Why I'm building Refrakt.

It was an Asian aesthetic clinic in my home city — professional, busy, with walls lined with before-and-afters. The kind of place that handles hundreds of procedures a year and has seen every face.

Before the procedure, my surgeon leaned over and traced a few lines across my face with a marker. Then she laid out a set of laminated reference templates — different nose profiles, different tip angles, different bridge shapes. She pointed. I nodded. I chose one.

But I had no real sense of what any of it would look like on my face. I had read everything — the forums, the recovery diaries, every before-and-after I could find. I do what I always do when something matters: research until I could teach it. And still, standing there with a line drawn on my nose, I couldn't visualise what I'd look like on the other side. Not even approximately.

So I trusted. I lay down. A few hours later, I woke up under bandages.

Nobody really tells you about the swelling that lingers for weeks. The way your face hurts to laugh. The mirror you start avoiding because you don't yet recognise the person looking back.

What I remember most isn't the pain. It's the uncertainty.

Did I do the right thing? Will this settle into something I love — or something I tolerate?

For a year, I carried that question with me every morning. I'm fine now. I love what I see in the mirror. But it could have gone differently — and the only thing standing between those two outcomes had been a guess.

One was about to do her chin. Another, her jawline. A third, lip filler. Same conversation, every time.

"I spent three hours the night before scrolling through strangers' before-and-afters. I still woke up with no idea what I'd actually agreed to."

"My surgeon was very clear. I just had nothing to anchor it to — no image, no reference point. It was all just words."

"I kept asking myself: am I anxious because it's a big decision, or because I genuinely don't know what I'm deciding?"

"Everyone kept saying 'trust the process.' But the process never showed me anything."

I started taking notes. Then sketching. Then prototyping. Then — somewhere between the third and fourth conversation — I realised: this is not just my story. It's a thing the world is quietly asking for, and nobody is building it well.

I won't pretend it's been linear. Last year I quit my job and co-founded my first AI startup — and destiny had other plans for that one. It taught me what I needed to know about building from zero, about the cost of certainty, and about how many of my own assumptions I had to throw out.

Now, with all the Abenteuerlust I've got left and a stubborn certainty that this one matters, I'm building Refrakt.

If you've ever sat in a pre-op room holding a stranger's photo and wishing you could see your own face instead — this is for you.