Flynt at one year: Things we cherish (and things we’ve learnt)

A year ago, Flynt was just a spark. Now it’s something real.

What began as an idea called “Flint,” a spark around a fire, has become late nights, Sunday sprints, and hundreds of early community members joining the ride. Here are some of the things we’ve loved, a few lessons we’ve learnt the hard way, and a look back at key moments from the past year.

Things we cherish

Sunday sprint planning. Every Sunday without fail, we meet to plan the week ahead. It’s become our anchor. A mix of structure and sanity — and a ritual we’ll protect no matter how busy things get. Working on something you genuinely care about. We have no investors (yet). Building Flynt feels like a jam session with your mate. Headphones on, deep work, and something new emerges each week. Running Flynt across five channels at once. We talk in Flynt WhatsApp for Flynt vibes, personal WhatsApp for life admin, Slack for real work, Instagram for motivational nonsense, and LinkedIn to laugh at the internet. It somehow works. Saying “huge”, “love”, or “strong agree” instead of “yes.” We don’t say “yes” anymore. It’s just “huge.” Watching the algorithm do its thing. There’s still a long way to go, but seeing our matching engine pair people who actually get on is a quiet thrill. Hearing from our earliest members. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. It’s early, but it’s clear we’re onto something people value. Talking about Flynt so much it becomes a running joke at your wedding. Yes, that happened. Playlists and a new appreciation for niche forms of ambient sound. Startups are won and lost on the quality of your playlist. Take this as gospel. (And MkGee, without MkGee we’d be nowhere)

Challenges we’ve learnt from

Building code AI-Assisted. “I hear you, I’ve fixed it.” Nope, still broken. “Got it, fixed now.” Nope, still broken. Lesson: give Cursor context — markdown files, clear rules, and lots of patience. Email. Deliverability is harder than it should be — especially when you’re sending both comms and calendar invites. We’ve learnt a lot about SPF, DKIM, and humility. Testability. When you build fast, it’s easy to forget the “test” in test-driven development. We’re fixing that now. We even built a backend time-travel feature that lets us simulate the Flynt experience on different days of the match cycle. Sunday sprint planning after a birthday party. Regret. But it’s still worth it. Fixing calendar permissions on your wedding day. Yes, genuinely. Don’t do this. Sending emails from localhost. We’ve all been there. Sorry to the early alpha users who got those. Merging straight to production. Pure chaos. We now have pull requests, staging environments, and CD tests. Progress. Making time for our loved ones. This one’s been the hardest — for us, and for the people closest to us. The only real solve has been being proactive: communicating openly and being fully present in the small windows we do get together. Also, coding in the kitchen so people can still talk to you while making a cuppa.

Key Moments Along the Way

The launch text — 10 November 2024 A WhatsApp group, a name, and an idea that stuck. That’s how Flynt began.

First logo and landing page — 3 March We had no brand guidelines, just a belief that connection could feel good again.

Long-term vision starts taking shape — 17 March The first dashboard mockups. It started to look like something real.

Incorporating — 26 May The paperwork moment. Suddenly we were a company.

First team away day — 21 June (a marathon in Norway) Some people take offsites in meeting rooms. We took ours at 42km.

First match — 14 August Seeing two people actually connect through Flynt was surreal. Proof the engine worked.

Looking ahead: we’re scaling the Beta to hundreds of users this quarter. The matching engine’s getting smarter, and we’re just getting started on making professional connection feel the way it should — warm, human, and genuinely valuable.