The Hop button! Okay, maybe that’s not such a small detail, but I care a lot about the moment someone experiences their first hop. I’ve realized that some people visit BuildHop a few times before discovering the full hopping experience. They click through to a project and think they’ve simply arrived at another website, without noticing the “Hop landing page” button at the bottom. Sometimes on calls, I’ll share my screen for a quick walkthrough, and I love watching it click. There’s this moment of surprise and delight when someone sees what hopping actually does. That “aha!” moment feels magical to me. It’s also a reminder that what feels obvious when you’re building something isn’t always obvious when you’re discovering it. I want to make that discovery feel easy and inviting.

The very first version of BuildHop was a little button at the bottom of the screen. You’d land on the homepage, click “Start hopping,” and find yourself on a random website. It was all about discovering something unexpected. My posts on X did a lot of the work of explaining what hopping was. Initially, the homepage had big hero sections describing all sorts of things, but reading through them took longer than actually discovering a new product! One day, I stripped it back to the bare essentials. I wanted people to experience hopping for themselves. Upvotes and downvotes were there from the beginning, but we soon realized that the most useful part wasn’t just the vote. It was understanding why someone felt that way. That’s what started turning BuildHop into a feedback machine, where discovering cool projects could also help the people building them.

I’ve learned how much builders care about what they’re creating, and how personal feedback can feel because of that. I’ve been there myself. When you’re halfway through building something, there’s this rush of excitement about what it could become. It’s easy to imagine how it might change someone’s life, including your own. During that stage, you’re often seeing the product through your own perspective, with encouragement from friends or a friendly AI companion. Putting it in front of other people brings a whole new perspective. Sometimes their feedback is hard to hear, but it can also help you see possibilities you would have missed on your own. That’s taught me that being open to feedback takes practice. You can care deeply about your idea while staying curious about how other people experience it. I’m learning that alongside the people I’m building for, and it’s a big part of why I care about making useful, constructive feedback more accessible through BuildHop.

The first time someone shared a screenshot of their analytics on X and wrote, “BuildHop is the only launch site that I am actually getting traffic from.” I believed the model could send meaningful traffic because BuildHop is designed around active discovery, not a static directory. People arrive because they are curious and want to look at what others are building. Still, I did not expect it to outperform other launch sites so decisively. That was the moment I realized the core idea was doing what we had hoped: sending founders real visitors, not simply giving them another place to leave a link.

Right now, I’m learning how to network more confidently. My background is in social media marketing, so I’m comfortable building large online communities, but one-on-one relationship building is a newer skill for me. I’ve been having fun figuring out what networking looks like in practice: showing up to events, introducing myself, and building connections through conversation. The biggest challenge has been quieting the voice that tells me I can’t or shouldn’t put myself out there and choosing to do it anyway. It’s been rewarding to stretch myself and build confidence along the way.

Building is a marathon, not a sprint. When you first put something into the world, it’s easy to expect the numbers to reflect all the work and excitement you’ve put into it. I keep reminding myself that my expectations are often shaped by what I hope will happen, and that growth takes time. There’s a lot to learn by sticking with something, listening to people, and making small improvements. The product can take a direction you couldn’t have imagined at the beginning, but you have to give yourself time to discover it. That’s why I think it’s so important to build something you really love. That excitement and curiosity give you a reason to keep showing up while the results are still taking shape. I keep coming back to that: care about what you’re building, keep learning, and give it time to become something.