About a month ago, I made a big call: I decided to stop taking on new fractional projects and go all in on building an AI-native startup, MuseKat.

It felt like a risk. A lot of people were surprised to hear I was taking this leap—especially for an idea that, on paper, isn't fully validated yet.

But in many ways, the decision wasn’t all that different from how I’ve structured my career over the past four years. When I take on fractional roles, I typically dedicate about 80% of my efforts to one deep embed—helping a client bring something to life. This time, I decided to use that energy to conceptualize and build something of my own. (The only difference is, I'm not getting paid to do it. At least, not yet.)

The week after I made the decision, I had a Zoom call to get advice from a friend who’s spent far more time building in consumer apps than I have. After I walked him through what I was building and why, he encouraged me to share more of my personal story—to invite people into the lived experiences and pain points that led me here.

I rewatched the video and realized there's nothing more authentic than the way I originally told him the story. So rather than make a new (more polished) video, I decided to just share that version for now. Here's the origin of MuseKat, in 3 minutes:

The Origin of MuseKat

As I share in this video, MuseKat was born from my own experience solo parenting my kids on Saturdays this past fall. If you’ve ever spent an entire weekend alone with young kids, you know—it’s intense. The endless stream of questions. The energy. The constant external monologue from toddlers who are just finding their voices.

But what struck me most was how differently we each experienced the same moment.

• As a 37-year-old mom who loves exploring NYC, I wanted to wander and explore my surroundings

• My endlessly curious 4.5-year-old just wanted answers—about everything

• My 2-year-old? She just wanted to do whatever her big sister was doing

It hit me: The way we engage with the world isn’t one-size-fits-all. But most learning environments are.

The power of AI to bring customizable "learning lenses" to any context is an idea I've been curious about for a very long time. And MuseKat is the first articulation of this idea. Rather than rely on a grown-up as the translator, or on museums themselves (which can’t possibly convert every object into a kid-friendly story), why not offload that work to a friendly AI-powered meerkat named Miko?

The Time to Build is Now

In this AI age, I’ve also been deeply curious about what it really means to build an AI-native startup—one that isn’t just using AI as a layer on top of existing workflows, but is fundamentally AI-forward in its design.

MuseKat felt like the right opportunity to take that exploration seriously. So, for now, I’m dedicating my time to figuring it out—one experiment, one story, and one learning lens at a time.

There’s obviously still a lot to figure out from here. But this idea had just enough of a spark—enough potential—to be worth chasing down, at least for a while. So I wanted to share my thought process out loud, in case any of you are standing at the edge of your own cliff, wondering whether to take the leap. There aren’t many certainties about what this AI age will mean for our future—but maybe that’s exactly the point. Rather than waiting for clarity, why not lean into the uncertainty and see what comes out on the other side?