Before Recova, we built ANYON, an AI development platform for people who can’t code. None of us studied computer science. We had tried to build our own ideas, FAXI, Treedi, TeamFlow, and kept running into the same wall.
So we went looking for everyone else stuck at that wall. We messaged people who liked our posts and asked for an hour of their time. Fifty-six of them said yes.
Here’s what we heard. Three out of four wanted to start an IT company. Most were doing it on top of a day job. Every single one had already tried the popular no-code and AI coding tools.
And 78% had given up at the same place. Not writing code. Opening the development environment. Installing Git. Matching a Node version. Setting environment variables. The terminal itself.
We had assumed the problem was “coding is hard.” It wasn’t. The problem was the door, not the room.
That one insight shaped ANYON: one install, a conversation to plan, and the tickets built for you. It won two grand prizes and a minister’s award.
It also taught us something bigger. Our best insight didn’t come from being clever. It came from talking to people until the pattern showed up on its own. The answer was sitting in interview number thirty-something, waiting for us to stop guessing.
When we moved to collections, we took that habit with us. Before writing a line of Recova, we are going back to the people who do the work. This time we want to sit even closer.