Before we dive in: throughout this series, I’ll tag any programs, people, templates, and tools I use along the way. Why? Because a true build-in-public story shouldn’t be about curated tech stacks or startup buzzwords; it should be about radical transparency, showing the good and the bad, and exactly how we’re building with the same constraints, frictions, and opportunities as other builders within the Canadian ecosystem.
Building the Foundation (and Wrestling with Carta)
It’s officially Day 1 of building Givly, and it already feels like I’ve lived three weeks in twelve hours.
No champagne. No launch streamers. Just tabs on tabs, elevator music playing through the phone while on hold with the bank, and Mario and I playing Slack tag like it’s a sport, both pretending not to be mildly panicking while an investor keeps hitting refresh on a broken Carta link for the hundredth time. It was a great reminder that startup fantasy ends fast and that this is what it actually looks like to build…caffeine, chaos, and a browser with 42 tabs open, all of them critical and none of them working.
This is the real start: messy, manual, a little unhinged.
It's the kind of day where you can’t tell if you’re building a company or losing your mind, in all honesty it's probably both. Yet there's something weirdly calming about it, like accepting chaos as a coworker. I’m equal parts exhilarated and nauseous, standing at the edge of the cliff with no parachute in sight, just duct tape, adrenaline, and Wi‑Fi.
But, last night I made a deal with myself — no fake productivity, no performative busywork. If I’m going to build this thing, it has to be done with absolute discipline and zero delusion (or as little as possible). Today (and every day after it) has one rule: fit in as many two-to-four hour deep work blocks as humanly possible, rest like it’s life or death, or drown. I’ve failed enough startups to know this isn’t a sprint; it’s an endurance test in chaos management. Forget hustle culture, this isn’t going to be all vibes and grind. It’s survival, and the only way through is to stack small wins and avoid context-switching unless something’s actually on fire.
Spoiler alert: something always catches fire.
Today’s Schedule
4:15 AM — Woke up sore, muscles screaming from yesterday’s workout. Whined for about ten seconds before remembering no one’s handing out motivational quotes at that hour and was met with the unspoken rule that we don’t miss gym days. Grabbed a snack and my so-called ‘super juice’ — a questionable blend of vitamins, caffeine — then climbed into the car with my partner.
5:00 AM — Gym. Heavy lifts, loud music, tunnel vision. My partner, Miguel, was booked for a photoshoot, so I killed the downtime with market research — because nothing says ‘balance’ like analyzing AI copilots between sets of deadlifts. Pulled reports on Perplexity and ChatGPT, mapping where the space is heading and how nonprofits fit (or don’t) into the chaos. Research hits different when your blood pressure’s already up.
7:30 AM — Home. Breakfast, shower, reset. By 8:45, coffee in hand, inbox zeroed, pretending that counts as peace.
9:00 AM — First nonprofit consulting client. Wrapped by 9:40. Every time I talk to them, it’s the same story: too many tools, not enough time, and zero alignment. That’s why we’re building this — sanity as a service.
10:00 AM — Concrete time. Between client calls, I mapped our product–market fit validation tracker — not a manifesto, just a working map of who we actually serve (nonprofits running lean), the pain they live in (fragmented donor ops, endless admin), and the receipts we’ll need before we dare call it traction. It’s not sexy, but it’s the scaffolding that holds up the dream. Then came the first real milestone: I packaged the developer brief and sent our first contractor agreement. Hitting send felt heavier than expected — like the moment a concept quietly becomes a company. Mario and I reviewed scope, signed off, and officially brought Ronak on board.
11:45 AM — Coffee and a walk with the family. Fifteen minutes of sunshine and small talk before diving straight back into startup purgatory.
12:00 PM — Second client call. More clarity, more confirmation that the pain points aren’t just common — they’re epidemic. Every nonprofit is duct-taping ten systems together and praying the data syncs. More proof that Givly’s timing isn’t lucky, it’s overdue.
1:00 PM — Finance hell, round one. I moved on to Stripe, activated payments, and applied for their startup program. Then Wave — the chart of accounts: revenue by product, COGS split from dev tools, OpEx in buckets (cloud, contractors, software, legal, banking). Future me will thank current me for the obsessive labeling. I even left notes like “tag every vendor, attach every invoice, do the damn bookkeeping weekly.” I blocked recurring finance time like it’s therapy. Next came Float setup: spend caps, receipt rules, digital cards for each department, and zero tolerance for late-night “productivity” app purchases made while delusional. Finance isn’t cute. It’s discipline disguised as boredom — and it’s what keeps startups alive. May have snuck a quick 20 minute nap for survival in here too.
3:00 PM — Carta chaos. Three hours of Slack volleys, DocuSign acrobatics, and investor wire juggling while rewriting a content plan in parallel. The multitasking trifecta that kills founders slowly. Tested my patience, tested my process, but didn’t break either.
6:00 PM — Systems finally stable. Carta sorted. Shifted gears into content strategy — mapped the newsletter flow, outlined the next batch of founder logs, refined dev documentation for Ronak. It was today's moment where exhaustion meets momentum. Built the 100 Days archive, spun up the newsletter, and drafted how it’ll live on LinkedIn. It looks like marketing, but it’s really therapy with an audience. Writing about it forces clarity — and clarity is the rarest currency in the early build. Every post, every caption is a checkpoint: did I actually move the needle, or just talk about it? This part ties it all together — the reflection, the communication, the community.
8:30 PM — Wrapped. Dinner on the table thanks to Miguel, who had his own marathon of a day and still had time to minimize my developing 'hangryness'. Eyes fried, brain buzzing. Early by startup standards, but tomorrow’s a design sprint and distribution-mapping day — and clarity doesn’t come from burnout.
What Broke
At the exact moment we needed it, Carta combusted. Investors couldn’t sign. Mario and I played volleyball on Slack with updates: he nudged the investor, I pinged support, nothing. We reverted to our emergency plan: issue the agreement through DocuSign, collect signatures, and document the workaround so the cap table reconciles later. Manually send the wires and log it in the system after receipt. It wasn’t elegant, but it worked. We moved money with traceability and kept the build unblocked. Day 1 isn’t the day for perfection; it’s the day for progress.
What Changed?
Carta’s meltdown meant shifting some of my product design work to tomorrow, but it also gave space to step back and recalibrate priorities. Clear permissions in Slack and finance mapping took a bit longer but will save hours later, and will spare an ugly Q4 for pre-launch billings and Q1 public launch. The program I stumbled on, Chris Neumann’s Game On, also reshuffled the plan and reminded me that structure matters, so I bumped some content-writing tasks to make space for it.
What I’m carrying into tomorrow.
I’m moving from infrastructure to product design. Tomorrow’s all about ensuring simplistic high-fidelity MVP V1 ensuring all elements are clean and relate to decisions that make a nonprofit’s day smoother: faster intake, fewer duplicate asks, and a path from “we care” to “we did” that doesn’t require seventeen emails.
Today's Reality Check
Day 1 doesn’t crown you. Day 1 just proves you’re serious. We didn’t ship a feature today; we shipped credibility with ourselves. The plumbing is in. The money moved. The repo breathes. The team line is open. Tools failed and we didn’t. That’s the whole point.
Keep building with me.
Follow along for raw founder notes, new drops, and behind-the-scenes updates from the front lines of building.
