18 Months of Work Revealed a 10-Year-Old Pain Point Hiding in Plain Sight

Backstory

About 18 months ago, I started my journey as a founder. I was tired of starting and stopping projects, knowing deep down that what I needed most was consistent effort. So I made a simple decision: to start, stay consistent, and work on my side hustle every single day before my day job. And honestly? It was fun, exciting, and energizing—I loved it.

Along the way, I set one crucial rule for myself: stop when burnout hit. This wasn’t about pushing through; it was about maintaining steady progress. Through this process, I learned so much—not just about marketing, finding users, and understanding what people would pay for (or wouldn’t), but also about the importance of finding the right audience.

Discovery by starting

I discovered how to get people to pay for a service I wasn’t even sure how to sell at first—or exactly who I was providing value to. I learned the massive difference between what people say and what they actually do. Most importantly, I learned that if your product isn’t in front of the right audience, the silence is deafening.

Books and theory could never have taught me what I learned by simply doing. I failed a ton, wasted money on useless features, and wrestled with frustrations like working with an overseas development team. But through all of that, something shifted. I started to see business and entrepreneurship differently.

Creating Opportunity

When I started, the idea of being a founder felt impossible. How do you even get users on a tool without VC funding? But I was wrong. Taking action not only created opportunities—it gave me a new perspective on problem-solving. The deeper I got into building Hound, the more I noticed problems I’d personally faced. Each one felt like a potential business opportunity, and suddenly, ideas were flooding in.

Action creates opportunity—and action sharpens vision. When you’re working a 9-5, it’s easy to miss the opportunities around you. But when you’re in the trenches, actively building something, those opportunities become crystal clear. And while you can’t chase every shiny idea, some of the best businesses are born from founders pivoting when the right idea hits at the right time. That’s exactly what happened to me.

A new idea born personal pain

While building Hound, I ran into a pain point: communicating with developers across time zones about bugs, UI fixes, and copy updates in a centralized way that wouldn’t get lost in the shuffle. As a one-man team, the constant back-and-forth was exhausting—and things were still getting missed.

I thought, “There has to be a better way.” But I shelved the idea to stay focused on moving Hound forward. I made myself a deal: if the idea still nagged at me three months later, I’d revisit it.

Coming back

Three months passed, and the problem still wouldn’t let go. I started talking to other designers (I’m a product designer by trade) to see if they faced similar challenges. Sure enough, they did.

Fast forward a few months, and the excitement around this idea kept growing. It started pulling me in more than my current business, even though I had paying customers at Hound. Here’s why I decided to pivot:

This was a problem I knew intimately—as a founder and designer, I’ve felt this pain deeply.

It wasn’t a one-off issue. This challenge has followed me throughout my 10-year design career. I just never though about it from a business perspective.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it—it consumed my thoughts daily.

Changing focus

So, I made the call. It was time to pivot and focus on solving this problem head-on. That’s how Ralee.co was born—a platform designed to streamline the design QA process by improving communication between designers and developers.

The goal? To make it ridiculously easy to screenshot or screen-record any issues, ensuring crystal-clear feedback on UI, bugs, experience issues, or copy fixes before a site goes live.

I’m incredibly excited to take this next step, and I can’t wait to share more as Ralee.co comes to life.