Late one night in a dimly lit coworking space, a young founder sat hunched over his laptop, fine-tuning the hover state of a button on his app. To anyone else, it was insignificant—barely noticeable. But to him, it was everything.

“It’s not just a button,” he muttered, frustrated that no one else seemed to understand. “It’s how someone feels when they click it.” He had spent hours adjusting the gradient, the shadow, the millisecond timing of the easing curve. Every detail mattered because, to him, the entire experience hinged on this single interaction.

His team, exhausted, had begged him to move on. “It’s good enough,” they said. But he couldn’t hear them. He couldn’t understand how they didn’t see it—how they didn’t feel the weight of something being off.

The next morning, bleary-eyed but triumphant, he showed them the updated button. Most shrugged, unable to spot the difference. But one teammate clicked it and smiled. “Oh,” she said softly. “That feels... right.”

He nodded. That’s all he needed.

Because for founders like him, it’s not about what others see—it’s about chasing the perfect moment, no matter how small, that makes someone else finally feel it too.

by georg von manstein (twitter/x: MansteinGeorg)