Summary
In early 2026, Citera’s co-founders Liam Karlsson and William Gyltman travelled to San Francisco to participate in The Residency while the company was still known as Rankad.ai. The experience forms part of our development from a Swedish startup into a company building for a broader market. This article explains the relationship, the value we see in an intensive founder environment and why the lessons from a residency need to become concrete product decisions rather than remain a collection of inspiring conversations.
The documented connection to The Residency
Our participation is documented in Yuncture’s account of the company’s move to San Francisco. The story describes Liam and William joining the founder environment there while continuing to receive support from the Swedish network around Rankad.ai. The Residency brings founders and builders into a shared environment. Its published material also describes a wider group of advisers, including Sam Altman as a Startup and AI Advisor to the organisation. That is a programme-level relationship: it does not, by itself, mean that Sam Altman became a direct adviser, investor or board member at Citera. We want that distinction to remain clear. The meaningful part of our story is participation in the founder environment and what we chose to do with it, not an implied personal relationship that the available evidence does not establish.
Why environment can change the questions a founder asks
A founder can become very effective at solving the problems immediately in front of them while rarely questioning whether those are the most important problems to solve. Time around other builders creates a chance to test the assumptions that have become familiar inside the company. For Citera, the underlying ambition is to turn organic growth from a collection of disconnected tasks into a more coherent operating process. That invites questions about product scope, customer involvement and how much work software can responsibly take on. A useful founder environment should challenge those questions rather than simply reward a larger vision statement. The important test is not whether a conversation feels ambitious. It is whether the conversation reveals a decision that should change: a customer segment worth understanding better, an unnecessary product feature, a weak explanation of value or a workflow that still depends too heavily on founder effort.
From exposure to a practical operating plan
Our view is that a residency is most useful when the team arrives with a small number of open questions. Without them, it is easy to accumulate introductions while leaving the company’s priorities unchanged. An illustrative question for an automation product might be whether customers want more control or simply more confidence that the right work is happening. Those needs can sound similar in a sales call but lead to different product decisions. More controls may help an experienced team, while clearer status and better defaults may matter more to a business owner who does not want another system to manage. The next step is to turn the discussion into a test. What evidence would distinguish the two explanations? Which customer conversation, onboarding change or product experiment could provide it? The outcome of the residency should include decisions of that kind, not only a list of people met.
Building with a wider market in mind
International ambition should affect how a product is designed, not just how it is described. A company serving different markets may need to account for language, customer expectations, publishing systems and the way commercial decisions are made. For a growth platform, translating a sentence is not the same as understanding a market. A service might be positioned differently, the evidence required to support a claim may differ and the questions customers ask before buying may change. We want those differences to inform the work rather than be hidden behind a generic global content plan. That perspective also encourages restraint. A product does not need to enter every market at once to be built with international potential. It needs a repeatable core and a clear understanding of which parts require local context or customer judgement.
What we want to preserve from hands-on building
Early-stage work often benefits from speed: a founder can hear a problem, make a change and see whether the customer finds it useful. As the company grows, that direct loop becomes harder to maintain unless the team makes it part of the operating process.
Our aim is to preserve the quality of that feedback while reducing dependence on individual founders. A customer question should inform better onboarding or documentation. A repeated publishing problem should inform a more dependable workflow. An unclear result should lead to better measurement rather than a more confident claim. This is the kind of learning we want a founder environment to support. The value is not simply proximity to ambitious people; it is the discipline of turning useful observations into a product that works more consistently.
A residency is not a substitute for customers
There is a risk in any startup programme that the audience inside the programme becomes more influential than the people who use the product. A pitch can become more polished while the customer’s basic problem remains unresolved. We therefore want to judge the experience by what it contributes to customer work. Does the product become easier to understand? Does the team identify a more valuable first use case? Does an experiment reduce the effort required to complete a task? Those questions keep the programme connected to the company rather than allowing participation itself to become the achievement. The same principle applies to mentors and advisers. A useful perspective deserves attention, but the founders remain responsible for deciding how it applies to their market and for testing it against evidence. Advice is an input to judgement, not a replacement for it.
Bringing the work back into the company
A temporary founder programme has a defined period, but the operating habits developed around it can continue. We would want the return to ordinary company work to include a clear set of priorities, an explicit record of changed assumptions and a plan for maintaining the relationships that genuinely help the business. That means being selective. Not every idea discussed deserves a place on the roadmap, and not every introduction needs an immediate follow-up. The strongest outcome is a smaller number of better decisions that the team can execute after the programme ends. For Citera, the ambition remains consistent across locations: build software that helps businesses turn their expertise and market opportunities into useful organic growth work, while making the process more understandable and repeatable.
Frequently asked questions
Did Citera participate under the Rankad.ai name?
Yes. The public reporting about the San Francisco period uses Rankad.ai, which was the company’s brand at the time. Citera is the current name.
Is Sam Altman a direct Citera adviser through The Residency?
The documented public relationship is his advisory role with The Residency. Programme participation alone does not establish a direct advisory appointment at Citera, and we do not present it as one.
Does joining a residency mean the company has received investment?
Not automatically. Participation, mentorship and investment are different relationships. Any investment claim needs separate evidence of an actual investment.
A broader perspective, applied to everyday work
The Residency belongs in Citera’s story because building a company involves developing the founders’ judgement as well as the product. Our focus is to apply that broader perspective to practical decisions: which problems to solve, which work to automate and how to make the result useful for customers. Explore Citera to see the company we are continuing to build.
Sources and useful links
The Residency: published organisation and adviser information
Yuncture: Rankad’s participation in The Residency
