My Startup Stories: Lost In The Forest. Day 599
I am standing on a small rock, in the middle of the wilderness.
The air has started to get colder and I can feel how winter is closing.
I am exhausted.
I’m trying to look around, but a thick layer of trees and bushes are blocking my view. Every direction looks the same. Because my team is waiting, I try to squeeze out a little more willpower to determine where to head next.
The past 1,5 years, I and my team have been grinding like never before. Along the way, we’ve surely found small gold nuggets here and there. Nothing huge, but enough to keep us going deeper into the woods. Now, after this endless fighting and survival, we are all tired — dead tired.
While I’m standing and trying to stare through the woods, a flashback strikes and takes me back to the day I wanted to leave the town. I was so full of energy and ready to kick some ass! Young’s inexperience and general defiance are a combination that surely gets you moving but it also has highly unpredictable results.
…you can’t find gold if you never leave the town.
When we left the town, we did it with style. We left our loved ones and told them how we would come back with more gold we could ever spend. Many were suspicious and doubted us, but we didn’t care. After all, you can’t find gold if you never leave the town. So we left and headed to the thickest forest we could find.
I can’t be angry with sharks if I swim in an ocean.
Now, as I am way too deep into the wilderness to come back, I feel lost. All that pride, pompous attitude, and self-confidence are gone. I’ve lost more than I’ve ever owned and trusted people I shouldn’t have trusted. So far, this has been an extremely costly endeavor, without any certainty that it would eventually pay back.
But, I am too tired to even feel anger. And to whom would I even be angry with? Maybe the people that fooled me? I can’t be angry with sharks if I swim in an ocean. Maybe I would be angry with me? I did my best at the time and always with good intentions. Hindsight everything looks so clear and obvious, but that’s a luxury none of us really have.
As I am standing and spending my last remaining bits of energy, I can feel how my team grows restless. Mutiny is not far away, if I don’t decide my next move quickly. These guys are all I have and without them, this expedition is over. I know it, and they know it.
Hope is a fucker. You can tolerate exhaustion surprisingly long, as long as you have hope. But when the hope is vanishing, so is your chances of survival.
Now, I feel that hope has started packing its stuff and about to skip. I can’t let that happen. That’s why I point a new direction and order my guys to continue working. The decision is based on gut feeling. It’s a hunch, really. But it’s the best I can come up with right now. I have a feeling that we are close, but on the other hand, I’ve been wrong before.
My history is not my future.
Well, now it’s not the time or the place to feel insecure. I am not quitting. Not because I don’t want to, but because I can’t afford to. As long as I breathe, I can succeed. My history is not my future.
So, I look down, pick up my chainsaw, pull the starter rope, and hear that old, familiar tearing sound.
Maybe tomorrow we hit that gold vein.
Mikael is a tech startup founder and storyteller. Startuppers are today’s version of gold miners. It’s dirty, exhausting, but still exhilarating.
