack Pitts, I sit down with Jesse Choe, CEO and Co-Founder of Bidflow. He breaks down his journey from early startup experiments to raising $1M at 19, dropping out of college, and getting into Y Combinator.

Jesse shares how his path started with building “fake startups” in high school, learning through failure, and eventually realizing the importance of customer validation and solving real problems. The conversation covers the pivots that actually mattered, the pressure of the YC process, and how rejection and iteration shaped his approach.

They also dive into co-founder dynamics, burnout, and how they landed on Bidflow by focusing on a real pain point in electrical estimation. A grounded look at what it actually takes to build something from scratch and figure it out in real time.