Bullsh*t builds nothing. This does.

Startups are loud. Everyone’s pitching, posting, launching. But for every glossy post, there’s a mess underneath: strategy that doesn’t stick, tech that overbuilds, teams chasing traction they can’t define.

Let’s get real: most things don’t work at first. And at Builders, we don’t hide that. We linger for it. We expect it. And we’ve built our whole studio around one uncomfortable truth:

💥 If you’re not honest about what’s broken, you’ll scale the wrong thing.

No fluff. No fantasy. Just pressure-tested reality. This month, we’re opening up our loop again—not to show what we got right, but to show how we build by fixing fast.

Venture building ≠ feature shipping

You can launch ten versions and still miss the point. You can raise a round and still not know if your thing works. Why? Because speed without friction is just chaos dressed up as progress.

So we ask:

🧪 Is this feature solving a problem—or distracting from one?
🔁 Are users returning because it works—or because we told them to?
🪞 Are we building from belief—or copying what looks good?

At Builders, we use stage gates to keep ourselves brutally honest. No marketing before retention. No hires before demand. No scale until usage breaks the system. You’d be surprised how many fires that logic has saved us from starting.

We’re not here to chase hype. We’re here to build systems that survive scrutiny. That’s what separates the noise from the compounders.

Inside the loop: signals, sweat, and course-corrections

What did May look like? Less talk. More tension. More uncomfortable pivots. More proof. Here’s what went down in the loop:

• Everday 2.0 → LIVE: After a year in the trenches, we didn’t iterate—we rebuilt. Real signals, readiness-first profiles, and skill maps from actual context. Estefania and Dylan didn’t just build the next version. They re-earned belief. 🔗 Check it out

• Investor House #10: No filters. No pitch theatre. Just real funder-founder collisions. Fireside with Gradyent’s Hervé Huisman proved one thing: long-term thinking still wins. And timing’s a beast.

• FitStream x Arches Capital: Deadlifts > decks. We kicked off Upstream Festival in the gym—because building is physical. Sweat is a better filter than small talk.

• CTO Breakfast at Snowflake together with No Such Ventures: Scaling with the AI Act breathing down your neck. Culture x compliance. Fundraising friction. We put the real talk on the table—and sharpened our instincts for what’s next.

Our ventures in motion

Not decks. Not demos. Actual systems, sweating through the same friction our founders do.

• Everday: V2 is live. Customers are onboard. The product isn’t shinier—it’s sharper. Built from founder friction, not backlog tickets.

• Avery: Hiring isn’t chaos anymore—it’s context-first and compounding. 40+ orgs onboard. Traction looks like users bringing in more users. Looking for a Founding Engineer to scale the signal. 🔗 Check it out

• Next venture → CTO locked in: Dashboards distract. This one decides. We’re building a venture where predictive finance meets orchestration logic—tools that help companies move, not just measure. After weeks of hunting, we found the CTO to lead it. More soon.

👀 What we’re reading:

• No BS venture building: 5 brutal startup fails—and how stage gates saved our asses.

• Why traction ≠ MRR: 4 signals that matter long before Stripe.

• Studios 2025: What we learned at Global Takeoff NYC.

Final word: Fast doesn’t mean sloppy

Everyone wants speed. But speed without truth kills companies faster than bad code ever will. That’s why we build with stage gates. That’s why we rebuild when the signals say so. And that’s why every success in our studio is earned—not assumed.

So here’s to the work no one posts. The calls where things fall apart. The moments where someone says “this isn’t it”—and that saves the whole venture.

We’re not scaling noise. We’re scaling what lasts. Let’s build.

Forward, always,

Michael van Lier
Managing Director at Builders