Founder Recap Feb 2026
Founder Recap Feb 2026
Hey all, there’s been a lot of great under the hood improvements and UI improvements but ultimately, I failed to launch.
Everything is better than it was before but I don’t feel it’s truly usable enough yet. I don’t think it’s useful enough to convince someone to pay for the product.
I think a recurring theme is the self-imposed expectations for the open-source repo quality. I suppose when the reason for open-sourcing the core product is based on asking myself: “Would I want to use this and champion for this strongly in a company if it was not open-source” and that the answer was “no for not open-source”, then I guess an implied question that keeps repeating in my head is variants of “would I use this for X”. Which unfortunately even when I try to scope things down to just one integration, I still have high expectations for the overall experience. But anyways, no need for more excuses, I failed to launch.
So let’s talk about progress and what’s been going on! I’ve rehauled the entire core backend and finally fixed all the duct tape solutions that would have just inhibited core feature development such as native python runtime and getting reasonably fast on-the-fly package and container management. I’m really happy with the state of things after the re-write, I don’t know how other people do millions of lines of code a week, but I’d rather have a clear mental model of how all the pieces fit together at this stage and I’m taking a bet that it will help the LLM with better and faster feature development in the future by leveraging these foundations.
There were also some small but weirdly significant moments for me where I’m just doing easier work on the frontend that maybe takes half a day to get through, but seeing simple things like meaningful color changes based on application state etc, was so oddly satisfying. Which is also annoying because all that difficult backend work just seemed so invisible in comparison. I suppose it’s lucky (or maybe unlucky) that I enjoy the invisible plumbing work because there’s also something deeply satisfying to connecting things together smoothly.
But as nice as all that sounds, I’m still far from my ramen profitability goals at this rate, especially with the shifting landscape with LLM developments, I feel like I’m constantly re-adjusting my worldview of how Rekait might fit into that vision, but along with that comes with continuously raising bar and directions to explore. I’m really concerned about how much longer it will take to get to an iteration that someone is willing to pay for.
The only thing that keeps me somewhat sane is that I’m showing people IRL what I’ve been building and the few people that approach and share their excitement about the product makes me at least feel I’m not too delusional (“Am I delulu” is probably a good question to ask yourself repeatedly too).
Recently another founder asked me, how do you handle burn out. Honestly, I don’t know how to answer that because despite the long journey so far from before I even wrote the first line of code for Rekait, I don’t think I truly feel burnt out yet. I do feel like I’m getting punched in the face by the market and the landscape of AI development a lot, but those don’t make me feel burnt out and sometimes they even help with course correction a little I think. I feel like I start my days with max confidence and then throughout the day stuff happens, or news about other products or some stray thought related to the product, just kind of kills my confidence by night time. Perhaps getting good sleep that resets mental state is a useful and necessary ability for this journey.
I feel like I’m moving so slow, but at the same time objectively I feel like I’m making good progress, but maybe it’s just not enough. But here’s a glimpse of things so far:
