This Is What Building Something That Matters Feels Like

Some days feel like my head is exploding.

Not in a dramatic way. More in a quiet, relentless way. A never-ending to-do list that keeps growing while you are already running as fast as you can.

Today was one of those days.

Reassurance Before Speed

It started with a meeting with a part-time CTO. After months of development, I am now almost done with version 1. A CTO is not there to build something new, but to bring this ship safely into port. Peace of mind.

A final sanity check before we go live.

Are we missing something? Is this solid? Are there blind spots left?

You assume that everything is under control, but two heads are better than one. And once we go live, there's no intention of pressing pause.

Responsibility You Hope You Never Need

Then I called the insurance company.

Liability. Cyber risk. All the things you hope you will never need.
The best insurance is the one you never use.

Still, it matters. Because if something goes wrong, it is not just about software.
It is about people. Companies. Trust.

One Source of Truth

After that, I met our new intern.

What a great guy. Curious, sharp, motivated. We talked about structure, documentation, and how we work.

We are rolling out Notion as our central knowledge hub. Probably not for everything, but definitely as a single source of truth. One place where decisions live. Where context is not lost. Where knowledge compounds instead of disappearing into chats and inboxes.

Still figuring out the edges.
But the principle is clear.

Betting on International Growth

Later in the day, a meeting with Flanders Investment and Trade.

Tomorrow at 10am, the starter subsidies for internationalisation open. Ninety slots. Forty-five get funding. The rest get nothing.

I adapted the business plan.
Wrote the export plan.
Cut the fluff. Made it realistic.

This is not theory. This is about building something that can cross borders and survive there.

Decisions, trade-offs, responsibility

And then, as if my brain still had spare capacity, I started thinking about GTM.

Inbound and outbound. How they align.
What analytics we need. What we track. What we do not.

Because without data, you are blind. And guessing is expensive.

That immediately triggered another reflex.

Privacy.

Tracking means responsibility. Cookies mean consent. Marketing cookies are new for us. Terms needed an update. Cookie consent needed an update.

It feels strange. On the one hand, I genuinely believe we do not need aggressive tracking to build a good product. On the other hand, is it not my responsibility to make ReplyFabric a success?

For my girlfriend.
For my family.
For my friends.
For my investor.
For future customers who will rely on this platform every day.

The more we grow, the better the platform gets. More users mean more feedback. More edge cases. More robustness. More value for everyone.

Comfort and Compliance Matter

Somewhere in between all that, we decided to go with Cal.com.

It is in test now. The reason is simple: when someone books a meeting, they should be able to choose Microsoft Teams or Google Meet. People should feel comfortable, in the environment they are used to.

Cal.com is EU-based, headquartered in Berlin. And yes, data residency matters.

Of course, that decision triggered another checklist.

ISO.
SOC 2.

Every provider matters now. Every integration matters. Every dependency becomes part of your trust story.

This Is the Part That Nobody Sees

Can you believe this?

This is what people never get to see when they look at a startup. They see features. Screenshots. A launch announcement. Maybe a funding round.

The mental juggling act of the creators is invisible.
While the constant trade-offs create continuous uncertainty.
The feeling that everything matters, all the time. No room for error.

It is a lot. Extremely a lot.

But it feels right.
This pressure, this responsibility — it is exactly what makes me come alive.