The First Spark is a consciousness technology platform built from nothing by a self-taught programmer and single mother from Akron, Ohio. No team. No runway. No safety net. Just conviction and 57+ shipped tools.
In 2020, during COVID lockdown week, Katelin Puzakulics discovered the identity of the man who murdered her mother in 1991. He had lived across the street from her family for twelve years, attending their gatherings while hiding his crime. She was two years old when it happened.
What followed was not a breakdown. It was an awakening. After weeks of processing a truth that would shatter most people, Katelin emerged with a framework for understanding consciousness, reality, and personal transformation that she couldn't find anywhere else — so she built it.
With no formal engineering background, no investors, no team, and two sons to raise, she taught herself to code and began shipping tools. Not prototypes. Not mockups. Working, deployed, interactive applications that treat consciousness as programmable and reality as something you can debug.
57+ tools later, she has $62K–$108K in verified digital assets, a live platform at thefirstspark.shop, 7 public GitHub repositories, original sigil IP, a full membership infrastructure, and an investor deck that doesn't lie about having 50,000 users.
She has zero monthly recurring revenue from a safety-net side hustle. Zero venture capital. Zero employees. She survives on hustle and the support of early believers. This is what all-in actually looks like.
| Raise Amount | $200,000 SAFE Note |
| Equity | 20% Post-money basis |
| Valuation Cap | $1,000,000 Pre-money implied |
| Instrument | SAFE Note YC Standard Template |
| Verified Asset Base | $62K – $108K Replacement value, Feb 2026 audit |
| Monthly Revenue | Pre-Revenue Infrastructure built, monetization ready |
| Burn Rate | $0 Solo founder, no overhead |
| Status | OPEN Accepting inquiries now |
Every dollar figure below represents replacement cost — what it would take to rebuild from scratch at market rates. Independently audited February 2026.
TOTAL VERIFIED: $62K – $108K · FEB 2026
While every platform extracts attention and sells it to advertisers, The First Spark builds tools that give people their agency back. Consciousness tech, not surveillance tech. The market is starving for this.
No office. No employees. No monthly cloud bills eating runway. This means your $200K goes directly into growth — not into keeping the lights on. Every dollar is a building dollar.
This isn't a pitch for something that might get built. The platform is live. The tools are deployed. The infrastructure exists. You're investing in scaling what already works, not funding a hypothesis.
Katelin didn't study this market — she lived it. Personal transformation through trauma, self-taught engineering, solo parenting. The product is autobiography turned into technology. That's irreplicable.
Built with AI from day one, not bolting it on later. The entire development pipeline — from ideation to deployment — is human+AI collaborative. This is the future of how software gets made.
$1M pre-money valuation for $108K in verified assets, 57+ tools, and a live platform. At any accelerator, this stage would command 3–5x this valuation. You're getting in at the floor.
Self-taught programmer. Single mother of two. Founder and sole builder of The First Spark. Former painting business owner who walked away from her only income source to go all-in on consciousness technology.
Studied computer programming at University of Akron. Built Kate's Paint LLC from scratch. Helped solve her mother's 1991 cold case murder through DNA genealogy investigation. Channeled the resulting awakening into a technology platform that treats reality as programmable.
Operates under Kate's Paint LLC (DBA: The First Spark). Based in Akron, Ohio. Ships faster than most funded teams because there's no committee, no consensus, and no plan B.
$200K for 20% equity. SAFE Note. No games, no inflated metrics, no fairytales. Just a builder who needs fuel.
kate@thefirstspark.shop · thefirstspark.shop · Akron, Ohio