Keep going

The latest Kismet demo, moving back home, building momentum

Illustration by Mitch Catayas

To keep going, I moved back home

It’s been six weeks since I moved in with my parents.

I gave up my SF apartment, found a temporary subletter, and slashed my expenses to buy myself more time and extend my runway.

On paper, it made perfect sense. But leading up to the move, all I felt was dread.

Would I regress into my teenage self? Feel the shame of moving back in with my parents at 30? Are the risks and sacrifices still worth it?

Funny enough, writing this weeks later, I barely remember feeling that way. Turns out, I give less fucks than I thought. Those worries just don’t carry the same weight anymore.

Instead, the dread’s been replaced by a different kind of haunting: Am I moving fast enough? Is my vision sharpening over time? Is this experiment working, and if not, what’s my next move?

It’s not ideal but it’s what my situation calls for. And if this is what it takes to keep going, I’m all in. Plus, I get to eat real Korean food again. SF could never. Thanks, mom!

To keep going, I let go of balance

These days, everything I do—from the time I wake up to when my head hits the pillow—revolves around Kismet.

I used to obsess over morning and night routines. Turns out, it was never about the routines. It was about having something compelling enough to build my life around.

I learned how to gamify engagement and honesty with myself. Every night, I pick the most important task for the next day. If I get it done, I give myself a green sticker. If not, a pink one. Every Sunday, I review my sprint like a personal report card—grading myself on five levers of momentum: stakes, feedback, speed, focus, and constraint. And you guessed it, more stickers.

Clearly, Sundays aren’t my best days

These are some of the many systems I’ve built for myself. It’s ridiculous, I know. But it works for my brain.

I have no balance but I’ve also never felt more engaged, in the best and hardest ways. I think this is how I’m staying sane as a solo founder.

To keep going, I optimized for learning

Ever heard of the phrase: “You’re [X] until it works”?

Delusional. Cringe. Whatever haunts you. I’ve cycled through all of them (I still am).

So what keeps me going in the long stretch between “X” and “it works”?

I stopped optimizing for being right and started optimizing for learning. And I built a container around it: weekly sprints where I build, ship, iterate, repeat.

It helped me ship shitty first drafts. To prioritize truth over ego. To detach from the outcome without losing sight of the vision. It even stabilized my mood.

So far, I’ve shipped three iterations of Kismet. Each rooted in a specific hypothesis. Each put in front of real people living the problem—some I’d interviewed before, others I found by DMing hundreds of strangers on Reddit.

The first iteration tested whether combining research, lived experience, and next steps could cut through the chaos of 20 open tabs when trying to understand your health. It worked, but only when the context felt hyper-relevant.

So the second iteration asked: if the content feels relevant, does it actually drive action? Book a doctor’s appointment, prep questions for your visit, etc? But using Q&A as the entry point created a mismatch. Users expected speed and definitive answers especially when dealing with something acute. That format wasn’t built for uncertainty. I realized I needed to narrow in on the people living in it—the ones navigating conditions that don’t have quick fixes or clear endpoints.

That led to the third iteration—where I am now: testing whether full health journeys, not just snapshots, help people with chronic, misunderstood conditions like endometriosis fill the gaps that even a diagnosis can’t.

Here’s a quick demo. If you or someone you know has endo or a chronic condition, feel free to pass it along! I’m always looking to learn from the right people.

Curious to share feedback or get involved? You can do that here.

Through it all, I’m learning to walk the line between conviction and feedback. How do you lead with feedback without outsourcing your conviction? Shorten the loop from idea → test → insight → next move?

I’m realizing that the learning loop only works if the decision-making time from insight to next move is fast enough to generate momentum and do it all over again. Because you never have 100% clarity or perfect data.

I’m also learning how to co-create with early testers, inviting them into the process without burning them out. Letting feedback shape the path without blurring my vision. Swapping in fresh eyes at the right moments. And keeping the distribution flywheel spinning even while I’m still building the engine.

To keep going, I just kept going

I used to wonder when things would stop being so hard. When do things start to feel more easeful?

I’m still in the part of the journey where momentum is mostly elbow grease. If I stop, everything stops. I figure that’s the cost of extreme ownership. In exchange for freedom and agency, you become the engine that keeps everything running. And there’s a quiet paranoia that creeps in when the hum of that engine starts to fade. Because restarting the engine is always harder than keeping it running.

Right now, my basic units of building momentum have been in the daily reps of showing up. Choosing to get back up, not because I always want to, but because there’s no other option. I remind myself who I’m building for. Why it matters. What I’m trying to bring to life.

And the more I return to that—my why, my vision—the less I feel the need to be seen or understood by others to keep going.

Something doesn’t work? Try something else.

Someone casts doubt? Unless they’re in the arena or a target user, archive.

So when people ask me, “What’s the next step? What’s the goal?”, I tell them: I have milestones I’m working towards. Metrics I’m tracking. But honestly? My next step is to just keep going. To keep iterating until something works.

I have no backup plan. This is the plan. That has been my stance since the day I sent in my resignation letter at Notion, and it remains true almost two years later. I don’t know if I’d recommend that approach or if it’s the smartest thing to do (probably not), but it’s how I’m wired.

I don’t think I’ve ever been this challenged to learn and evolve—or felt this aligned with how I'm living and what I’m building. And it’s in that alignment where I’m starting to find a quiet kind of ease.

So right now, I genuinely can’t think of anything else I’d rather be doing. Because if there was, trust me, I’d be doing that. This is way too hard to do otherwise.

But even on the hardest days, something in me still whispers: Keep going.

And if you’re there too, I see you. I’m rooting for you. And I’m glad you’re here with me.