🦴 Day 3: The Genius of Scar Tissue

Here’s something strange about bones.

When a bone breaks and heals, the site of the fracture becomes denser — at least for a while. It forms a callus: thickened, reinforced tissue where the damage occurred. That patch is often stronger than the original bone, though not always permanently.

This process is part of Wolff’s Law, a 19th-century theory still used in orthopaedics today. It states that bone tissue remodels and adapts in response to the forces placed upon it. Stress doesn't just strain the body — it shapes it.

And I think the same is true for founders.

You don’t usually decide to start your own company from a place of comfort. The decision often follows a fracture.

Sometimes it’s dramatic: a toxic exec team, a failed product launch, a redundancy. Other times it’s slow: a feeling that your work isn’t landing, that you’re not growing, that your creativity is being siphoned into someone else’s vision.

You feel like you’re solving the same problems over and over — and yet somehow still not being listened to.

These aren’t failures. They’re inflection points.

And more than that — they’re evidence that you’ve been building resilience.

As a designer, your entire career is one long practice in adaptation. You’ve launched things that didn’t land. You’ve reworked flows after user tests obliterated your assumptions. You’ve defended decisions in rooms where you had the least power.

And you’ve learned from every one of those breaks.

So when you’re considering becoming a founder, it’s not about adding new skills out of nowhere. It’s about recognising that you’ve been practicing them — sometimes painfully — for years.

But here’s where it gets tricky.

The same humility that makes you a great designer — listening closely, iterating patiently, seeking feedback — can also hold you back. It makes you wait for readiness. Or for a better time. Or for someone else to invite you into the founder seat.

But the truth is, no one hands you that role.

You take it.

The callus forms. The signal shifts. And one day, instead of asking for buy-in, you start building something of your own.

Tomorrow: What jellyfish can teach us about reinvention — and why your most powerful move might be returning to your earliest instincts.

- Andy Budd
The Design Coach & The Design VC