We are starting to feel like a startup

There is something strange about running a startup when you have no real revenue to speak of. You keep paying for things, taking on responsibilities, finding new problems to solve, and somehow, at the end of the month, your bank account doesn't seem particularly impressed by your efforts.

And yet, something has changed at kleosvic.

For quite some time, kleosvic was essentially me doing everything. Development, management, execution, planning, and occasionally wondering why I had decided that starting a company was a good idea. There were friends helping along the way, contributing ideas, working on things and making the project better, but they weren't formally part of kleosvic.

Now there are three of us.

Nothing particularly dramatic happened. There wasn't a recruitment campaign, an elaborate onboarding process or a particularly impressive announcement. They were already close friends who had been helping with kleosvic. We simply decided to make things a little more official.

We've established roles. I still handle most of the management, development and execution, effectively wearing both the CEO and CTO hats, sometimes simultaneously. One of the others takes care of the visual identity and audiovisual work, while the other focuses on research and marketing.

We even communicate through email now.

I know. Very corporate.

Big startup talks, but I'm writing this from localhost because the server we're paying for doesn't support Payload correctly.

Some things never change.

The funny thing is that we haven't suddenly become a company with endless meetings and rigid schedules. We send updates, share what we're working on and generally remain free to organise our own work. There's no elaborate management structure, no calendar full of mandatory meetings and no one pretending that every minor decision requires a committee.

It just works.

And perhaps that's what makes this feel different. Things that used to happen informally between friends are now part of an actual structure. There are responsibilities, expectations and people who are genuinely involved in making this happen.

Of course, none of this has solved our financial situation.

The expenses are still there. The subscriptions, the infrastructure, the services and all the other little things that make running a project surprisingly expensive. The debt hasn't magically disappeared because we've added two people to the team. If anything, it's becoming increasingly funny that we have the organisational structure of a startup and the financial performance of a rather ambitious hobby.

But I don't particularly mind.

For the first time, kleosvic feels less like a collection of projects that I'm trying to keep alive and more like something we're actually building together. There is a certain satisfaction in knowing that someone else is thinking about the visual side while another person is researching marketing opportunities, instead of having everything depend on whatever I can squeeze into my day.

I'm not going to pretend that we've figured everything out. We haven't. We're still learning how to organise ourselves, distribute responsibilities and make the whole thing sustainable. There are plenty of things that could go wrong, and probably will.

But honestly, I'm on top of the world.

We are three people now. We have roles, responsibilities, email updates, and expenses that would probably be more reassuring if accompanied by some actual revenue.

Maybe that's what starting a company feels like. Not necessarily having everything figured out, but gradually realising that you're no longer doing it alone.

And for now, that's more than enough.

Although, from now on, you might start hearing a few stories from the other side of the table about what a terrible boss I supposedly am.