Product Therapy: mental agility, the most beautiful parking lot and oversized clothes
August 2026
Bumping Along
About a year ago, I was hitting my 3-month mark at Hampton. I was adjusting to a new kind of messy and a different kind of pace that I can only now recognize as working at a startup. I spent my entire career in Big Tech and the transition to a startup, particularly after working for myself, was jarring and at times, painful.
Through that discomfort I learned how to adapt my ways, my assumptions and my nervous system to a sea of uncertainty while the ground continued to shift underneath me. It was one of the hardest professional adjustments I’ve ever made and one that gave me this new skill set I’m reflecting on during pregnancy: true mental agility.
As a seasoned PM that worked in agile development I thought I knew speed, scrappy and living in the ambiguity.
Spoiler: I didn’t.
Startup life blew my practices out of the water. Out with the old and in with the new: Improvisation, incrementally and incomplete information. Somewhere in there, the startup training started to prepare me for the life chapter I’m in right now: pregnancy.
Every week is something new: a physical curveball, a mental hurdle, a crash landing into a new trimester. It’s thrilling and downright exhausting. Friends say pregnancy’s stages are the actual preparation you need for having a kid, because its quite similar.
And so, today, I’m sitting with a moment of gratitude for how working at at startup better prepared me to weather the unknowns of pregnancy. And how both of those experiences have possibly better prepared me for when my daughter arrives in the fall.
How? I’m more accepting of the unknown, welcoming of it rather victim to its grip. I don’t have all the information because I refuse to read all the baby books (I have no interest). And despite all the spreadsheets and project management I’ve inflicted on my household, I know that the lowest priority items on our to-do list will not be done by the time the baby arrives. And I’m not as upset about that as I would have been in the past.
So while the meta point, How working at a startup prepared me for pregnancy, is the most click baity Substack topic one could ponder, I’m sitting in the truth of that as a teeter on the edge of my 3rd trimester.
Passing through my portal of change.
Things I Stacked
After reflecting on a year at Hampton, I was compelled to deep dive on real-life experiences in product strategy and product market fit.
And yes the product market fit includes Karaoke.
Culture Clicks
Move over fro-yo, Culture in the Garment District has a dessert worth traveling for. No but for real, the black and white cookie 🍪 is only secondary to Levain. Despite having grown up in Chicago, I had never visited nor done the Chinatown experience. Boxes checked - karaoke and dim sum, ✅ ✅. In NYC, I finally tried Kings County Imperial and it was excellent.
I visited Metro 🎥 for a friends birthday - the private movie theater experience was incredible. I also made a poor choice to watch The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare before bed 📺 and I’m continuing to practice sitting in the uncertainty. Because I have many questions.
In my final stretch of pregnancy, getting dressed continues to be a struggle. When I’m not renting things from Nuuly, I’m lounging in my favorite oversized t-shirts which are definitely overpriced but are certainly the most cozy. I pre-ordered this one because I’m a classic millennial.
Substack clicks
I’m Jori Bell, VP of Core at Hampton and a coach for Product Leaders. Learn more about my coaching practice here.
This comparison is spot on…
And also obsessed with that joyful pic of you bumping along. 🩵