Most growth stories are told backward. We start with traction and scale, then work our way to origin. But for founders building something durable, growth usually starts much closer — with friction that won’t go away.
When I spoke with Meng Li on In Community, that starting point was clear. Huhu didn’t come from market research or trend analysis. It came from becoming a second-time parent during lockdown and realizing how far baby products had drifted from real parental needs.
The lesson for founders is simple but often ignored: the best growth insights come from proximity, not spreadsheets. If you’re too far from the problem, no amount of marketing will close the gap.
Start With the Constraint, Not the Opportunity
Meng didn’t begin by asking how big the category was. She began by asking what felt broken and why no one had fixed it yet. That constraint shaped everything that followed — product design, positioning, and how the brand spoke to customers.
Many early-stage companies reverse this. They chase a large market and then struggle to differentiate inside it. Starting with the constraint forces clarity. It gives marketing something real to translate and sales something honest to stand on.
If you can’t clearly name the frustration you’re relieving, growth will always feel harder than it should.
Learn How Growth Actually Works Before You Need It
Before founding Huhu, Meng worked at Native during a period when the brand was still earning trust, not coasting on it. Native’s success, under founder Moiz Ali, wasn’t driven by constant reinvention. It was driven by consistency — clear products, tight positioning, and restraint in how growth was pursued.
For founders, this is an underrated move: learn growth inside someone else’s business before betting everything on your own. You see which levers matter and which are noise. You learn that marketing amplifies clarity but punishes confusion.
That knowledge shows up later, when decisions get expensive.
Treat Marketing as Translation, Not Persuasion
One of the clearest lessons from Meng’s approach is how she thinks about marketing. When a product is built around lived experience, marketing’s job isn’t to convince — it’s to translate.
Entrepreneurs often over-index on cleverness when what customers want is recognition. Growth accelerates when people see their own problem reflected back to them without exaggeration.
If marketing feels like performance, something upstream is broken.
Trust Is a Design Choice
Huhu’s growth reinforces a broader truth: trust isn’t a brand value you announce. It’s a system you design.
Trust shows up in product quality, in what you choose not to promise, in how you price, and in how patient you are with growth. For small businesses, this means resisting premature scale. For larger organizations, it means protecting coherence as teams expand.
The payoff is practical. Trust shortens buying decisions. It reduces reliance on paid acquisition. It gives brands room to grow without burning belief.
What Endures
Meng’s story is instructive because it shows what growth looks like when it’s built deliberately. Stay close to the problem. Let constraints guide clarity. Learn how growth works before you need it. Use marketing to translate truth, not invent it.
Growth doesn’t come from pushing harder. It comes from earning belief — one decision at a time.
