The tale of public execution/deliverance

"But it's been no bed of roses. No pleasure cruise. I consider it a challenge before
the human race and I ain't gonna lose" - We are the Champions - Queen

So last week was big. Really big! It was the first real public expedition of Foundry Fuel and on a personal level it was nerve wracking. Exercising a platform at a real event for the first time gives any developer the jitters but considering my past this was a set of hurdles I had to get over and beyond.

People seemed surprised that I was nervous. When I spoke with old friends, previous co-founders and members of the Founder Labs cohort they genuinely seemed surprised that I would be nervous considering my background and experience. Here's some of the comments.

* "But you have built massive platforms and systems. How can you be nervous"
* "Wise up. You're one of the best CTOs in Northern Ireland."
* "After everything you have been through? This must be easy?"

All very flattering and i'm sure some of that seems true but this situation is different for many reasons.

1) I have coded this by myself, no team, no collaboration, no shared ownership
2) I'm a one person business, so all customer discovery and research is on me
3) My last project was a visible public failure
4) My last project was a massive personal failure

What does this mean? Well my confidence was already low and the pressure was high. Normally this is a recipe for disaster but several things got me through.

The collaboration with people in the space whether they were founders, technologists or hosts really helped. In particular the team at Ormeau Labs kept pushing me all the way to get the product built and get it out to the users. This was a major driver. Secondly my amazing wife never stopped believing I could do this. She encouraged me and made space for me when I really should have been doing more adulting, more parenting and more other stuff. Community and backers need not be about money. Sometimes people seeing belief in you means so much more.

...making changes to a live platform 3 hours before an event is crazy. Don't think I didn't consider it. I really did.

I had worked hard before the event to test and run several key edge cases through the platform. The Founder Labs cohort in the Ormeau Labs were fantastic at being my test cases and I managed to run several concurrent users on the platform with different device types to get a real world feel. I revised and revamped the platform after each session. I tested early and as often as I could but the gods of demos had a curveball waiting for me. Three hours before the event I found a bug. A horrible bug. When you scanned the event QR code and logged in on your phone you, occasionally, got a random Axios API error. Why? Well there was a race condition in all the voting qualification checks that only occurred at random times. I knew why, I knew what and I knew how so I could fix this right? Well, no. The bug was easily mitigated by a page refresh so there was a work around. More importantly though, making changes to a live platform three hours before an event is crazy. Don't think I didn't consider it. I really did. But this is what separates the professionals from the hobbyists. I could make a change but I didn't have time to test end to end so even though my code confidence was high it was stupidly risky. So against every developer urge in my body I sucked up my frustration and prepared to just warn people at the event that night.

This was incredibly difficult as I wanted perfection, I wanted to show everyone I was still great at what I do and, I wanted to purge some demons. Standing up, doing my intro and admitting to an issue was not where I wanted to be but that was just the way of things. No choice. Onwards was the only way.

So what happened? Well picture the scene, One host, three founders and 60 event attendees. The platform was up and running, the unique QR code was on screen and people were engaging. I was on stage first to present the platform, tell people the what and why it exists and also advise of the bug. Guess what, no-one batted an eyelid. Everyone knew I was in Beta. Everyone knew this was a one person show. Everyone was supportive.

If you don't know how Foundry Fuel works by the way, you can view my YouTube channel here.

Following a fascinating fireside with a local founder (not me) I was back up to introduce the three founders who I have been working with on Founder Labs, who needed technical help and therefor were pitching that night. They were fantastic and did us all proud, delivering their practices intro pitches really well. The audience were engaged and attentive and everything went smoothly. And inside I sighed a massive sigh and some metaphysical weight was finally lifted off my shoulders.

Post event everyone was chatting, the energy in the room was electric and there was amazing feedback. After the event LinkedIn lit up for all of us and people started reaching out looking to engage with the platform.

For me though this has been a sort of pilgrimage back to the light. When you lose your business due to things out of your control you can feel hollowed out and used up. Nothing seems just or fair. Nothing makes sense. You feel like your efforts, your skills and your energy isn't enough. When you are neurodiverse this doubles down. If you are like me your brain works overtime to understand that which is not understandable and the only thing you have in abundance is pain and confusion. I'm not fully back to full strength yet. I'm really close though and although I am not yet fully whole, I can share something special with anyone who ever has to go through this.

The road out of Hell is long and hard, it's a painful journey of self reflection and sometimes self-pity but don't give up. Opportunity exists out there. People are kind. People are strong and will help you. Find your tribe. Find your handhold and start climbing that wall and before you know it you will see the light again, come back stronger and come back better.

I'd like to thank the teams at Ormeau Labs, The Founder Labs team, my previous co-founders and everyone else who supported me to this point. I really want to thank my family. My wife and two boys never doubted me. They never accepted that I wasn't good enough. They kept the faith.

This isn't the end dear readers, but it's a pretty great landmark.

Remember, you've got this.
Gareth