In 2013 I was broke, $120k in debt, and sleeping on friends' couches. I'd moved to Silicon Valley with the dream of starting a software company, and I knew it'd take sacrifices, but I didn't realize I'd fall to this low point so quickly. My co-founders and I were working on a mobile app for creating photobooks - Kindred Prints - and we were determined to figure it out. But we didn't know what we were doing, and we made a bad bet on photobooks being a good idea. The bet we got *right*, however, was MOBILE. Mobile was growing like crazy and poised to surpass desktop within a few years, and we knew we wanted to be in the middle of it. Fast forward a year and we decided to shut down Kindred... BUT we'd uncovered a new opportunity: linking into mobile apps was broken and we'd thought of a way to solve it. So we launched Branch Metrics to help apps route their users and measure their traffic on mobile. Turns out that was a *good* bet, and we grew. Fast. Since then, we've passed $100M ARR, grown the team to 500 employees, and become a unicorn while powering measurement and linking for the world’s top apps and 3 Billion devices a month. The ride has been crazy but the most memorable and inspiring part has been the people. Working with some of the smartest, kindest, and most inspiring people I've had the privelege to meet has been what fuels me. And Branch wouldn't exist without every person that's contributed to the mission these past 9 years. Now that Branch is stable and on a healthy path, I've started the journey to do it all over again with a new company. Follow along as I share my mistakes, failures, and hopefully a few learnings from this crazy ride.