"This is janky."

These three words, spoken repeatedly during Boon's early days, capture a simple truth about building better technology: you need to experience the problems you're trying to solve.

Boon started as a recruitment agency, not a tech company. We built our first tool just for our needs. Experiencing the daily frustrations of recruiting and trying to fix them shaped everything about how we build technology today.

Learning by Doing

When you're trying to hire great people, every minute counts. As recruiters, we spent too much time dealing with complicated tools and manual processes instead of connecting better with candidates.

We didn't originally set out to become a tech company. We just needed a better way to work. Dakota Younger, our founder, explains: "We started as a recruitment agency and built Boon initially to get referrals from candidates. We were our own customer. We would go back and use it, then realize 'this is janky' and fix it."

Being recruiters first gave us insights we couldn't have gotten any other way. We witnessed the problems, knew which solutions would work in real life, and most importantly, what would actually make recruiters' lives easier.

Lessons From Our Customers

One of our biggest lessons came from an unexpected place: helping one of our customers hire truck drivers. We had been successful in helping companies hire office workers, but this was different. "You can't put the cart before the horse," Dakota adds. "Every extra field you add to a form will hurt how many people complete it. When you're dealing with a truck driver, they won't download an app or fill out a long form - they need something quick and simple."

We had to question everything we thought we knew about how people use technology.

The insight from this experience changed how we built everything. Instead of adding more features, we started removing obstacles. We made forms shorter. We stopped requiring app downloads. We made everything work with just a few clicks. These tweaks encouraged more people to use our tool, which worked better.

Growing While Staying Grounded

As we grew beyond our original recruitment agency, we faced the next big challenge: how do we keep building things people actually need? The answer was simple but far from easy. We kept testing everything ourselves and listening to how people really used our tools.

"Instead of us being the direct testers, we handed off to others," Dakota explains. "But we still needed that direct feedback to make sure we were building the right things."

This approach proved especially valuable when we started working with hospitals to hire nurses. Despite working in a completely different field from truck drivers, we discovered that nurses had similar needs: they were busy professionals who needed simple tools that worked quickly.

Why Simple is Hard

Perhaps the most surprising lesson from our journey is that keeping things simple takes constant work. We've had to say no to features we liked because they made things too complicated. We've had to resist adding impressive-looking capabilities that would have made the tool harder to use.

Take how we handle referral rewards. Most companies track these in complicated spreadsheets, with different departments passing information back and forth. From experience, we knew this approach wasn’t the best because it was too complicated. So, we built a system that works without requiring extra effort from busy people.

What We Learned About Building Better Tools

Our experience taught us several important lessons about building technology. Here are some of them:

Use What You Build

While knowing your industry helps, you still need to use your own product regularly. We often discover problems just by using our tools ourselves.

Fix the Basics First

It's tempting to build fancy features that look impressive. But success usually comes from doing the simple things really well. A basic solution that works perfectly is better than a complex solution that's hard to use.

Keep Testing

As your product grows, keep checking whether new features actually help users. Sometimes, the best improvement is removing something that's getting in the way.

Remember Real People

Every time you add something to your product, think about the person who will use it. Will it make their job easier or just add another step to their day?

Looking Forward: What This Means for Technology

We're seeing more people who understand specific industries building tools to solve problems they've experienced. This is creating better solutions, ones that focus on what actually works rather than what looks good in a presentation.

This change represents more than just a new way to build products. It's about understanding that the best solutions come from people who have lived with the problems they're trying to solve.

Looking ahead, we believe the best technology will come from people who deeply understand the problems they're solving. Not just through research or interviews but through direct experience.

For anyone building technology, here is our message: spend time doing the job you're trying to make easier. Understand how people actually work, not just how they say they work. And never stop checking whether what you're building actually helps.

Because in the end, the best solutions don't come from impressive technology alone. They come from understanding real problems and caring enough to solve them the right way.

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