Hitting publish on this first post feels a lot scarier than any “go live” button I’ve pressed on a product. There’s a particular kind of vulnerability in saying - “this is what I’m building, this is why it matters to me, and this is the version of myself I’m choosing to bring into the world”. It’s nerve‑wracking, but it’s also one of the few moments in building where the fear sits right alongside a quiet sense of conviction - I’m doing something I genuinely believe in.
Over the last few years, I’ve spent a lot of time inside the world of “professional networking”. I’ve watched my connection count go up, learned what kinds of posts tend to get likes, and seen how easy it is to mistake activity for progress. On the surface, those numbers look great - more followers, more impressions, more comments. But underneath, I kept coming back to a simple question - if all of this is working, why do so many of us still feel alone in what we’re trying to build?
In product and business, we talk about vanity metrics all the time. Page views vs. retention. Sign‑ups vs. activation. It turns out the same thing applies to our careers. Connection count, likes, and comment threads are the vanity metrics of networking. Nice to look at, easy to screenshot, but not always a reliable measure of what actually makes a difference to our lives. The real value shows up somewhere else entirely.
The “real” metrics for me look more like this:
✅ How often do I have a conversation where I can be honest about what I’m struggling with?
✅ When I share something I care about, does anyone go beyond “great post” and actually engage with the idea?
âś… Am I getting thoughtful, personalised recommendations - people, resources, perspectives - that genuinely move my work forward?
âś… Do I feel like I can show up as myself and still be taken seriously?
Those moments are harder to quantify, but they’re also the ones that make the late nights and hard decisions feel less like a solo battle and more like a shared journey. They’re the difference between feeling like you’re shouting into the void and feeling like you’re part of a small circle that’s building alongside you.
That’s why I’m building tara.
The vision is simple: a world where the journey of building what you believe in is shared, not solitary. The mission is to bring curious, driven people together for authentic conversations. Conversations that spark new ideas, offer fresh perspectives, and slowly build the kind of trusted relationships that make meaningful work possible. Instead of optimising for reach, tara is designed to optimise for depth.
In practice, that means focusing on the kinds of “metrics” we rarely see on dashboards:
✨ The quality of a conversation, not just the number of participants.
✨ Whether someone feels understood, not just responded to.
✨ Whether a match led to a new idea, a mindset shift, or a sense of being less alone.
✨ Whether people feel valued for their authenticity, not just their polish.
I know what it feels like to be out of sync with traditional professional spaces. To walk into a room (physical or virtual) and feel like you’re meant to perform a role rather than show up as a whole person. tara is my attempt to create a different kind of space. One where the starting point is curiosity, not credentials. Where empathy matters as much as expertise. Where it’s okay to say “I don’t have this figured out, but I want to talk about it.”
So this is my hello world. A small, imperfect, very human beginning.
If any of this resonates, if you’re tired of chasing networking vanity metrics and you’re more interested in building deeper, more honest connections… then I’d love for you to be part of the early access launch of tara. This first version will be small on purpose, so we can really listen, learn, and shape it together with the people it’s for.
Here’s to making 2026 less about bigger networks and more about better conversations.
