Codiga: How it Ended
Note: this is the last post of the series about building Codiga.
November 2022. Codiga is still a small company with five people scattered across the globe (Canada, Colombia, Hungary, and USA). We are ready to announce our new product in a few weeks: a real-time code analyzer that detects and fixes coding issues. Think like code analysis as a service, through an API, and not as a binary as any existing platforms. Our new product was already available for a few weeks, we just did not announce it formally.
I received an email from someone interested in a partnership. They wanted to see our product. I had such contacts before and stopped answering: I considered it was a waste of time. But this time, this was from a company I highly respected, and it could lead to something good for us.
I did a demonstration of our product. And within a few days, we were discussing a potential acquisition. I initially refused the offer, thinking we could go bigger. I knew that running a startup is like running an ultra-marathon: I still had gas in the tank and I could go the distance.
I came back to France for Christmas, and I reflected on life: the relationship I gave up, the wild ride of making a company and landing an acquisition offer. I also thought about my team: this offer was generous for them as well, and I knew they will be extremely excited if I were to accept. I understood I made a mistake and this exit is precisely what I wanted.
After coming back to the US, I was hoping for a call to resume the conversation. And if the call was not coming by the end of the month, I would swallow my pride, initiate the conversation myself and admit I made a mistake.
A few days before the end of January, I got a call. Within a few months, I was in New-York with the team. We had one last night together. We will continue to work together, but Codiga will be no more.
As explained in the first post of this series, I separated from my partner to build this company. In my initial world view of 2019/2020, we would get back together once this rodeo was over and eventually get married. Of course, I was hoping it would take me less time to exit this company, and looking back, I was completely stupid and delusional. But she has been supportive and following the company progress through the years. It was now 2023, I was happy in my personal life, and I was not expecting anything from her but at least an acknowledgement that what I did was worth it.
The day I announced the company acquisition, I received texts, calls, and email from many people. Many people except her. This left a bitter taste.
It took me weeks months to process the fact that we exited. I initially did not believe it. I realized that my natural stubbornness made me lose a great relationship years ago, but it also enabled me to build and sell a company within two years. I constantly obsessed day and night on building a great product and always doing the right thing. And this is what led us to a successful exit.
I believe obsession is a quality in a founder. You need to obsess on the quality of your product and almost all aspects of your company. Obsession is what will make your product and company different from others. It’s what will differentiate a great product from an okay one. Obsession is what will keep driving you to iterate on your product until it’s the way you want it, not the way it has been implemented by your team.
“While most people stop when they’re tired, I stop when I am done. In a world where mediocrity is often the standard, my life’s mission is to become ucommon amongst the uncommon.”
David Goggins - Never Finished
As the weeks went by, I realized that many parts of my personal life were damaged. Relationships I did not maintain, friends that I did not visit or family that I rarely contacted. I can blame myself for this or decide to move on, learn, live and avoid these mistakes moving forward.
Some people also wrote to me to tell me how easy it has been for me, and they could do the same without much difficulty. Others told me it was pure luck. I also got emails from people telling me I was a failure for exiting so early.
The realization that I could have managed things differently and that haters may have been right haunted me for weeks. Until I let it go one day. It was liberating.
“It’s so easy to get lost in the fog of life. Tragedy hunts us all, and any event that causes suffering will linger longer than it should if you let it. Because our sad stories enable us to grade ourselves on a forgiving curve. They give us latitude and justification to stay lazy, weak-minded motherfuckers, and the longer it takes for us to process that pain, the harder it is to reclaim our lives.”
David Goggins - Never Finished
This has been a wild ride. I did what I wanted to do with my life and lived this story on my own terms. And I am proud of what I accomplished.
In this world, we have too many talkers and judgmental individuals seating in their ivory towers, unwilling to take any risk. The world does not need more talkers, it needs more doers. People who change the world start companies. And I hope to help them succeed with my limited capacity and capabilities.
Thanks to anyone who invested in my first company or joined me. For those who did not invest or left me: thank you as well, you helped me to be strong and better.
I love this life and everything it brought to me. Knowing it will come to an end one-day makes me value and appreciate the present.
I hope this series gave you some insights into what it takes to start a company and motivated you to build one. This newsletter will be silent for the next few weeks, I may post a few posts when a particular idea comes. I now want to focus only on building. I am not done yet.
- julien