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Redesigning Reflection: Our Weird, Ambitious Quest to Save Humanity

Alright, let’s get real. Let me tell you the story of WeFlect ID, the startup with a mission to be “the last hope for humanity’s reflective experience”… and how we spent a good part of our time at a pitching competition explaining to people what “reflective experience” even meant. LOL.

It all started with Jessica Aurellia. Back in 2023, she built the first version of WeFlect as her thesis project—a beautiful tool focused on self-love for her thesis. She’s the heart and soul, the original founder who saw a need for more kindness towards ourselves. I came on board, saw the potential, and saw a chance to take it further. Way further.

The big question for me was: How do you make reflection not just another app, but a truly engaging, rapid habit? I was inspired by card games like TentangKita that ask deep questions. It’s this deep deck of questions for couples that cuts through the small talk. It’s powerful because the questions are expertly crafted to unlock real emotions and thoughts. That was the “aha!” moment. What if an app could do that, but for your relationship with yourself? And what if it was as easy as talking to a friend?

So in 2024, we decided to rebuild from the ground up. I scrapped the old design and started from scratch. Together, we crafted this grand, slightly dramatic vision: To be the last hope for humanity. We believed that in a chaotic world, the ability to understand yourself was the ultimate anchor. It sounded epic in our heads.

We hustled. I coded. We designed, we planned, and then we took our “last hope for humanity” to the real world. I pitched at NetX (and we won!), and we set up our stand at the Bandung Startup Pitching Day at ITB, ready to impact lives.

And then… reality hit. People would come to our stand, look at our app, and their faces would just scream one thing: confusion.

• “‘Reflective experience’? What does that mean?”
• “Is this a diary app?”
• “So… you just… talk to yourself?”

It was humbling, to say the least. We had this beautifully crafted solution, but we were speaking a language our potential users didn’t understand. The “hungry audience” wasn’t just waiting for us; we had to explain why they should be hungry in the first place.

That was our biggest lesson. WeFlect ID wasn’t just about building a perfect technical product. It was about translating a profound human need into a simple, undeniable value proposition. It was about connection, not just code.

So, did we save humanity? Not quite. LOL.

But we learned the most valuable startup lesson there is: it’s not about your idea being too advanced; it’s about your ability to make it feel essential. We learned it as a team — a designer, a hustler, and a builder — trying to bring a little more wisdom into the world, one confused (but eventually curious) visitor at a time.