Our bank accounts had exactly one signer. Then the Navy called
The handoff that nearly broke was signature authority on our accounts, which existed in exactly one name until that week.
- The biggest moment in our history ended up in the hands of our head of sales rather than one of my co-founders.
- A founder who maintains a reserve commitment practices the one discipline most companies pay consultants to simulate, which is the readiness to hand the operation to someone else on short notice.
- While Matt Chase, our senior vice president of global sales, delivered the most important pitch in our company’s history, I was in Norfolk, Virginia preparing to deploy.
None of it resembled the continuity plan that sits untouched on our Google drive, because it happened on a clock, with Disrupt approaching and the real possibility that I would be unreachable for six months.
The succession conversation is the one that slides to next quarter because the founder is healthy and nothing forces the issue, and mobilization orders are the rare event that forces it on a schedule the founder does not set.
- Research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has found that veteran-owned businesses have a harder time accessing capital than comparable companies.
- Investor relationships I had managed personally moved to Jonathan Sperber, my cofounder and our chief strategy officer.
- I have thought about that week every day since, and I have come to believe the orders were the most honest test a CEO can face: proof, on a date I did not choose, of whether I had built a durable company or a team that could not function without me.
- My civilian work involves identifying foreign influence campaigns as they move through American online conversation, so I have never thought of military service and company building as entirely separate worlds.
- I was not in the audience or in the wings, because four days earlier the Navy had sent me mobilization orders.
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