We should probably tell you the inspiring founder story. The one where we identified a market gap, validated the problem, built an MVP, and iterated our way to product-market fit.
That's not what happened.
What actually happened: we almost sleep-walked out of a relationship we both cared about, got scared, and made something to try to save it.
That's less VC-friendly, but it's the truth.
The Before
Here's the setup: two people who met in tech. Both ambitious. Both "high-performers." Both very good at optimizing systems and very bad at leaving work at work.
In the beginning, like all beginnings, we were electric. Staying up late talking about everything. Learning each other's histories, dreams, fears. The usual intoxication of new love.
Then life happened. Demanding jobs. A startup that didn't work out. Another one that did. Stress that lived in our bodies. The slow, imperceptible drift that happens when you're both looking at laptops instead of each other.
We didn't notice it happening because we were still there. Same apartment. Same bed. Same routines. You can be physically present and emotionally absent for a long time before anyone calls it out.
The Moment
There was a night — I can still picture the lighting, the half-eaten takeout, the particular quality of silence — when one of us said something we couldn't take back.
Not "I don't love you" or "I want out." Something worse, in a way:
"I feel like I'm dating your calendar."
That landed. Because it was true.
We'd become co-managers of a shared life, not partners in an intimate relationship. We knew each other's schedules, dietary restrictions, and preferences for thermostat settings. We didn't know what the other person was thinking, dreaming, fearing, becoming.
When was the last time we'd had a conversation that wasn't about logistics? When had we last surprised each other? When had we last felt curious about the person across the table?
We couldn't remember. That was the scary part.
The Experiment
What followed was about six months of trying to figure out how to come back to each other.
We read the research. Gottman. Esther Perel. Attached. All the books. We tried the exercises. Some helped. Most felt forced — like we were doing homework for a class we didn't want to take.
What worked, eventually, was stupidly simple: asking better questions.
Not "how was your day?" (which can be answered in one word) but "what made you smile today?" or "what's been on your mind that you haven't told me?" or "what are you afraid of right now?"
We wrote these questions on index cards. It felt goofy. It also worked.
Suddenly we were talking. Actually talking. About things we'd never discussed, things we'd been carrying privately, things that made us nervous to say out loud. The questions created permission. They made it okay to go deeper.
The Unintentional Product
We weren't trying to start a company. We were trying to save a relationship.
But we kept refining the questions. We made them for friends who said they wanted them. We made them prettier because one of us couldn't help it. We added ritual elements — little structures that helped create intentional space for connection.
People started asking where they could buy them. We didn't have an answer. So we made one.
Growing Us is the tool we built because we needed it. The deck, the app, this whole thing — it's all in service of a single goal: helping couples stay connected in a world that constantly pulls them apart.
What We've Learned (That We Didn't Learn in Tech)
Building this has taught us things that no sprint retrospective ever would:
You can't A/B test your way to intimacy. There's no funnel. No conversion optimization. Just two humans trying to be real with each other, over and over, forever.
The best relationships feel inefficient. Tech culture praises optimization. But the best moments with a partner are often the "unproductive" ones — the wandering conversations, the unscheduled time, the silences that aren't awkward.
Maintenance is invisible until it's not done. Relationships are like codebases: they degrade without regular care. The couples who make it aren't the ones with the best start — they're the ones who keep showing up for the boring daily work of connection.
Vulnerability scales. When one person opens up, the other follows. It's contagious. This is maybe the most important thing we know.
Why We're Doing This
We're not relationship experts. We're two people who almost lost something important and decided to pay attention.
Growing Us exists because we wanted something that didn't exist. A tool that would help us connect without feeling like we were in couples therapy. Something that felt like play, not work. Something that fit into a random Tuesday evening.
If it helps other people the way it helped us, that's the whole point.
We're not trying to fix broken relationships — that's what therapists are for. We're trying to help good-enough relationships get better. To give couples a reason to put down their phones and actually look at each other.
That sounds small. But we don't think it is.
The small moments compound. The ten-minute conversation before bed. The question that leads somewhere unexpected. The choice to be present instead of efficient.
This is how love grows. Not in grand gestures, but in daily intention.
We're still learning. We're still messing up. We're still, some nights, two people staring at laptops instead of each other.
But at least now we notice. At least now we have tools. At least now we're trying.
That feels like enough.
Want to try what worked for us? Start with our weekly relationship check-in guide or read about how we run couples retrospectives.
Update: The thing we built is now a real app. We just launched Growing Us on Android and iPhone — free to try.
— A & A