Committing to Consumer Health

This is a personal monthly reflection on my deliberate shift toward entrepreneurship, meant to look back on what I've been working on and forward to what's next.

It's for anyone curious about what I'm building, for those who want to support the journey, and for myself as a way to think more clearly.

By sharing publicly, I'm hoping to increase my surface area of luck, create accountability while (currently) working largely on my own, and force a more honest reflection on progress, learnings, and upcoming opportunities.

It's also a reminder that I'm playing a long-term game – and, if nothing else, a way for my partner and parents to better understand what I spend my days on.

While I already started writing quarterly updates last year for the same reasons mentioned above, my Q1 reflection ended up being a half-baked, Q2-diluted pool of thoughts and reflections. I plan to do better in 2026 and be more consistent by writing shorter, monthly reflections.

Reflecting on last year, I didn’t feel like I made a lot of progress on paper (mainly $0 revenue from my own startup and zero technical cofounders). However, I did connect with lots of potential cofounders (roughly 100+), tapped into a few spaces (e.g., HR tech, agentic marketing), started freelancing as a potential springboard within agentic marketing, and – most impactfully – became more “technical” by using AI tools to build AI workflows and web apps. I also learned some basic but important lessons: everything takes longer than one might imagine, and everyone has an opinion, like it or not.

Following frustrations around not finding a technical cofounder, mostly due to timeline misalignments (after idea/space- and vibe-fit were already given), I decided to pursue an opportunity at an early-stage company. The idea was to be the only non-engineer in a team that would ideally go big or bust fast, resulting either in a strong personal track record or in removing the timeline issue by working closely with a handful of engineers that would then be “available” at the same time.

During that process, however, I had second thoughts and realized that starting something on my own is what I really want.

I started 2026 more excited than ever on this journey, realizing that I shouldn’t feel limited or blocked by not having a cofounder as there is enough work I can do without one. I also feel confident in now having the skills needed to be able to at least build my own MVP/prototype. So instead of prioritizing the cofounder search, I decided to flip the script and settle on a space, trusting that standing for a space would even create more meaningful leads for potential collaborations.

I still strongly believe that “team > idea”, but I’m set on the consumer health space, with the vision to “democratize healthspan” (to use the startup lingo’s boilerplate of the last decade).

I believe health sits at the very core of our lives, being our most valuable good. Imagine having all the money in the world but not being healthy. Or having the best friendships in the world but not being healthy. What enjoyment is left then?

For me, this emerged as the most important space I could dedicate my time to: solving a problem for myself, hopefully helping the people I love, and ideally many millions more.

It’s a gigantic space, both in terms of sub-verticals and competitive landscape. Still, I believe it will only continue to grow as the system remains broken (today’s healthcare system is largely focused on intervening once it’s already too late) and as technological advances make health a higher priority for consumers (more thoughts on this in the future).

January flew by, largely focused on further exploring and understanding the space and, most importantly, educating myself. As part of that, I spoke with 20–30 consumers to gain a broader perspective beyond my own. This led to the idea of organizing a productivity-longevity retreat for founders and operators, which I’ve currently put on hold after having second thoughts about the effort-to-impact ratio.

I also participated in a “Stockholm Startup Tour”, expanding my network and getting extra motivation and inspiration to start the new year. Lastly, I spent one week working together with Jaafar to explore whether we could be a good match to build together in the consumer health space, but we decided not to pursue a collaboration due to the remote setup (he’s based in London).

Overall, the good news is that I’m extremely excited about the space and can clearly see the summit. What I currently lack is clarity on which of the many ideas I have is the best one to start with. In other words, the vision is clear, but the path to reach it is not, specifically which core target audience to focus on first and what to initially “hook” them with.

This is the main goal for February. I aim to narrow the pool of ideas down to a handful, break those into potential MVPs, and test/validate them quickly.

To get there, I need to become more pragmatic, moving faster, working scrappier, and being less conservative about expenses where the advantage is clear (primarily spending on AI tooling that helps me build and validate faster).

Lastly, I really liked this post that I came across a few months ago, essentially saying to focus on building something I’ll be proud of, regardless of the outcome, grounding my self-worth beyond the business itself.