8 Months, Countless Iterations, and 7 Days Until Launch – What We Learned Building Kognis

Hi Product Hunt 👋

After 25 years working as an architect, I decided to take on a completely different challenge and build a software product.

Eight months ago, we started building Kognis, a personal intelligence system designed to help people capture, organise, prioritise, and recall the things that matter most.

As launch approaches, I've been reflecting on what has surprised me most during the journey.

One of the biggest lessons was how difficult seemingly simple problems can become. We spent far more time than expected solving issues around duplicate events, conflicting dates, related tasks, and ensuring AI-generated insights were genuinely helpful rather than adding more noise.

Many of the features that looked straightforward on a whiteboard turned into weeks of redesigns, testing, and refinement before they felt ready.

For those of you who have launched products before:

What was the challenge that took far longer to solve than you originally expected?

And looking back at your launch, how did you decide when your product was "ready enough" to put in front of users?

I'd love to learn from the experience of other makers as we head into our final week before launch.

Thanks in advance for any advice or lessons learned. 🚀