How to Start a Business to Solve a Personal Problem
- Brainz Magazine
- Apr 3
- 10 min read
Aneela Idnani is a lived-experience expert in Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors (BFRBs). As co-founder of HabitAware, a TIME Magazine “Best Invention,” she creates innovative solutions for mental health recovery & behavior change. Aneela is also an author, TEDx & keynote speaker. Aneela knows that when we lead with love, we find peace & purpose.
They say, “Build what you know.” I say, build what breaks your heart. When your startup is rooted in a personal problem, one that’s lived in your body, that you’ve cried over, fought through, and finally come to understand, you’re building with a kind of power that can’t be taught.
That’s how HabitAware was born: from both market research and lived experience. What follows are the hard-earned insights and lessons that helped transform private pain into real-world impact.
Childhood games become grown-up desires
As a kid, I was a bit of an outlier. While other girls played house or school, I gravitated toward baseball and Legos with the boys. I didn’t fully connect with the typical “girl” roles; I felt more at home in my tomboy skin. My energy went into creative and cause-driven projects: crafting, scrapbooking, and writing stories about the environment and racial justice.
But my favorite game? Playing “office.”
It was the world I knew best. I watched my parents run things side by side, both managing my mom’s dental practice and my dad running his import/export business from our basement home office. It wasn’t just play. It was my first glimpse into the rhythms of entrepreneurship. Looking back, it’s clear: the seed was being planted.
In our childhood games, my best friend and I ran imaginary restaurants, hotels, and even cruise ships. We weren’t just playing; we were creating our own world. Those early make-believe businesses lit a spark in me and because real desires. Those playdates motivated me toward studying business in college.
But like so many of us do, I got practical. As I got older, the pull toward entrepreneurship was gradually quieted by the voices of fear, conformity, and a craving for stability. I fell into accounting during my junior year of high school and fell in love with it. In the wake of losing my dad to cancer around that time, the structure of accounting offered a calm in the chaos. Balancing T-accounts was soothing. Accounting calmed the invisible anxiety within me. It gave me a roadmap at a time when my path felt so uncertain. I wanted and needed something safe in that time of loss. I needed a clear path forward. And so, I chose accounting.
Still, in choosing that path, I was silencing another part of me: the creative spirit that stayed up late writing poetry, sketching ideas, and designing graphics. I went on to earn my CPA license, but I kept feeling stuck, yearning for something more expressive, more me.
So I left to go find it. I took a leap and enrolled at the Miami Ad School. In a flamingo-pink building full of wild ideas and color, I learned strategy, art direction, copywriting, and production. It was the polar opposite of black-and-white accounting. I was totally out of my element and completely at home. For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t just working; I was coming alive. I had gone from feeling unfulfilled to learning how to fill my own cup.
The next six years took me deep into the world of advertising in New York and Minneapolis. Through the creative process, I started to understand entrepreneurship in a whole new way how ideas are shaped, tested, and brought to life. But over time, I found myself growing frustrated. So much energy was poured into pixel-perfect Instagram posts or million-dollar Super Bowl spots. I was crafting joyful visual experiences, yes but I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were missing the plot. The activist in me was restless. I wanted to create work that made a meaningful impact, not just impressions.
Insight: Over the years, in my twisty-turny career path, I’ve learned something simple but powerful: our child-selves know us best. Before the world gets loud with its expectations, job titles, and fear of judgment, we’re guided by pure signals of what lights us up. If we can hold onto those signals, they just might point us toward what we’re truly meant to build.
The secret I hid for 20 years
When we moved to Minneapolis, I told my husband, Sameer, “I want to start a business.” I didn’t know what kind yet, but I was keeping my eyes open for a problem worth solving. After a few months and no lightning bolts, I went back to advertising.
It was during this time, while pregnant with my first child, that a secret I’d carried for over 20 years finally came to light.
You see, I live with trichotillomania, a condition where I automatically pull out my hair as a form of self-regulation when I’m stressed, anxious, bored, tired, or overstimulated. As a kid, I didn’t understand why I did it. I just liked the sensation of tugging at my eyelashes and eyebrow, the strange satisfaction of the tiny “rip” sound.
For decades, I hid behind my black eye pencil, terrified that if people saw my missing lashes or brows, they’d think I was unstable. Incapable. Less-than. I thought I was alone in this.
But I wasn’t. I later learned that Trichotillomania is part of a group of mental health conditions called Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors (BFRBs). BFRBs also include skin picking (dermatillomania or excoriation disorder), nail biting (onychophagia), cheek biting, nose picking, lip picking, and more. These behaviors affect nearly 1 in 20 people. They are the most common disorders you’ve never heard of because, like me, many of us are hurting in hiding.
One morning, I couldn’t hide anymore. During my pregnancy, the pulling had become unmanageable. Sameer noticed a large patch missing from my eyebrow and asked gently, “Aneela, where are your eyebrows?”
Overcome with shame, I finally whispered the truth: “I pulled them out.”
Instead of the judgement I feared, Sameer leaned in. He caught me with his eyebrows, and then he caught me with his love and support. He read everything he could find online to understand what I was going through. A few nights later, as we sat on the couch watching TV, and I was unknowingly pulling again, he gently grabbed my hand. And that’s when the idea sparked:
“I wish I just had something that notified me.”
That wish became a business, HabitAware, and a solution: the Keen, and now Keen2, smart bracelet for BFRBs. My husband and I built it alongside John and Kirk, two incredibly talented friends who brought the technical magic to life.
Keen2 uses gesture detection algorithms to recognize specific, repetitive hand movements like nail biting, skin picking, nose picking, and hair pulling on the scalp, face, or beard. When it detects one of these trained gestures, it gently vibrates a subtle “hug on the wrist” that snaps you back to awareness.
That shift from subconscious to conscious is the foundation of behavior change. Because the truth is, you can’t change what you don’t notice. But once you’re aware, you can begin to interrupt the pattern and replace it with healthier alternatives. With practice, you're not just managing the behavior; you’re retraining your brain.
Insight: Awareness isn’t just the foundation of behavior change; it’s also the heartbeat of product innovation. Building a tech solution like Keen2 required us to stay curious, collaborative, and deeply connected to both our users and our team. From idea to iteration, progress came by paying attention to patterns, to feedback, to what was working and what wasn’t. You can’t change or improve what you don’t recognize. Great products don’t emerge fully formed; they evolve through deep listening, trial and error, and a shared belief in the problem you’re solving together.
HabitAware stops hair pulling
In building Keen to help myself, I regrew my eyebrows and my self-confidence. Importantly, we discovered that helping yourself can be the first step to helping others.
Since our launch in 2017, HabitAware has supported BFRB recovery for tens of thousands of people across 80+ countries. According to surveys, 94% report the bracelet increases awareness and 82% report a reduction in behaviors by using Keen2. We are teaching people how to use awareness to pause and in many cases stop hair pulling. We’ve received countless beautiful messages from our Keen family. But one from a mom named Mindy continues to stay with me:
“Your bracelets have helped in a way. that are indescribable. Instead of coming home from school and isolating himself because he's ashamed of pulling his hair, my son comes home and wants to talk about how many times his bracelet reminded him of where his hands were. Thank you again so much." –Mindy
Her young son was suffering. Now because of HabitAware, he’s on a new path a path of awareness, compassion, and control.
Insight: Personal solutions can scale when built with intention. By anchoring our product in lived experience and continuously iterating based on real user feedback, we turned a private struggle into a global solution. The data speaks for itself: 94% of users report increased awareness and 82% report reduced behaviors. When a product truly works for one and is refined with the input of many, it can work for thousands.
How we built a BFRB business
Honestly, the how is textbook:
Identify a problem
Design & develop an initial solution
Test, iterate & improve
Go to market
It’s the process that is taught in business schools and accelerator programs everywhere. But there’s one step they rarely emphasize and it’s the most important of all:
Believe in the idea.
The startup world loves to glamorize the “build something cool, move fast, break things and make millions” narrative. But that’s never been my motivation. And if you want to build something that lasts, it can’t be yours, either.
Insight: Startups fueled by belief, not just market trends, have staying power. When you build from personal conviction, you’re more resilient, more focused, and more connected to your end user. That belief becomes your edge: it guides your decisions, attracts the right people, and carries you through the inevitable challenges. In a world chasing virality, belief is your long game.
Why solving your own problem works
Solving your own problem gives you something deeper than profit: belief. When you believe in the impact you can make, you become a competitive advantage. Here’s how:
1. Market access
You speak the language of the community because you are the community. You understand the pain, the patterns, and the quiet nuances others might miss. That insider perspective builds instant trust, loyalty, and support.
I’ve been part of the BFRB community for years, long before HabitAware existed. I know the language. I know the shame. I know what people need to feel safe and seen because I needed it too. That’s why our community shows up for us: tagging us in posts, cheering each other on, and offering support. That’s the power of building something from within; it resonates because it’s real.
2. Lean Development
When you deeply understand the problem, you build smarter. You can separate the must-haves from the nice-to-haves because you’ve lived the experience. That clarity allows you to focus, prioritize, and get to market faster and better than those solving from the outside in.
Early on, another team saw what we were building and pivoted into our space. But their product lacked discretion, wasn’t as effective, and ultimately didn’t resonate. Why? Because people can feel the difference between something built from love and something built for opportunity.
3. Staying power
And here’s the biggest reason to build a startup that solves your own problem: you’ll stick with it.
When things get tough, and they will, you don’t quit. Because it’s personal, you care more. When accounting got hard, I walked away. When advertising lost meaning, I left. But HabitAware? This is different. This work is too meaningful to walk away from.
When it’s your story, your pain, and your purpose, you can’t and won’t give up.
Insight: You are your market. You are your competitive advantage. When you build from personal experience, you don’t just understand your customer; you are your customer. That gives you clarity, credibility, and commitment. It leads to smarter decisions, more authentic messaging, and deeper community connections. And when people trust that you truly get them, they show up for your mission, and for your product. That’s how you create value, both financial and personal. That’s how you build something that lasts and something that matters.
A challenge for you
Pay attention to the problems that keep showing up in your life. Your pain might just be your path.
Don’t start a business just to start a business because everyone else is. Start by solving your real problem.
To find your version of success, I hope you will look within to connect with your inner child. And I hope you will look around to see the community you’re meant to serve. Start by listening to the whispers of your heart. That’s what I learned after surviving breast cancer: the Universe whispers before it screams. Don’t wait for lightning. Start now.
Your childhood self knew what you cared about. Your present self knows what hurts. Your future self is waiting for you to connect the two. When you turn your problem into your “why,” you build something that can heal both yourself and others.
When you build something you believe in, others will believe in it too. And they’ll show up to help you grow it.
If you're carrying pain, consider that it might just be the seed of your purpose. Plant it. Water it. Share it. That’s how to start a startup that moves with intention and fixes problems.
That's how you build what matters.
That’s how your solution could be someone else’s miracle.
You don’t need to have it all figured out. You just need to begin with honesty, with heart, and with the willingness to follow the thread of your own story.
Whether you’re building for millions or helping just one person (including yourself), know this: Purpose-driven progress is still progress. And small, intentional steps taken in alignment with who you are will always get you further than chasing someone else’s definition of success.
If you’re ready to build something that matters, start with what matters to you.
Read more from Aneela Idnani
Aneela Idnani, Mental Health Founder and Advocate
Aneela Idnani is a lived-experience expert in Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors (BFRBs). As co-founder of HabitAware, a TIME Magazine Best Invention backed by NIH research, she creates innovative solutions for mental health recovery and behavior change. She is also an author, TEDx speaker, and Certified Peer Support Specialist, using her voice to drive change and mental health equity. Through storytelling and advocacy, Aneela empowers others to break free from shame and build self-awareness. She believes that when we lead with "Love, Strength and Awareness," we create space for growth. By turning pain into purpose, Aneela helps others find peace and freedom.
