Last week I sat down with Haley Bateman, founder of Home, a personalized AI meditation app that's fixing what apps like Calm and Headspace cant seem to crack. She's a former art director who's building a whole product solo and non technical, using tools like Midjourney and Claude to create a full brand world before most founders even have a logo. We talked about why meditation apps struggle with retention, how brand becomes your only real moat when AI makes everything easy to copy, and how creatives can ship faster by treating AI like a really good intern.

Top Takeaways

1. Decision fatigue kills meditation app retention The big meditation apps have libraries with thousands of options and that actually makes people quit. When you open Calm and see 47 different sleep meditations you just close the app. Haley built Home around a chat first flow so the app asks you what you need, then generates one custom meditation. You just press play.

"It wasn't for a lack of discipline. It was for a lack of a tool that was meeting me where I'm at." — Haley

2. Brand is what you have left when everyone can build the same product AI is creating product parity across the board and that means the only thing that separates you is how your product makes people feel. Haley put it perfectly when she said this:

"Someone once told me an Equinox and a Crunch use the same gym equipment and they have two completely different brand values."

And that applies to meditation apps, productivity tools, anything. If you're building consumer, brand isn't extra, it's everything. 3. You can build a cinematic brand world with Midjourney if you have taste Haley's landing page looks like a film. And she made the whole thing using AI tools in a couple of days. But she didn't just type "meditation app vibes" into a prompt box. She started with a Pinterest board pulling from films, poetry, colors, textures. Then she built detailed prompts scene, time of day, lighting, camera angle, grain and iterated over and over.

"You just have to treat it like it's like a really high performing intern that knows every single style of anything ever." — Haley

Her process was start with still images first because video tends to look more AI, then animate the stills. And always reference real photography to understand what you actually like about it before you try to recreate it. She also used ChatGPT to teach her film and lighting terms so she could write better Midjourney prompts. 4. TikTok is a legit channel for founders to find VCs and community

Haley posted her YC application video on TikTok after she figured YC would auto reject her for being solo and non technical. That one video got 75k views, landed VCs in her inbox, and changed the trajectory of her company. She didn't overthink it, just posted honestly and let the algorithm do its thing. If you're a founder and you're not experimenting with short form video you're leaving reach on the table.

5. There's still tension around solo non technical founders even in the AI era YC rejected Haley and pushed her to find a technical co founder. And she's hearing the same thing from other investors even though people are also saying you don't need developers anymore because of AI. The market hasn't caught up to the reality yet and creatives building products are sitting in that gap right now.

Key Learnings

Start with culture, not competitors. Haley didn't look at other meditation apps when she built her brand. She made a Pinterest board from films, music, poetry, and pulled patterns from there. That's how you end up with something that feels different. Prompt like you're art directing. Good AI output takes detail and iteration. Write long prompts. Include scene description, camera angle, texture, movement, lighting. Then critique what comes back and push it further. It's still work. Match your brand rollout to your product quality. If your brand looks way better than your product actually is that gap will hurt you. Haley's being careful not to over promise visually before the tech can deliver the same experience. Naming matters more now. Slapping AI in your product name already feels dated. Pick something human that lasts. Haley started with OM AI and switched to Home because she realized people are getting tired of the AI branding wave.

What's Next

If you're a creative or non technical founder building with AI, the path Haley's on is going to become way more common. Brand and taste and storytelling are advantages now because the tech is accessible to everyone. And if you're in wellness, meditation, or any space with retention problems, chat first personalization to fix retention is worth studying. Haley's raising a pre seed round now to bring on dedicated technical talent and rolling out the full brand as the product catches up. You can join the waitlist at practicewithhome.com and watch her build in real time. Want to catch more founder conversations like this? Check out upcoming Catalyst webinars where we break down workflows that actually work.