It's exactly 2:15 am. As usual, this is another episode of What Keeps Me Up at Night.
Now, this week has been quite a week, a hectic one, a very busy one, but a deeply inspiring one too.
And once again, I'm surprised by the power of the human brain. The ideas, the systems, the logic, and what we can really accomplish when we genuinely put our minds to something.
And no, before you ask, I'm not awake because of the World Cup. Although that semifinal yesterday was what we call a pure classic, and don't get me started on Sunday, the final and the Belgian Grand Prix on the same day. But tonight there's no semifinal keeping me awake. It's just me building.
Soft music plays quietly in the background. It's past midnight, and the continuous tapping of my keyboard is the loudest thing in this room. And strangely, that sound excites me.
Because right in front of me, raw information, scattered data and lines of code are slowly turning into something that is not just beautiful to look at, but relevant. Useful. Maybe even essential for the growth of this enterprise.
A few days ago, most of it existed only inside my head. Now I'm watching it come alive on the screen, and honestly, I still find that unbelievable.
But before I tell you what I've been building, some context. I've invented a new routine that works for me. I go in early, 7ish or 8ish, work very smartly, and by around 3 pm I take my leave and head straight to my local gym.
See, fitness is something I've started taking seriously, considering the absurdities of life, the uncertainties, and the pressure that comes with being a founder, a builder. And trust me, if you push your body, you end up with a great evening and a good night's sleep.
One of these mornings, I asked my very special person, "Hey, love, have you noticed the shift in how I do things? I feel different. I feel as if I can literally build anything. Or am I getting into my head?"
Part of that shift is because I've finally started letting go. When I was starting, I would literally do everything. A bit of construction? You'd find me there, figuring it out. The feed mill? There. The poultry side? There too.
Then one of the very key people and influential figures in my journey, someone who has inspired this journey and powered this movement, who I consider a mentor, not just an investor but a partner, kept telling me about the beauty of having a team, the beauty of delegating.
And the truth is, you can never design a system if you don't understand the work. But you can't grow it forever holding everything yourself either. Now I work with a team of young, smart, energetic people, everybody giving their best. When you see people like that, it inspires you. It frees you.
And that's what made these last seven days possible. Because while everybody saw a founder keeping normal hours, I was coming back home and building, bit by bit, late past midnight. That's what makes the startup journey exciting, right?
I won't pretend I knew exactly what I was doing from the beginning. I didn't. There were moments when something worked beautifully, only for another part to break. Times I thought I'd finally solved one problem, then realised I'd created two more.
A small feature could consume hours. And sometimes the screen just kept "thinking" while I sat there wondering whether the system was confused or whether I was the confused one. Probably both.
But slowly, from the very first module to what is now module twelve, everything started connecting. Production, raw material inventory, finished feeds, dispatch to reconciliation.
Information that previously lived in separate files, physical forms, and more than a thousand pieces of paper could finally begin speaking to each other. And then I saw it working.
Not perfectly. We still need to test it in the real operation, make corrections, and probably discover problems I haven't imagined yet. But it works. And that gave me a kind of joy that's difficult to explain.
Not because I became a software "developer" overnight. Developers, you can relax; your jobs are still safe. It's because I took one of our most frustrating operational problems and turned it into something we can finally see, understand, and begin solving. Because here's the thing: I am not trying to build software. I am trying to solve a problem inside my business.
Even as we speak, I have a complete file, a thousand-plus papers, waiting to be reconciled. Dispatch, inventory, production. Try verifying that by hand.
And before you tell me to just subscribe to a system, most of them don't address what you're actually looking for. This, my friend, is what I've come to realise differentiates a business person from an entrepreneur.
A business person buys the tool that's close enough. An entrepreneur goes a step further and builds the one that fits. Even on a borrowed machine. Even with no preparation.
Once it's tested, it gets deployed in the company, and I know it will give us fantastic results. And I'm starting to wonder: is this a gateway? Is this where the SaaS conversation begins? I don't know yet, and I'm not in a rush to answer. For now, it fixes my own thousand-paper problem first.
It's 4:00 am now. I need to get a few hours of sleep. Today we meet new farmers, we verify a few things, and we call it a week. And Sunday? Maybe Kimi finally gets his edge. Antonelli, you know how much I've been rooting for you.
And maybe the young one Lamine Yamal finally gets the keys to the kingdom from the GOAT himself. That should be Messi, right?
And by the way, before I forget, we are hiring an admin/finance lead. The team is growing. If this sounds like you, come join an amazing startup and let us know what you think. To everybody who has inspired this journey, you are legends. I salute you.