About this site

I have been involved in building companies for a while — as a founder, an operator, an early hire, and a board observer. Across those experiences I accumulated a set of notes I kept coming back to, patterns I kept seeing, and mistakes I kept watching people make (sometimes me, sometimes not).

This site is where I write those up. The details are always fictionalized — names, industries, geographies, and timelines are changed or composited from multiple situations. This is not journalism. I am not trying to expose anyone. I am trying to make the patterns legible for the next person who finds themselves in a version of the same room.

The goal is not to be comprehensive. There are plenty of startup books and frameworks and thought leaders. This is more like a notebook: specific, honest, and written for the version of me that needed it three years ago.

Who writes this

I am keeping this anonymous on purpose. The site is not about me — it is about the situations. If I put my name on it, the situations become about my reputation, and that is not useful to anyone.

What I can tell you: I have built things from zero to revenue. I have raised money and run out of money. I have had great co-founders and terrible ones. I have hired people who changed everything and people who set things back. I have been in board meetings that felt like growth opportunities and ones that felt like ambushes.

I kept notes through all of it. This is where they live now.

A note on fictionalization

Every note on this site is grounded in real events, but I change enough details that no one involved should be identifiable. If you think you recognize yourself in something, you might be right — or you might be recognizing a pattern that is more common than either of us wants to admit. Either way, the note is not about you. It is about the situation.