The hard things about hard things.

The hard things are the decisions you make when you’re tired. The kill you execute when you’ve already told the story publicly. The weekly update you write when nothing dramatic happened, only progress. The hard conversation with a founder who wants certainty… while you’re both still inside ambiguity.

December is usually the month for highlights. But for builders, December is the month where you see what held up. And what didn’t. Because building isn’t a vibe. It’s a sequence of hard things done without guarantees, over and over again. So instead of a highlight reel, here’s what we learned from a year of hard things:

First things first: Momentum needs a system behind it

Raw ambition without structure becomes chaos. Structure without ambition becomes theatre. We’ve seen this across ventures, events, hiring - even the studio itself:

What we doubled down on (and how we’ll prove it):

• Offence beats defence. We’re done explaining why Europe is behind, 2026 is about building like we plan to win. Proof: fewer “nice to have” experiments, sharper bets, and ventures shipping into real labour transformation - not “AI tooling.”

• Repetition becomes leverage. Founders build once every few years. We build multiple times per year. Pattern recognition turns ambiguity into an advantage. Proof: earlier kills, sharper wedges, stronger founder matching, fewer “maybe” ventures that drag for months.

• Community isn’t a nice-to-have. The hardest things are rarely solved alone, they’re solved in rooms where people tell the truth. Proof: CTO Network and Investor House became the highest-trust environments we’ve ever built. No pitches. No noise. Just builders.

The hard things don’t get easier. But the system around you can get stronger.

In the loop: Rooms that tell the truth

A few moments that shaped how we’re entering 2026:

• Investor House @ Leadinfo — scaling the old-school way. This room hit different. Not because of hype - because of pure execution. Quirijn casually corrected our intro: “It’s 9.000 customers now… 20.000 websites actually.” The real takeaway wasn’t the numbers. It was the philosophy: scale through focus, organic growth, and a few sharp acquisitions - without VC pressure bending your operating DNA. And then the line that froze the room: “We sold at €5M. We’re now at €20M.” Just reps.

• CTO Network — nerd therapy, the way it should be. Engineering debates, weird edge cases, people who actually shipped things. Exactly what the network was built for. The feedback we heard again and again: “This is the only room where you can fully nerd out and still feel at home.” That’s the bar for 2026.

• Agentic Breakfast @ Databricks — memory as moat. The sharpest shift we’ve seen: AI moving from software you use → systems that work for you. And if agentic systems are the future, memory is the moat. Not a feature. The foundation.

Ventures in motion: Hard proof, hard hiring, hard acceleration

Hard things show up differently across ventures. But the pattern is the same: clarity is earned in motion.

• Trigger — the hard thing is making meaning computable. Trigger didn’t start with a feature list. It started with a person (Federico) who sees human behaviour differently, not through “social media,” but through motivation, timing, and context. One screenshot. No launch. No hype. And suddenly: 1.200+ comments from people wanting to try something that technically doesn’t exist yet. Now comes the hard part: vision → engine. Trigger is hiring a CTO / Founding Engineer who cares about behaviour as much as code. If you know someone, send them our way. Explore the role. 🔗

• Everday — hiring their founding engineer. Not a bug-fixer role. A build-the-thing-together role. The CTO is looking for a buddy: someone who loves messy whiteboards, sharp debates, speed and correctness - and wants end-to-end ownership close to product and users. Join as a Founding Engineer. 🔗

• Avery — proof hiring isn’t keyword search. Timetohire hired a Senior Front-End Engineer in 7 days with Avery: upload job → 80 candidates shortlisted in an hour → offer accepted in a week. The twist? The hire didn’t even have “React” or “TypeScript” on their profile. Avery looked deeper than buzzwords. Full story here. 🔗

• Cortena — fuel to move faster. Cortena secured a €150K Rabobank Innovation Loan to expand the team and accelerate the build. More capacity, tighter loops, faster shipping - still early, but moving.

👀 What we’re reading (and writing):

• Europe in 2026: go full offence. I shared a clear prediction: AI won’t just change software, it will change labour. AI is moving from tools to systems that work for you. Standing still means getting eaten alive. The upside if Europe moves? Enormous.

• Partnering with Builders: the uncomfortable questions (answered straight). We hosted our first online coffee chat for founders interested in co-building with a venture studio, and heard the same recurring questions again and again: What do you actually do in the first 10 weeks? How do stage gates work? What does co-building really mean? How does founder/CTO matching happen? And yes, when do you kill? Next year, we’re going to answer these questions publicly, directly, without mystique.

• A day in the life of an Entrepreneur in Residence. We filmed Alisher (Founder of Avery) for a full day - no scripts, no filters. The real version of entrepreneurship in a studio: building while things break, deciding while things are unclear, carrying responsibility across multiple ventures… but never alone.

Final word: The hard things don’t stop, you just get stronger

2025 was intense. Messy. Full of experiments, decisions, kills - and a few very clear yeses. Behind every venture is a team doing the unglamorous work, every day.

To the founders, EIRs, partners, investors, and friends who trusted us while things were still unclear: thank you.

In 2026, we go faster. Sharper. More offence. Because this wave isn’t coming politely. And builders don’t wait for permission.

Forward, always - and happy new year,

Michael van Lier
Managing Director at Builders