I’ve been building Magnetic Bear Studios for the last two years.

From a logo on a napkin and a 200$ contract, to an exponentially growing mobile dev shop. One of my first big lessons running a young company was that it takes on a life of its own! It’s scary.

You’re focused 24/7 on finishing feature/contract #89 while dealing with time-sensitive business issues… and when you finally take a breath to look at where you are, you realize that the company itself has been evolving and pivoting. In a sense, it’s a bit like the saying goes:

Focus on what’s important and the rest will take care of itself.

What the saying fails to convey is that the rest may not be done the way you would do it.

Being a technical founder at a small company, I’ve had my head buried in code for the last few months. When I looked up again to assess where the business was going, I saw that the team’s interests were moving rapidly away from services towards building a product entirely ourselves.

To be fair, the goal from day one was always to evolve to a product company, so that seed was planted a long time ago.

But it was still difficult to let go of the services side. Of the CEO position and its responsibilities. Of the brand and company we had built from the ground up.

Ultimately, I couldn’t be more enthusiastic and confident about this new chapter. Being CTO of Dashbook, I’ll be focusing 100% on tech while relying on 2 extraordinary co-founders to take care of every other aspect of the business.

So the lesson here is that you have to let the company run its natural course. It has a mind of its own… and you should trust it!