What Good Is a Win If You Have No One to Share It With?

I think Switchly can quite easily become a company worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Potentially much more.

I am not saying that because I think valuation is the only measurement of success. It is not. And I am not endlessly interested in more money for the sake of more money.

At some point, more is just more.

I do not lack a father figure’s validation badly enough to need to spend my entire life collecting increasingly expensive things to prove that I won.

But I also think there is something dishonest about pretending money does not matter at all.

Understanding money, business, incentives and the rules of the game matters. I have noticed that the people most critical of the game are sometimes the people who never really learned how to play it. That probably sounds harsh. Maybe it is. But I would much rather hear criticism of the game from someone who has won, or at least played it very well, because then I know the criticism comes from understanding rather than frustration at losing.

I see the game.

I understand what we are trying to do with Switchly. I understand why I think the opportunity is enormous. I see a very strong strategy and a product with a huge amount of potential.

The goal itself is actually very simple:

Make Switchly the best AI phone receptionist in the world, while making booking management as easy as possible for businesses.

That is the thing I care about.

And I want to know, when I look back on my life, that I gave it everything I could.

The problem is that I am still trying to understand what “everything I could” actually means.

The standard I hold myself to

Right now, I work almost constantly.

Every moment when I am not working can feel strangely uncomfortable. Sometimes excruciating.

I hold myself to a standard of almost impeccable productivity. There is always something else that could be improved. A conversation that could sound more natural. A booking flow that could be simpler. A page that could explain the product better. A bug that could be fixed. A strategy that could be thought through more carefully.

And the difficult part is that I genuinely like it.

This is not a story about a man trapped in a job he hates.

I love working. I love building. I love finding a problem and pulling at it until I understand it. I love the stress of it, even when I complain about the stress of it.

Aside from the occasional round of golf and going to the gym, I do not have many time-consuming vices. I do not drink. I do not do drugs. I do not gamble. I do not spend my weekends watching sports.

I like doing this.

Working. Building. Trying to make something excellent.

It is stressful, of course.

But honestly, it is also the best.

And that creates its own danger.

Because when you hate your work, it is obvious when it starts taking too much from you.

When you love it, the line is much harder to see.

There are three of us in this story

I have a fiancée, Jana, and a two-year-old son, Emil.

Jana is incredibly supportive. She understands my obsession with making Switchly excellent, even though I can sometimes see that it is a bit much for her too.

She is also an excellent listener.

I talk to her about almost everything. Business ideas. Product decisions. Theories about the world. Blockers. Frustrations. Successful meetings. Bad meetings. The moments when something finally works after weeks of not working.

The ups and the downs.

And Emil is there for all of it.

Of course, he has no idea what most of it means.

He is two.

Right now, he gets excited when he sees a tram in the city. Chickens and ducks are his favourite animals.

He is not analysing our go-to-market strategy.

But he is growing up around this period of our lives.

He hears his parents talking through problems. He sees excitement when something goes well. He sees frustration when something does not. He sees ideas being discussed, challenged and changed.

I hope that, in some small way, he takes something from that.

Not that he has to become an entrepreneur.

Not that he has to build a company.

I hope he learns how to think.

How to communicate.

And maybe most importantly, how to listen.

The fear behind the ambition

I have seen what obsession can do to people.

Relationships ruined.

Divorce.

Parents who succeed professionally and somehow become secondary characters in the lives of their own children.

That scares me.

One of my deepest fears is not being the primary male influence in my son’s life.

And I think this is where the usual conversation about ambition becomes too simplistic.

People tend to pick one of two sides.

One side says family always comes first, as though ambition can simply be turned off at 5 p.m.

The other says that if you really want to win, you have to be willing to sacrifice everything.

I do not believe either one.

I want to give Switchly everything I can.

But Jana and Emil are not part of the price I am willing to pay.

I would sacrifice comfort.

I would sacrifice most of my free time.

I would sacrifice leisure, easy weekends and probably more sleep than is healthy.

But I would not sacrifice that aspect of our family.

Because what good is a win if I have no one to share it with?

That is probably the answer I keep coming back to.

I do not want to hide ambition from my son

I also do not think being a good father means hiding the work from Emil.

I do not want him to remember a childhood where his father was physically present but mentally somewhere else.

But I would be happy if he remembers this as an exciting time.

A time of change.

A time when his dad was trying to build something.

A time when ideas were constantly being discussed in the house. When things sometimes went wrong. When something finally worked and everybody could feel the excitement.

Maybe he will remember none of the specifics.

He probably will not remember product launches, investors, blockers or meetings.

He might just remember trams.

Or chickens.

Or ducks.

But perhaps some part of the atmosphere stays with him.

The idea that difficult things can be figured out.

That problems are worth talking through.

That excitement can come from creating something rather than only consuming something.

That listening to someone you love is part of helping them build.

I would be proud of that.

I still do not have the balance figured out

I do not think this post ends with a lesson.

I have not cracked work-life balance. I am writing this at 10 p.m. on a Friday night, at the start of a long weekend, while most people are probably doing almost anything other than working.

Honestly, I am not even sure balance is the right word for what I am trying to achieve.

There will be periods when Switchly demands an unreasonable amount from me. There already are.

There will be periods when my family has to come first without negotiation.

The challenge is making sure I know the difference.

I want to give this company everything I have without accidentally giving it the things I value more.

That is the line.

I want to make Switchly as successful as it can possibly be.

I want to build the best AI phone receptionist in the world.

I want to make booking management dramatically easier for businesses.

I want to look back and know I did not waste the opportunity because I was lazy, distracted or afraid.

But I also want Jana beside me when I look back.

And I want Emil to know that while his father was obsessed with building something, he was never less important than the thing being built.

Maybe that is the standard.

Not perfect balance.

Not less ambition.

Just making sure that when the wins finally come, the people who made them matter are still there to share them with you.