Serval

I’m sitting alone in Slack from a company I started two years ago, reminiscing and reflecting on all that was right and all the missed opportunities. It was so close – we were so close – and I don’t know if I’ll ever really get over this.

Serval seemed like the perfect summation of my experiences to date, the perfect transition from where I was into who I wanted to be. I had supportive, brilliant cofounders on this journey with me. We had a fun, big idea and amazing people willing to talk to us about it. People that I looked up to and respected signed up for my email list. Everything was perfect and then it was gone.

Different things trigger memories from Serval’s success days. Last night, it was a synthwave playlist that I happened to pop on while sitting down to do some work. You see, we were very much children of the 90s and infatuated with a retro gaming aesthetic and the purpley-blueish hues and smooth, maybe-80s maybe-90s maybe-nevers sounds of whatever I had on brought it all back in an instant. It was December 2022, and Midjourney had just become the thing that everyone was playing with, and it did not disappoint when punched in “svg vector art of serval logo vaporwave style complimentary colors.”

This little guy really spoke to me. I was excited to be the CEO of a company with an off-pink t-shirt and a funky off-the-cuff logo of a wild cat that was vaguely familiar to most people. We were different and weird and deeply technical. Talented and scarred in just the right ways to try and build something better. I think a lot about the risks I stacked up and took on, both for myself and for the team. Which little decisions here and there left us on the runway, out of fuel and wondering what we’d all be doing next.

That May afternoon in Menlo Park in 2023, enjoying each other's company, we were relatively positive and reflecting on the good times, visiting the Computer History Museum like little kids together. It’s all the more sad knowing that even just that day, in the free thoughts we had jotted down in my notebook, there were several ideas that, taken to fruition, could have been significant and allowed us to keep building together as a team. It’ll always be a failure of mine that I couldn’t save it there in the waning hours. That last Zoom meeting with a VC, sitting outside of a building on the Stanford campus (was I LARPing as a 20-something bay area founder?)... even there, there was a moment, a bit of intrigue... we still had something.

But I didn’t lean in. I said, give me a little time to get back to you and show you what we’re doing. What we had was never enough to me. It was always a little short of where I thought it needed to be, and I kept it inside, and dragged us along.

I remember finally getting out my first big monthly email to all of our followers and supporters. It was agony getting that stuff out of my head. But I hit send on that email, and the bytes flew over the internet, and I flew out of the house for a run in the cool January air and felt like this is it - I had gotten out of my head, I had taken that major step with the support of the team around me. We were going to do great things.

I chase that feeling still, and I know (or do I?) what I need to do when I feel that way again.

I think I already knew that it was too late. It had been a refreshing, if somewhat somber evening prior. A long walk through Golden Gate Park with a good friend as the sun began to set on a somewhat cool day in San Francisco. I got an email from a different VC, the one that had seemed to believe in me, and had left me thinking for the 9 months leading up to that moment that we were going to get to build something great together. It was a friendly email, and I appreciated the courtesy of an explanation, but it was a no to investing in Serval.

It’s funny because I’d spent the afternoon with my cofounders, coming to terms with us moving on separately over big bowls of ramen, a cool misty rain drifting in through the open wall of the restaurant. It was sad, and a little surreal, but also warm and reinforcing. It was the most time we’d spent together in person. When the email came in at 7:30, I already had the feeling that it wasn’t going to be good news. It had dragged on too long, months of indecision and me trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat.

I replied quickly as I was walking, “No worries. I appreciate the thoughtful email. We’ve decided to shift gears anyway, so it’s not a hard thing to read. Mark and I really like you too. Let’s hold off on the Chase intro for now - hope to connect again in the future.”

I genuinely felt fine with it. I wandered Stanford the next day looking for a place to take a meeting after another long walk in the metallic gray weather from lunch at Jing Jing in Menlo Park. I was a little underwhelmed by the campus. I just thought I’d feel something inspiring walking the hallowed grounds I’d heard so much about. I went into the bookstore, full of students and parents. A stale modern coffee shop on the second floor. I eventually found a covered space somewhere nearby with a few chairs and tables set up, and mostly had it to myself.

What’s the most important thing I have to say about Serval? That I was right. That I was alone. That we were all alone.

I was right that I had a glimpse of something worth building, and I saw a spark in everyone I pulled in to help me build. But I was alone in being the only one on the team that didn’t fully know what they were doing, trying to live up to the role in the way it feels like trying to throw something in a dream. And we were all alone, of course, with our own motivations and interests and quirks and considerations. I’ve reflected in the past and felt like it was clear what I should have done. As I’ve gotten older and somewhat wiser, I think it’s only less obvious.

Was it worth fighting on alone that summer after the band broke up? The slow scattering of my wants to the wind that year ended up serving as the backdrop to some broader growth and understanding in who I was. I’m resilient if nothing else. Stubborn, sometimes by virtue of having to relearn, resay, rethink and redo repeatedly just to remember.

I don’t think money would have solved our problems. I’ve liked to think that it would have for much of the time since, and it may have, but in a hard-to-accept way I think all of us have slowly come to better places than we were. That we’re better for the experience.Not scarred, but maybe humbled. Not broken, but probably more respectful of the lift.

Now that I’ve decided to come forth with something new, take that oath again to myself that I will do things the right way, that I will live up to this, memories of Serval are weighing on me a bit more. I’ve always been all too happy to be one with potential–a childlike curio, bereft of visible faults but moving too fast to be certain. I liked the moments where things seemed destined to turn out the way we all hoped, that time where I could pretend that I was who I wanted to be, forget about the things that made me who I wasn’t, and just wrap myself in someone else’s jacket and stare at a computer screen for hours. I guess I can be harsh and critical of that version of me, while still feeling proud and emboldened. I look at photos of myself from then sometimes, barely two years ago, and think how young I looked.