Yes it is hard. Nice post @Maria Georgiana Sas and congrats for your project. Keep it up !
@Sustainibli Five years ago, I started my first startup. I made every classic founder mistake: running before I'd learned to walk. If you know, you know. I spent nearly a year building features before validating any of them. I sank money into airtight legal contracts instead of testing and growing the business, and when the moment came to use them, I chose not to sue. Along the way, I surveyed designers, manufacturers, and suppliers, and even had the chance to join the Women's Forum. But I got obsessed with UI/UX, and trusted a developer who kept over-promising and under-delivering, even after senior engineers reviewed his code. The startup made it into IDEA Accelerator, and angel investors believed in the vision. Still, the funding never came close to covering what it cost to build and run the platform. Eventually, I made the hard call to put it on hold. I wouldn't trade a single one of those mistakes. What I'm most proud of isn't what I built. It's who I stayed while it fell apart. I paid every collaborator, every time, even when it meant having almost nothing left for the week. I never complained. I never shifted blame. I chose the high road, even when the low one would have been easier, and maybe even justified. The dream never disappeared. It just went quiet. My relationship with fashion started long before this startup: working in the industry since I was 16, graduating from ESMOD Paris, and gaining experience across Bucharest, Copenhagen, Milan, and Paris. The industry itself was never unfamiliar. What I still had to learn was how to build a company around it, and how different that is from understanding the system itself. Now I'm returning to that original vision: a more circular, connected fashion industry. This time, differently. No building alone in a vacuum. No spending a year perfecting something before learning what people actually need. This time, I'm starting by listening, and building alongside the people already living this industry: designers, manufacturers, material innovators, suppliers, retailers, and everyone who touches a garment before it reaches a wardrobe. If that's you, I'd genuinely love to talk. Follow us @Sustainibli for updates #CircularFashion #FashionInnovation #StartupLessons #Entrepreneurship #SustainableFashion #FashionTech
