The Hardest Month of My Founder Journey
Doing the work
I'm going to be honest with you—this past month has been one of the hardest in my journey as a founder.
After 20 years in product development, working with elite teams at companies both big and small, I thought I had a lot of this figured out. I had a clear plan for launching hili, collecting feedback, iterating and improving. I knew how to run an effective product development process. I understood the rhythm of building a startup.
What I didn't anticipate were the challenges in startup team building and when people I thought were committed to the vision would simply... leave. Just bail out and leave me hanging sometimes without even letting me know. I’m left scrambling and trying my best to keep all the balls in the air and give the rest of the team what they need to do their jobs.
When Your Team Becomes You
The hardest part isn't just the disappointment—it's the immediate reality that follows. I've had to step back from the business development work I was doing for hili and dive deep into the technical weeds to keep our actual build moving forward. Momentum is everything when you're building something new, and I refuse to let these setbacks slow us down. Even on my hardest days I force myself to do something, anything, to move us forward. Some days my 110% effort looks different than other days, and I’m working on knowing that is okay. The worst thing that could happen right now is that I forget why I’m building this in the first place and let the momentary struggles overshadow the big picture.
The Vision vs. The MVP
There's been another startup challenge that's an equally important opportunity for my personal growth: the founder reality of paring down what an MVP actually looks like when I can see the entire experience so clearly in my head.
I know exactly how hili should work. I can see how one feature naturally leads to another, how the whole ecosystem comes together to solve the real problem of finding and saving trusted recommendations in a world increasingly comprised of AI generated slop. When I envision someone using hili, it all feels so natural and seamless.
The problem? We can't build all of that right now. And honestly, we shouldn't.
As much as it pains my designer's heart to ship something that feels incomplete, I'm being challenged—both by myself and trusted advisors—to identify the absolute minimum viable product. To get something in front of real people, gather their feedback, understand what works for them and what doesn't, and learn about the problems they're actually facing.
This feedback loop is crucial for everything we're building next, but it's definitely been hard to embrace imperfection when I can see the full picture so clearly.
Perfect Is the Enemy of Progress
I'm discovering that having a complete vision isn't always an advantage in the early stages, and sometimes it's even a limitation.
The magic happens when you find the courage to ship something imperfect and let real users tell you what matters most to them. Their actual behavior—not my assumptions about their behavior—needs to guide what we build next.
I'm learning that perfect is the enemy of progress, especially when you're trying to solve a fundamental problem with a solution you want to feel as intuitive as possible. That ease of use and natural user adoption only comes from observing countless users interact with the product at every stage of development.
“Good design is obvious, great design is transparent.”
Why This Matters for hili
Everything I'm going through right now—the team challenges, the MVP decisions, the vulnerability of putting imperfect work into the world—it's all making hili better.
At its core, hili is about authentic connections and real recommendations from people who know you. It's about cutting through the noise and finding what truly matters. Most times, building something authentic means going through the messy, imperfect process of figuring it out as you go.
Moving Forward
I'm sharing this not for sympathy, but for solidarity. Building something meaningful is hard. It's messy. It requires vulnerability and resilience and the willingness to adapt when your original plan falls apart.
I still believe deeply in what we're creating with hili. The vision is still crystal clear, it’s just the path to get there that has just gotten more interesting.
If you've been following our journey or signed up for our waitlist, thank you for your patience as we figure out the best way to bring hili to life. We're not slowing down, we're just learning to build more thoughtfully.
And, if you're a founder going through your own difficult season, know that you're not alone. Sometimes the hardest months teach us the most important lessons.
Let's keep building something better, together.
Karli