Why I Decided to Build Alone & How I Mapped the Gaps I Would Have to Fill

There wasn’t a decision. Not really.

I was a new dad. Sleep-deprived in the way that makes you question basic things — like whether you’ve eaten, what day it is, or whether you’ve always been this tired or if this is new. My daughter wouldn’t settle. I’d tried everything the internet suggested and a few things it definitely didn’t. And at 2 AM, with her on my chest and my phone in the other hand, I found myself scrolling through parenting apps thinking: I’ve shipped products to over a billion users. Why is this the hardest UX I’ve ever used?

The problem solver in me just... started. No big announcement. No decision to become a founder. Just a brain that couldn’t stop poking at a problem it found interesting.

That’s Snugglebug. Not a eureka moment. A tired dad who couldn’t switch off.

What I didn’t have — and I really, genuinely did not have — was any idea how to build a startup. I’d worked inside them. I knew roadmaps, sprints, user journeys. Turns out that’s a completely different skill from starting one from zero. I did not know this yet.

I did not tell anyone. Not really. A close circle of two, maybe three people knew something was brewing. I spoke to five or six new parents, who got a vague sense of what I was working on, but Snugglebug was pretty much in stealth. Not because I had a strategy around it. Because I wasn’t ready to say it out loud yet.

And my plan for the co-founder question? I’d decided AI would fill that role. I’m not joking. I had the product instincts, the engineering background, the domain knowledge — and I had my own team of Lovable, ChatGPT, Stitch, and Claude. What else did I need?

Turns out: quite a lot. But that realization came later.

The what-ifs were loud. What if it’s already been built? What if I say it out loud and it stops feeling like a good idea? That last one. That was the real one.

FRWRDx is where I finally stopped stalling and actually looked at what I was missing.

Some gaps were obvious. I had no idea how to run a proper customer discovery interview. What I was doing — having vague conversations with parents I loosely knew — is not validation. That’s just hoping someone will accidentally confirm your assumptions. A different thing entirely.

I had no startup network in Dubai. Not the useful kind. I knew people in tech. I didn’t know the founders who’d built consumer products here from scratch — the ones who could tell you what actually works and what’s a very expensive trap.

But the gaps that surprised me were the ones I’d been quietly not naming.

I had completely overestimated my comfort with uncertainty. Which is embarrassing, because I’m a senior PM. I present to boards. I have strong opinions about roadmap prioritization that I will share with you at dinner whether you asked or not. My wife has confirmed this is a real pattern.

And yet I couldn’t bring myself to say “I’m building a parenting app” to another parent at a playdate. Not because I thought they’d steal it — well, maybe to some extent — but mainly because I was scared they’d be polite about it. That specific kind of politeness. The nods, the “Oh interesting”s. That felt worse than rejection somehow. At least rejection is honest.

That was the real gap. Not skills. Not network. Just the basic courage to be seen doing something that might not work.

FRWRDx gave me a reason to open up because the program kind of required it. You can’t go through 14 weeks of milestones while keeping the idea inside your head. At some point you have to put it in front of people.

And the thing I’d been dreading just... didn’t happen. Nobody laughed. Several people said “Wait, I’ve felt exactly this.” A few were the exact parents I was building for.

I stopped asking “Do you like this idea?” — which is really just asking for approval dressed up as research — and started asking “Tell me about the last time parenting felt completely overwhelming.” Completely different answers. Infinitely more useful.

On co-founders: I still don’t know if I need one. What FRWRDx taught me is that “Do I need a co-founder?” and “Who do I need around me?” aren’t the same question. The ecosystem here runs on advisors and mentors differently from other markets — real support doesn’t require equity. But you have to know exactly what you’re asking for. Which means you need the map first.

If you’re sitting with this right now, here's what I’d actually say.

Stop waiting to feel ready. That feeling is not coming. Especially if you have a baby at home (well, Snugglebug would be of heavy help in that case).

Write down the fears, not just the skills. The fears are usually the bigger gap, and nobody reminds you to map them.

And talk to people. Not to validate the idea. Just to say it out loud to another human. That one thing changed more for me than anything else.

Aditya Pappula is the founder of Snugglebug, a parenting app being developed for families navigating early childhood. He went through the FRWRDx IDEA Program as a Dubai-based founder and is a Cohort 2 alum.

If you’re sitting on an idea you haven’t said out loud yet, rolling applications for the FRWRDx IDEA Program are open. 14 weeks, 7 milestones, AED 3,000 — and you keep your company.

Apply