Letting go of Expectations & Why we entered Stealth

"If you let go of expectations, reality may exceed what you expected"

I heard this line in the show 'bold type' playing on my laptop in the background as I was coming down from the high that was my startup's first internal hackathon.

This quote spoke to me so much in this moment because just days ago, I had completely different expectations for where my company would be today. You see, we had just finished our very many calls with a VC fund and I thought I would be announcing our initial round of funding today. It turns out those calls went really well until they didn't.

The day I found out this money was not going to make it into our bank account was actually weeks ago , my gut feeling was just off. I call that 'gut feeling' my internal compass and I consult it quite often. It doesn't give exact answers, more of a general vibe about whatever direction I'm going in and I have to say it has never failed me. In this case I just felt like we needed more time but I had kept pushing through because we had come so far in the process, I figured better to just let it play out.

We were not ready.

I was relieved when it did not go ahead but also a little bit sad because a chunk of the past couple of months and weeks had been spent building up to closing this round. People knew about it and they were waiting for 'the good news'. I felt like it would be a tangible thing to show my parents and say 'look, see, I'm a real entrepreneur , working on a real thing, these guys in suits say so' .

Alas, none of these are good reasons to raise funding / give away equity in your company prematurely and it is so easy to forget your 'why' especially when other smart people are telling you how great your idea is and how now is the time to go all in. I took my eye off the really important goal and succumbed to vanity metrics and feedback but luckily I realised it before it was too late and went back to recommitting myself in building the company I want to build with values that I believe in and it may take a little bit longer but it feels right and true.

I will never build something I don't wholeheartedly believe in, this is a promise I made myself at the start of this journey. This is why we went into partial stealth so that we can focus on our product with only the voices of our customers in the line of influencing what Klëm inevitably becomes.

Back to the starting quote, reality exceeded expectations when we had our first internal hackathon this last weekend and it went AMAZING! it was so good that we have decided to add hackathons to our flow. We held it over two days and accomplished results worth months of work in hours. Everyone on the team was in sync and so aligned by the end. I felt like we were in control, creating, dreaming, building- together.

What a buzz!

Treats were mandatory

I thought about how this idea sat in my head for years and now there were 6 other people, all giving up their entire weekend to sync up and build. How cool is that?

In conclusion , this week I thought our first major highlight as a company would come from external validation but in fact it came from us as a team and all the work we are doing that currently is only known to us and so only feels real when we are together.

I am so proud of this work. I am so proud of this team, their dedication, passion.

An exhausted but satisfied group .)

We will come out of partial stealth in time for Web Summit in November/ and upon our release of the very first product we have in the pipeline.

I would like to conclude with yet another set of wise words, this time from the master innovator himself.

Whatever you are doing in life, I hope you are finding your way back whenever you veer off course , veering off is unavoidable, the secret is in getting back on.

Thank you for reading!