Two Years Running a Startup

Two years into running a startup, the clearest thing I can say is that it has been both less glamorous and more meaningful than I expected.

From the outside, startup stories compress neatly. You have an idea, build a product, find momentum, and eventually the narrative skips ahead to traction. The real version has a lot more texture. It includes uncertainty, admin work, identity shifts, long stretches of invisible progress, and a thousand small decisions no one sees.

When I started BetterKey, I thought mostly about the product. I thought about what should exist and how to build software that felt thoughtful and useful. What I did not fully appreciate was how much of building a company is learning to make reality move, one task at a time.

That starts earlier than people think.

Before there is much of a company, there is paperwork and setup. Starting an LLC. Setting up a business address, company email, and website. Creating a GitHub organization and CI so the work has a real home. Getting a DUNS number. Enrolling in the Apple Developer Program and figuring out the Small Business Program. Filing for trademarks. Learning how business taxes actually work. None of it is glamorous, but it matters. It was one of my first lessons in founder life: things do not happen unless I make them happen.

That mindset shift has probably changed me more than anything else.

I came into this as a seasoned mobile engineer and engineering manager. I knew how to build software and lead teams. Much of my previous work involved aligning people, managing across functions, and helping organizations move together. There is real value in that work, but there is also friction built into it.

One of the surprising joys of building alone has been how little distance there is between an idea and action. I can just do things. I can build, change direction, improve a flow, rewrite a screen, test an idea, and evolve the product without spending half my energy on coordination. That directness has felt incredibly alive.

But being a solo founder asks something different of you. There is no separation between strategy and execution. No one handing you priorities. No one quietly catching the balls you drop. If the company needs something, eventually it becomes your job.

That has been both energizing and humbling.

The freedom to move quickly comes with a tradeoff: I am not just the engineering department. I am also the product manager, marketer, finance department, legal department, and customer support team. The hard part is not only building the product. It is constantly switching contexts while still maintaining momentum and judgment.

That has changed how I think about leverage. One of the recurring founder questions is not just “how do I build this?” but “do I need to build this at all?” Sometimes the right move is custom software. Sometimes it is choosing the right tool, integrating it well, and moving on.

I also started this company during the rise of tools like ChatGPT, Cursor, Claude, and Codex. That changed the feeling of building. A solo founder could suddenly prototype, debug, research, and ship with a different kind of leverage. The ceiling for what one person could accomplish started rising in real time.

But better tools do not remove the need for taste, judgment, or persistence. If anything, they raise the stakes on having them.

The same has been true of vendors and partners more broadly. Progress often depends on choosing the right people to work with, asking the right questions, keeping momentum alive, and making sure important threads do not stall. Forward progress is not always code. Sometimes it is a conversation, a follow-up, or a decision that keeps things moving.

The highs have been real.

There is a particular feeling that comes from turning an idea in your head into something another person can use. The first time a product starts to feel less like a side project and more like a real thing in the world, something shifts. You stop imagining and start carrying responsibility.

I have loved what the work has demanded of me. Startups expose the difference between the person you imagine yourself to be and the person you are under pressure. They surface your habits, blind spots, patience, and resilience. They do not politely wait for you to become ready. They just keep presenting the next problem.

The lows have been real too.

Some days the problem is not that I do not know what to do. It is that I do know, and it is still going to take longer than I want, cost more energy than I have, and demand a level of consistency that can feel inhuman. There are weeks where progress is invisible from the outside and only barely visible from the inside.

One of the hardest parts has been redefining what work-life balance means in this season of life. I am raising a young child and caring for two dogs. There is no pristine founder schedule over here. A lot of this company has been built in early mornings, during nap times, and late at night. That reality forced me to stop romanticizing perfect focus and start respecting imperfect consistency.

I used to think progress required big uninterrupted blocks of time. More and more, I believe in accumulated motion. A bug fixed. A screen improved. A difficult email answered. A vendor nudged forward. A decision made. Learning to create forward progress in small increments has been one of the most practical survival skills of the last two years.

That has also changed how I think about endurance. As a marathon runner and outdoorsman, I already had some relationship with the idea before starting a company. Real endurance is not dramatic. It is showing up consistently, staying steady, and continuing to move forward when the progress is not glamorous.

I have never believed endurance means everything comes naturally or that you have to be the fastest person in the field. More often, it means being willing to keep putting in cycles. To learn. To adapt. To let experience refine you instead of discourage you. If I keep showing up, keep learning, and keep evolving, I can usually find a way through the obstacle in front of me and reach the next milestone.

That mindset has carried over into founder life more than anything else. Endurance is not just toughness. It is learning how to return. Return to the product. Return to the problem. Return after a bad week, distraction, doubt, or fatigue. The people who keep going are not always the most fearless. They are often the ones who learn how to keep re-entering the work.

I have a much deeper respect now for the long middle. Early on, I treated hard seasons like interruptions, as if the real work would begin once things felt cleaner and more obvious. But the messy middle is the work. The ambiguity is the work. The repeated return to the same core questions is the work.

Why this product? Why now? Why me? Why keep going?

You do not answer those questions once. You answer them over and over, sometimes with conviction and sometimes simply by continuing.

Two years in, I do not feel disillusioned. If anything, I feel more grounded. The mythology has worn off, which is healthy. Startups are not magical. They are a very human process of making bets, absorbing setbacks, adapting quickly, and trying to build something that deserves to exist.

I have also leaned more on my network than I expected. One of the underrated advantages of experience is having people you can learn from in real time. Conversations about tools, vendors, tactics, and industry shifts have helped me make better decisions and stay current. Building alone does not have to mean thinking alone.

I also feel more protective of the parts of life that are easy to sacrifice in the name of ambition. Sleep. Relationships. Perspective. Presence. I do not think building something meaningful requires destroying yourself in the process. I think it requires building a life that can sustain the work.

What I believe now is simpler than what I believed at the start.

I believe things do not happen unless I make them happen.

I believe good tools can multiply effort, but they cannot replace judgment.

I believe one of the most important founder skills is knowing what to build yourself and what to solve with tools, vendors, or existing systems.

I believe being a founder has stretched me far beyond being an engineer or manager.

I believe momentum matters, but so does patience.

I believe the real skill is to keep moving, especially when the movement is small.

And I believe the ups and downs are not evidence that you are doing it wrong. They are often evidence that you are actually in it.

That may be the clearest reflection I have after two years: the goal is not to build in a way that avoids difficulty. The goal is to become the kind of person who can carry difficulty, stay present for the people who depend on you, and keep going anyway.

BetterKey is still being built. So am I.