The small apartment Reza shared with his cousin had been completely transformed into a battlefield. Papers were scattered everywhere, two laptops were open on the floor, and three half-eaten cups of instant noodles sat abandoned on the coffee table.
The clock struck 2 a.m., but the trio showed no signs of stopping. In fact, the chaos seemed to be reaching a new high.
"Wait, wait, WAIT!" Naya shouted, her hands frantically flipping through the messy notes. "If we put customer acquisition before platform deployment, the investors are going to think we're bluffing! We need to make it look like the product is already feasible!"
Aruna, eyes glued to his screen, barely reacted. "Focus. We're almost there. Just—can someone fix the revenue projection slide? It looks like a joke right now."
Naya flopped down beside Aruna, grabbing her laptop. "I'll do it. But seriously, Aruna, you need to stop promising features we haven't even figured out yet."
"I'm a visionary!" Aruna grinned without looking up. "Selling the dream is half the game."
Reza threw a pillow at him. "Yeah, well, you better dream us into a real business before next week."
The air smelled like cheap coffee and pure adrenaline. The three of them were running purely on determination and caffeine now. Ideas flew across the room like bullets — some brilliant, some completely ridiculous.
"What about offering a free trial for six months?" Naya suggested between yawns.
"Too long. Three months, tops," Aruna countered.
"And we'll need a solid hook," Reza added, typing furiously. "Something that makes us stand out from the dozens of startups pitching the same 'easy business solution' crap."
Naya leaned back and stared at the ceiling. "What if… we focus on the emotional part? Small business owners aren't just looking for tools — they're looking for hope. Something that says, 'We get you. We've been there.'"
Silence fell for a moment.
It was one of those rare pauses in the middle of chaos, where everyone realized they had stumbled onto something important.
Reza slowly looked up. "That's it."
Aruna sat up straighter. "We tell a story. Our story. Why we wanted to build this. Make it personal."
"Exactly," Naya said, her eyes gleaming with new energy. "We're not just selling a platform. We're selling survival. Dreams. Second chances."
The room buzzed differently now. Not just with panic, but with something more powerful — belief.
"Alright," Aruna said, standing up and clapping his hands. "Let's make the pitch deck tell a story. Screw boring graphs. We'll give them a reason to remember us."
As the sun began to creep over the skyline of Velaris Tech Valley, painting the sky with soft hues of pink and gold, the three of them were still working — tired, delirious, but alive with a kind of hope that only dreamers understood.
They had less than a week to perfect everything.
But for the first time, it didn't feel impossible.
It felt like the beginning of something real.