Ten in the morning. Home office, two monitors and a laptop, coffee with dates and nuts. Jungle outside the window.
I opened a ticket in the customer support system of the SaaS we built: a customer wanted to cancel his subscription - $30 a month, and asked for a prorated refund for the days left. I opened his account, counted the days, did the math. Approved a $17 refund, wrote that the money would show up within a few business days, closed the ticket.
Half an hour later, I was done with customer support for the morning.
At noon, I got a WhatsApp from the CEO of a startup building a new AI model, the kind that tries to push the edge of what’s possible. A few weeks earlier, he’d told me what they were working on and asked for help with the raise. I thought of a fund I’d worked with that felt like a good fit. Sent a message, made the intro, and moved on.
Now the CEO wrote: the fund is in. Close to a million dollars.
He was thrilled. He deserved it.
I read the message twice. Wrote congrats, told him he’d found great investors. And I meant it - they’re building something real, the kind of thing worth fighting for.
But it’s their round. The meetings, the pressure, the breakthroughs, the excitement, the five years ahead - theirs. I connected two people, closed a $30 ticket, and stayed here.
At three, I left to pick up my kids from school.