The story of a start-up: The genesis
It is said that everything in this universe (or multiverse, if you’re into such beliefs) has a story. Some are arguably more interesting than others, but they are, ultimately, stories that we can always look back to and recount. What is more interesting, though, is that given our space-time continuum, stories have three facets. The past which is engraved, immutable and tangible, the present which is actionable and introspectable and the future, which is yet undetermined and influenceable. Last but not least, all of these stories are not isolated in their own little sphere, but are intertwined with many others, and as such, craft the tapestry of our life.
Of course, this view on life, at least from my own point of view, is the result of the passing of the years, a certain evolution of the mindset on life and (some would say) wisdom. When I look back at the younger, wilder version of myself from 15 years ago and its view on life at that point, I cannot help but wince. Details are irrelevant, but suffice to say that if I had the opportunity to send a message back in time to that version of myself, I could probably write a book, which could more or less pass as an autobiography. That’s what drives most people to write their autobiographies, I suppose. Since we do not have time-traveling objects, we can only hope that others can perhaps learn from our story and skip some of the cringey moments in life, so that we can reach those moments of satisfaction faster and with less effort.
That… is the theory, at least. In practice, as Churchill once reportedly said, we, humans, are doomed to repeat history because we do not learn from it and I am no exception. Yet, another trait of humanity is its persistence and defiance in the face of futility, which is why this blog series was born.
Of course, as mentioned earlier, some stories are more interesting than others and I’m confident that my own life story is nothing to write home about. The story I want to tell in the coming months on this blog is a story of entrepreneurship, of sacrifice, of technical challenges, of failure and, hopefully as we go along, of success.
Last week we participated in Web Summit, one of the biggest events in the Tech world, as a startup in their ALPHA programme. For those not familiar, it is a programme aimed at pre-seed and A-series start-ups looking to expand their visibility, network and reach. We had the opportunity to showcase and demo our product, Velamnis, and engage with the audience.
We were uplifted by the positive feedback we received, especially for a product which is far from complete, and one of the questions we received the most was “What inspired you to build this?”. It’s not the question itself that surprised me, but rather the amount of people that asked it and the reason they asked it. I initially thought that the question was a mere formality, but after getting a few of them, I countered the question with another one, namely, “What made you curious about that?”, to which, I was surprised to hear many answers in the vein of “Because this product resonates so much with me!”
That is probably some of the best feedback any (future) customer could provide because it tells us that we are doing the right thing. We hear about emerging start-ups all the time, but unfortunately, we also hear about the demise of many start-ups. Almost every start-up (and business in general) in existence started with an idea. Someone had an idea and the vision to bring that idea to life; but an idea is not enough for a business to evolve or survive. Marc Randolph has an excellent article about why most ideas, in fact, are terrible, but just because an idea is terrible or unoriginal, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t work on it, as long as you keep an open mind about transforming that idea and finding alignment with the audience your business is targeting. As Marc says, many successful business of our time started out with terrible ideas which didn’t get too much traction, but they had the willingness to follow the audience and pivot. A large chunk of start-ups failed because they stubbornly tried to keep solving a problem that nobody really had in the first place. This is why the feedback we got during Web Summit is so important. It confirms that we’re aligned with (most of) our audience and that our idea solves a problem for them and might not be so terrible, after all.
Going on to actually answering that question, there are two components to the motivation behind building Velamnis. One is personal and the other is social, but they mostly overlap.
I was born in an eastern european country which had been under soviet influence for decades up until the ’90s. Personal surveillance was an integral part of daily life and the Ruling Party made sure that everyone was an agent for their benefit, whether they liked it or not, and whether they knew it or not. There are great books on this, if it sounds fascinating to you, so I won’t go too much into the details, but basically, even before the “online” was a thing, our lives were full of elements which spied on us.I was too young to be directly affected, but I remember the stories my parents and grandparents used to tell me about this. Mind you, this was not something which was confined to Soviet-linked countries. Surveillance was and still is an integral element of most governments. The soviets were just not as subtle about it. In fact, they were quite blunt and direct about it.
Fast-forward a decade or two and the Internet took the world by storm. As with our real lives, surveillance soon found its way into every aspect of our virtual lives. From the websites we visited to the emails we sent, the bulletin boards we posted on, the shopping sites we used, and of course, let’s not forget, social media, surveillance was there, in one form or another, and not just by governments. Now, Big Tech also wanted in on a slice of the pie because it figured out that big money could be made with targeted advertisement. Indirect surveillance also increased. Stalking became as easy as searching for a name on Facebook. Discrimination found a facilitator in online profiles. Candidates could be dropped from interviews due to posts or views they expressed on social media. The ’10s were definitely a golden age of surveillance and a dark age for our privacy.
Luckily, around the ’10s, some influential people got fed up with this wild west scenario and some frameworks started to appear, some even going as far as legal enforcement, to diminish surveillance and enforce a degree of privacy, but it was, in this author’s opinion, too little and too late. Instead of tackling this in a proactive way, we were being reactive and trying to shoehorn these frameworks in a society which had been “educated” to either ignore surveillance or to think it is benefitting it, but worst of all, a society which learned how to exploit it.
As a young and rather enthusiastic engineer, I felt proud of working in Big Tech, but not so proud about my Big Tech entourage. Imagine discovering a critical flaw in a backend system, reporting it, only for the report to disappear and be talked into forgetting what you found and not talking to anyone about it. Or discovering that others abused their privilege of data access to obtain blackmail material and seeing them so light-heartedly joke about it. Or being recruited into shadow teams dealing with covert surveillance on behalf of particular actors, all for the “benefit of society” and accepting because what you knew was already too much for you to willingly stay on the sides and fearing dismissal. Did it feel like those stories my grandparents used to tell me? It sure did, only at a whole different virtual level.
So, Big Tech doesn’t care about protecting the users’ privacy, despite all the noise it makes about it. The people working for Big Tech don’t care about that either, quite the opposite. But someone did! Someone did and wanted to do something about it, without kicking the hornets’ nest. I tried to navigate this fine line back then and worked towards a similar product, only to eventually end up in a meeting with HR and a few friendly chaps in suits and ties with briefcases explaining to me how difficult my life will be if I choose to ignore their friendly advice to cease and desist. Not the place you want to be when you’re riding the wave of your professional life, so I decided to yield.
Soon, I left Big Tech behind and moved into something different, but the idea stuck with me. It was clear that Big Tech wouldn’t be compatible with my side-hustle, so it was time to shift gears. I talked to people about the idea and the general opinion was the same: why would I want to do something that goes head-first against the current dogma? how will I survive in such a hostile environment? why would I choose such a difficult path to tread? In other words, why would I work against them, and not with them? My idea was user-centric but anti-corporate, anti-investors and anti-monetization. I even got some laughs out and responses such as “Users don’t keep you alive, investors do! Users are just KPIs, you’re going for the wrong crowd!” (this one in particular stuck with me).
Eventually, I accepted the reality that this will be a lone venture and decided to start working towards it. Big ideas, however, required big money. And money isn’t easily made (note that I say “made”, not “raised”). While talking to several entrepreneurs who were willing to share their insight on how to navigate the murky waters of bootstrapping a start-up, I collected that knowledge and put it to good use. It’s an arduous journey which has only barely begun, but we are determined to follow it.
Upcoming blog posts will take a look at how we’re managing that, what our vision is and how we plan to achieve that vision and make Velamnis a successful, user-centric product that can survive in this hostile environment.
You can start using Velamnis right away for free and until November 30th you can use the code WEBSUMMIT23 on checkout to claim 6 months of Premium access at no cost. We’d like you to take this opportunity to evaluate Velamnis in the upcoming months and decide whether it is the right fit for you. Currently, just file transfers are available but development is underway for file storage and instant messaging, so keep an eye out on our Release Notes page.
This post was authored by Claudiu Curcă — Founder
