At first, you're excited. The easy stuff is easy, and it spurs you on.

“I can do this.”

You learn numbers. Common objects. Basketball for some reason.

When you say something to a native speaker, their face lights up. “Lihai! Your Chinese is so good!”

They don’t point out that you accidentally said, “I want to sleep,” when you meant, “I want dumplings.” They’re just happy you tried.

And that feels like proof.

Then you hit the wall. You keep reviewing words, but new ones don’t stick. You can recognize characters one day and forget them the next.

You feel like you’re sinking.

So you pivot. You stop grinding flashcards in isolation and start learning phrases in context.

You watch videos. Listen to real conversations. Try different apps. Repeat things out loud until your family starts worrying about you.

Eventually, you find something that works, and now you’re ready to show the world.

You go all the way to China, stride confidently into a shop, and ask: “Zhèxiē dōngxi duōshao qián?” How much are these?

The shopkeeper takes one look at you, sighs, types the price into their phone, and turns it around.

Nobody wants to have a conversation with you.

All that praise you got at the beginning? It wasn’t market validation.

It was encouragement.

That’s exactly what happens when you start a B2C SaaS company.

Your friends love the idea. Other founders tell you it sounds cool. People say, “I’d totally use that.”

But then you launch, and the market doesn't care.

No conversation. No engagement. No credit card.

And that’s when the real work begins.

You stop looking for polite encouragement and start looking for people with a real reason to care.

For Mandarin, that meant finding language exchange partners. People who wanted to learn English. They were willing to listen to me stumble through Chinese because I was helping them too.

Over time, those became real relationships, because there was mutual value.

That’s the part most founders miss.

The goal isn't to find people who will politely praise your product. You have to find people whose problem is painful enough that they'll tolerate the awkward early version.

They’ll sit through the bugs. They’ll answer your questions. They’ll tell you when your wording makes no sense. They’ll keep coming back because, even though it's ugly, it helps them.

Learning Mandarin taught me that praise is not progress. Encouragement is not validation.

And if nobody is willing to struggle through a conversation with you, you probably haven’t found the right customer yet.