Sometimes You Just Have to Stay in the Game

I'll admit something that probably isn't very founder-like: I still wake up some mornings wondering what could go wrong with Sytes.

Building something new is terrifying, particularly when you've put your reputation, time, and energy behind an idea that didn't have an obvious path to success when you started. You have to be comfortable with the possibility that you'll swing and miss, that people will tell you they saw it coming, and that you'll spend a long time wondering whether everyone else was right. The only way I've found to deal with that is to keep showing up and keep doing the work.

Eventually, if you keep showing up long enough, something starts to change.

I felt that pretty clearly at ICSC Orlando this year. I've been to enough conferences to know that you don't always get someone's attention on the first try. Sometimes they aren't interested in what you're building, sometimes they're too busy, and sometimes they give you the polite smile that means you'll probably never hear from them again.

This year felt different.

People who had never given Sytes much attention were suddenly stopping to ask questions. Some seemed to recognize the name before we even started talking, while others were curious about what we'd been building since the last time they'd seen us. I don't know exactly what changed, and I'm not going to pretend there was one magic moment that suddenly made everyone understand the vision.

Maybe they had seen our QR codes popping up at other booths. Maybe someone in their network had mentioned Sytes after having a good experience. Or maybe, after seeing me sprint past their booth at enough conferences, they finally figured that we weren't going anywhere.

Whatever the reason, that recognition meant something to me.

When you're building a company, there is a long stretch where you have to explain yourself constantly. You're introducing the idea, explaining why the existing way of doing things doesn't work, and asking people to believe that the alternative you're building can actually become part of how an industry operates. That can be a lonely process because you don't always get immediate validation.

Then, gradually, you start hearing the same name from people who didn't know it before.

That's what I felt at ICSC.

Sytes isn't some overnight success story, and I don't think the job is finished because people are finally paying attention. If anything, that attention raises the bar. Once people recognize what you're doing, you have to keep proving that the product works, that the marketplace can deliver, and that you're building something that is genuinely useful to the people in the industry.

But I'll take that challenge.

Because one of the hardest parts of building a company is getting people to believe you're serious enough to stick around. You can talk about your vision all day, but eventually the only evidence that matters is that you're still there, still improving the product, still talking to customers, and still finding new ways to make the industry work better.

That's what I've tried to do with Sytes.

So yes, I'm still paranoid. I'm still looking for the thing that could go wrong, and I'm sure there will be plenty of things that do. That's part of building something from scratch.

But walking around ICSC Orlando and seeing people who once wouldn't give us five minutes now wanting to understand what we're doing was a pretty damn good reminder that persistence works.

We aren't going anywhere.

And now that more people are starting to notice, I'm even more excited about what comes next.