Today Arjen dropped off the latest working prototype.
It’s one of those moments I live for as a founder. The thing is finally in your hands. It runs. It makes the right sounds. The fan behaves. The controls do what they should. You can feel the product becoming a real object in the world, not just a picture in your head.
And yet, it’s also funny, because when you look closely, you still see the “not finished” parts.
The plastic on this prototype is a little crappy. It’s PETG, and PETG just doesn’t look that nice on these angles. The surface is not where I want it to be. But that wasn’t the point of this build.
This one was a behaviour test.
Does it run clean?
Is it noisy?
Does the fan control do what we want?
Can we toggle the red light on or off properly?
That was the mission. And it delivered.
I filmed it on my hands, but the truth is it works great for face and other parts too. That’s the whole idea. A lamp you actually use, because it fits into normal life.
I keep seeing it as a simple stand at home. And a small stand at the office desk. Something you can bring to work. Put it next to the laptop. Turn it on. Do your thing. No drama.
That’s what I mean when I say “portable” in our world. Not portable like “battery and app and travel case and ten accessories.” Portable like “it belongs in your daily rhythm.”
The magical phase: everything is clear, but nothing exists
There is this phase in building where everything is obvious in your head, but it’s not obvious to anyone else because it doesn’t exist yet.
You wake up and the product is there in your mind. The story is there. The positioning is there. The use cases are there. You can see customers using it. You can see the shop display. You can see the box. You can see the whole product family.
But in the physical world, there is nothing. Just parts. Just messy prototypes. Just decisions. Just a thousand small constraints.
And still, every day you create and create. You establish yourself. Not with talk. With output.
This time around, Arjen and I made a solemn oath. No outside money.
That’s a big statement for me to write, because my last two companies were heavy R&D. The only way to realize those dreams was raising money. You need employees. You need time. You need runway. You need to pay for development work that is expensive and slow.
Raising capital can make impossible things possible. I’m not against it. I’ve lived it.
But there is a weird pattern that happens almost every time.
You build a large development organization to get the product done. Then the product finally gets ready, and leadership naturally wants to cut that department down and shift focus to marketing and sales. It makes sense. It’s just weird each time. You spend years building this engine, and then the minute it works, the company wants to shrink it.
I’ve been through that cycle. And I’m done with it for now.
Because the other cost of investor money is time. Real time. Founder time.
Endless nights. Investor search. Calls. Pitch deck making. Follow-ups. Revisions. More meetings. More calls. More decks. More calls. More calls.
Holy shit. That took more than half my time as a CEO. And the whole time you are doing it, you tell yourself it’s “necessary.” Maybe it is. But it’s brutal.
This time I want my time back.
Build it ourselves, here, in Hang Dong
So Arjen and I went with a design we can design and manufacture ourselves in our factory in Hang Dong.
We’ve done it before.
We made FlexBeams there, in a medical device factory setting. We learned what good manufacturing feels like. We learned what quality systems feel like. We learned what it takes to ship real units that people trust.
Now we’re making NeuroVIZRs there.
And next up is the AriHelder product family. Starting with Helder 2.
I call Helder 2 our Volkswagen of red light.
Not because it’s cheap and flimsy. The opposite. Because it’s practical. Because it’s engineered for real life. Because it’s the one you can recommend to normal people without feeling like you’re selling them a luxury toy.
A simple lamp. Built locally. Repairable. Clear use cases. No cloud. No app. No nonsense.
Just turn it on.
This is also the first “AI era” startup for me
Something else is different now.
The LLMs are helping like crazy. And I’ve started coding agents too. Not as some Silicon Valley fantasy, but as a very practical thing.
We can do a lot of busy work through agents now.
All the stuff that used to eat you alive. Formatting. Rewriting. Structuring. Variations. Admin. Research summaries. Repetitive tasks. The boring parts that still matter.
Now the output per day is insane compared to five years ago.
And as a creative, I feel like this is our time to shine.
I can work on an idea and publish the same day.
That matters. Because story is the most important part of any message.
Sound and image matter, yes. But ultimately we are storytellers. That’s what humans are. We live inside stories.
And storytelling has become more accessible, at least for me, because I have so many ideas in my head. Now I can actually move them from mind to reality faster. I don’t have to wait for the whole organization to catch up.
Working with Arjen again
Another note, and I mean this genuinely.
It feels great to be doing a startup with Arjen again.
He doesn’t have unlimited time because he’s working another job. But he designed the first product. And he’s starting the second one soon.
We work so well together. We complement each other perfectly.
Both strong minds. We can argue hard. Proper arguments too. And then we always find our way back. We care about truth. We care about Logos. We care about the trivium. We care about building things that make sense, not just things that sell.
To be working together again is a joy for me.
Thanks Arjen.
The problem we are solving now
With FlexBeam, I feel like we kind of solved the problem of portable red light therapy in a Western context. At least for a lot of people. It’s a great device. It’s proven. It’s loved.
But in Asia, that 499-ish price tag is a lot of money. It’s not something normal folks can afford. That’s the problem Arjen and I are solving now with AriHelder.
How do we make this accessible?
How do we build it locally, keep quality high, keep it repairable, and still land at a price that fits real life here?
That’s the mission.
And days like today, where a working prototype lands on the table and behaves the way it should, they are proof that we’re on the right path.
Still early. Still messy. Still PETG surfaces that look rough.
But it runs.
And that’s a magical moment.
If you want to come try it in person, reach out. We’re building this in Hang Dong. We’ll keep sharing the journey as we go.
Christian, January 29th 2026