8 quick questions (and answers) about Henosia

This is the second post of our #buildinpublic series. As everyone might not have followed along from the beginning, here is a quick recap of the What, Who, Why, Where, When, and How (and a few more) of Henosia :

What is Henosia?

Henosia is a code-native design tool for UX designers and developers, to help them build better digital products, by eliminating the handoff gap and empowering the designer to code without writing code.

Because it can work directly in production code, it is able to push and pull from GitHub, almost like a visual IDE for designers.

This means no more manual translation of vector drawings into working interfaces, and no more code exports that can’t be read back into the tool.

#designheartscode ?????

Who is behind Henosia?

The two founders of Henosia are Jim Meyer and Janne Jul Jensen, Ph.D. (me). Jim is a front-end developer and I’m a UX designer. We both hold 20 years of experience in our respective fields, and we met at Elsevier where we were colleagues for 3 years.

Why are we building Henosia?

During our 20 years of work in the field, we’ve both experienced the handoff gap firsthand, and we have lived the pains it inflicts, like

• The constant struggle to keep design and code in sync.
• The frustration as a designer of only indirectly being able to affect the product through developers (what they code is what gets shipped).
• The manual work of translating designs into working code.
• The endless iterations to try to align design and code with each other into a coherent product.

It is based on this, that we decided to make it possible for designers to design directly in code, rather than in drawing tools and prototyping tools, as this would eliminate the above list of pains.

“Design is not how it looks, it is how it works” (Steve Jobs), and how it works is ultimately decided by the code, not by a drawing or a prototype.

Where does the name and logo come from?

The name Henosia stems from the Greek word Henosis which means "oneness", "union" or "unity". Henosia makes it possible to unite design and code, creating one source of truth. This is also present in the Henosia logo, in which two branches merge into one, cutting off the upper right of the "H" creating the lowercase "h".

When did it all start?

The first idea for how to actually do this, technically, came over Christmas 2019 and was made into a PoC in the spring of 2020. For a long while it remained a side project, although taking up more and more time. As a result, in Spring 2022 we quit our jobs and went full-time on Henosia.

How do you fund it?

It turned out our timing was the worst ever! We came out swinging in 2022 and started pitching investors, just as interest rates and inflation started to climb and the investment market froze over (except for anything AI ??). It didn’t work. Even though many of them recognized the novelty and potential of the idea, it was too early, too risky, too expensive, too unproven, too … everything, in this market.

We decided to stop wasting our time on something that clearly wasn’t happening right now, and instead spent that time more constructively building out the product, getting user feedback, approaching potential customers etc. instead.

Until then we had been bootstrapping, and we’d be able to continue doing that for some time too. Thankfully we didn’t have to, as our application for Innovation Fund Denmark’s Innofounder program was approved and we’ve been part of that since the fall of 2022 (highly recommended, BTW! Ping me if you want to hear more).

As the investor market is still not out of the ditch yet, we continue down this road of bootstrapping and public funding for the foreseeable future, and we already have ideas and applications out for financing the next leg of our journey, ultimately to be “VC fundable” once the market recovers.

Thankfully, we have been able to do this because it is only the two of us, and we can turn our burn rate way down low. It wouldn’t be that easy if we had a team to care for too.

How far are you?

We are currently in Alpha and are in the process of onboarding Alpha users. We look forward to learning from these Alpha users’ experience and usage of Henosia and based on that, improve and expand Henosia to best meet their needs. You can read more about the status of Henosia in our first #buildinpublic post here .

If you are interested in joining the Alpha, feel free to send me a message.

Who is helping you?

The list is too long to start mentioning everyone by name! But there are some categories of people who have helped us with various aspects of this journey we’re on:

• A number of current or former startup C-suites: being kind enough to advise us on all sorts of topics, such as feedback on pitch deck, brainstorming on product vision, building financial models, discussing go to market approaches etc. (You know who you are!)
• A few community thought leaders: taking time to watch demos and comment on the narrative of Henosia, as well as let us pick their brain on what they look for in new products.
• Our Innofounder mentor Jannie Friis Kristensen : She has multi-hatted along with us, acting as cheerleader, devils advocate, inquisitor, facilitator, and sanity checker, all while generously sharing her network and looking out for our well being too. Thanks, Jannie, you’re a gem!
• VCs and angel investors: not just saying no, but giving us some constructive and actionable feedback to take forward.
• Henosia’s early users: Those who tested with us along the way, Dezide , who were the first to take a chance on us, and our more recently onboarded Alpha users all of whom have agreed to take Henosia for a spin and are giving us honest and frank actionable feedback.
• Event organizers: Inviting us to speak, participate, sit on a panel, be on a podcast, featuring us in a newsletter, or in any other form giving us a platform that allows us to reach another sliver of our potential audience.
• ….And our entire network: On LinkedIn, Twitter and IRL taking interest, commenting, sharing, asking questions and generally rooting for us, whether in public or more quietly in private messages or conversations.

No matter which category you belong in: Thank you! ?? It takes a village, and all that.

Want to hear more?

There are multiple ways to follow our journey with Henosia:

• Go to?my profile ?and click the bell icon ??. That way you get notified about each new?#buildinpublic ?article I post (expect about one per week).
• Follow us on Twitter under the handle?@HenosiaHQ , or follow us individually under @JanneJulJensen and @JimMeyer
• Follow our hashtag?#designheartscode both on here and on Twitter
• If you have any questions or would like to learn more about Henosia, please reach out at?[email protected], we'd be happy to chat. Perhaps you can even join the Alpha, as we're currently taking in our second batch of Alpha users! You can sign up?on our website .

Thanks for reading along!

-Janne ????