Looking To Learn And Put Myself Out There

Hey y’all,

I’m Harrison - one of the founders of NUMI (Y Combinator, $2m ARR) and now Flowglad. Also a Y Combinator/RISD alum and was founding product designer of Imgur. The following is a bit all over the place but more so a release for me. Happy to respond to any questions anyone has.

Why I’m building in public this time

At NUMI, I was dead-set on staying out of the spotlight. Part of it was imposter syndrome—watching founder friends post record MRR graphs or land huge raises, while my co-founder and I spent a long time stuck in pivot hell. But looking back, hiding felt worse in the long run.

We missed out on real-time feedback and a community that could’ve helped shape a better product.

Pivots, lessons and hard truths

NUMI wasn’t always the “design subscription” service it is today.

My cofounder and I started NUMI by booking a one-way ticket to Kenya, confident we’d spin up a software business in under a year. It took four. We lived through wild pivots, contracting out engineers to keep the lights on, and eventually heading back to the States as the country started to shutdown from COVID.

Around that same time, my dad—my biggest cheerleader and confidant—passed away. As rough as it was, it somehow reignited my determination. He believed in me when I couldn’t, and losing him reminded me how short life is. I’m still looking for that kind of unwavering support today, and I guess building in public is my way of trying to find it again.

Turning a corner

After returning home, we refocused on what we knew: design for startups. We dropped engineering gigs and went all-in on turning NUMI into “your startup’s design department.”

Leaning on my design background, we built a marketplace of top designers and top startups eager to work with each other. And I taught myself sales—turns out UX research and sales are cousins if you steer from problems to solutions. In parallel, I learned the hard truth of validating revenue early. Customers who say, “I’ll pay if you build this one more feature,” often never pay and end up making you work on shit that wastes your time.

We got better at zeroing in on must-have solutions and charging confidently. As our customers helped us better understand our product’s worth, we began to raise our prices commensurately. This helped both attract better, more willing to pay customers AND better designers.

New chapter: Flowglad

We recently brought in a new CEO at NUMI so my cofounder and I could devote ourselves to Flowglad.

This time, we want to share our progress publicly, both for accountability and for real feedback. We now know authenticity resonates more than self-censoring perfectionism.

Where I’d love your input

• How do you decide when to share progress so it’s valuable and not just noise?
• How do you stay humble without underselling your accomplishments?
• What can I provide for the community so I’m not just asking?
• Any other subreddits you’d recommend for sharing founder stories or gathering feedback?
• For SaaS founders in AI/Indie Hacker spaces: how did you land your first 10 customers? Your next 90?

Happy to answer any questions - really trying to be an open book this time around. Thanks for reading (I found it cathartic), and I hope this post offers a bit of perspective (and maybe inspiration) to anyone feeling stuck in the founder grind. It can be dark, but sometimes that’s what sets the stage for dawn.