A Year as a Startup: The Journey of Kirkwall

I have high standards for business books, and “10x is Easier Than 2x” by Dan Sullivan is the best one I’ve read in years. The core thesis is that it’s much easier to grow your business tenfold than to make small, incremental improvements—primarily due to choice paralysis. If I asked you to grow your business 10% this year, you would have countless ways you could attempt it. At a certain point, you would begin to fear that you had picked the wrong approach. If I told you that your business must clear $1M in revenue this year, you would conclude that there are probably only two or three ways to make it happen— likely through targeting larger accounts, taking more risks, and swinging for the fences. This approach leads you to be laser-focused on the two or three possible paths to explosive growth. In many ways it’s similar to Warren Buffett’s 5/25 rule—write down the top 25 goals in your life, rank them, and circle the top five. Then cross out the bottom 20. You’re now banned from pursuing those bottom 20 items this year because they pose the highest risk of distracting you from your top five goals.

January 2024

January 2024 was our first step in transitioning from a small, scrappy startup into a real company. We had just launched our software a few weeks prior in Silicon Valley at the graduation ceremony for our Plug and Play investment accelerator program. We had spent the week in California living the classic Silicon Valley lifestyle—crashing in sleeping bags on my mom’s floor in Palo Alto while finalizing our investor pitch before we went on stage. We had recently hired Justin Morales, a longtime friend of mine from New York City who had finished a cybersecurity boot camp and was looking for his next big step in life. Justin had told us if we were open to hiring him, he would immediately pack up a suitcase and fly to Fargo to join us. I’m a huge fan of investing in risk-takers who are all-in, so we made him an offer. Justin picked up and moved to Fargo with a single suitcase, landing at Hector and greeting me with “Bro, how the hell is it already so cold here?” Before long Justin was Employee No. 1, joining us for our official software launch in Silicon Valley. We ate as much free food at the conference as possible. We had finalized our software demo 24 hours before going on stage, but money was still tight and none of us were going to turn down free food. We’ll decline to state the quantity of free food we attempted to smuggle out of the conference.

In preparation for this next growth phase, we worked with our lawyers to convert our company from a North Dakota LLC into a Delaware C-Corp to ensure we were prepared for our Venture Capital raise. This was also the very first time we began to pay ourselves after over a year in business. Up to this point, Ujjwal and I had been living off savings and barely scraping by. When we first launched the company, we spent an afternoon discussing how we could JANUARY 2024 scrape together the $200 we needed for one of us to attend the Bushel Buddy Seat conference in Fargo. Suddenly, we were actually paying ourselves a regular biweekly paycheck, although, admittedly, minimum wage. I still remember Ujjwal turning to me and saying, “Honestly, it’s surreal getting a paycheck from our startup after a year of wondering if this would ever happen.”

Up to this point, we had taken scrappiness and frugality to a whole new level: we moved in together with my huge Saint Bernard (Boris) and set the thermostat to 60 degrees, primarily heating the house with wood we found on the curb from trees the city had cut down that we subsequently chopped with an axe in the backyard. On one occasion when the team accidentally locked the car keys inside our truck, they spent two days on YouTube learning how to pick locks to get back inside the vehicle rather than pay a locksmith. We ate all of our meals together, and anyone who hunted down resources—whether food, beer, or otherwise—brought it back to the house to share with the team. Ujjwal’s relatives occasionally sent him home with meat and he often cooked big batches of amazing Nepalese food for the team.

January was the big turning point for Kirkwall.

Why would a company transition to a Delaware C-Corp?

Converting a North Dakota LLC into a Delaware C-Corp is a strategic move to prepare for a venture capital raise. Delaware’s businessfriendly legal framework and well-established corporate laws make it the preferred jurisdiction for investors. A C-Corp structure allows for multiple classes of stock, simplifies equity arrangements, and aligns with VC requirements. It also offers scalability for growth, easier implementation of stock options, and readiness for IPOs or acquisitions. This conversion ensures the company is investor-friendly, attracts top talent, and meets the structural needs for raising capital and future expansion.

February 2024

This month we were still riding the high of officially launching the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) of our Kirkwall software— but we quickly learned that launching software alone doesn’t produce customers, and we had a lot of hard work ahead to drive sales and achieve the revenue we needed to keep the company alive. Following one major software deal we closed, we had successfully paid off the $50,000 line of credit that First Western Bank had extended us to launch our company. This month we landed an additional microloan financing package from Lake Agassiz Development Group to continue to scale. I had already taken out a second mortgage on my home, and to secure the microloan I had to put up my prized 1974 Stingray Corvette as collateral. As a classic car enthusiast, any friend of mine knows that I would sooner sell a kidney than lose the Stingray. I was now more motivated than ever to succeed.

Suddenly, we were actually paying ourselves a regular biweekly paycheck.

On the technical side, this was a hard month for us—we took a very honest look at our software, and realized it was far too slow. Certain features took over 30 seconds to load or receive notifications, and we concluded that there was no way we could proceed with what we had. We completely ripped apart our software and started from scratch, rebuilding the platform in an entirely new programming language optimized for speed. We more than quintupled the speed of the software, but for a brief period this month, we were deeply in debt without a product that we felt we could sell. That was not a good feeling.

This was also the month that Ujjwal went full-time on Kirkwall, having just finished up his role specializing in IoT agricultural sensor technology for Grand Farm.

Going full-time is daunting for any founder. After years of watching Shark Tank and always thinking that Kevin O’Leary “Mr. Wonderful” was too harsh for refusing to invest in founders who hadn’t gone full-time on their startups and still maintained other employment, suddenly we understood why and changed our viewpoint. Over 99% of our company revenue has been achieved since we went full-time on Kirkwall. In my case, I went full-time accidentally— my prior employer had suddenly dissolved and gone out of business overnight after our German parent company declared financial insolvency, and I took this as divine intervention and the push I needed to run with Kirkwall and build the company. For Ujjwal, we were able to be more strategic about the timing, but that doesn’t remove how intimidating it was as founders to take the plunge and go full-time.

The best historical analogy is the military act of burning ships upon landing and eliminating the possibility of retreat—whether Hernan Cortes or the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, numerous military forces have been victorious against extreme odds when the ability to retreat to safety was removed. If the only way to survive and pay your mortgage is by closing deals and driving revenue, going full-time will certainly light a fire under any founder

March 2024

This month was one of entirely new logistical challenges—I had spent a decade serving on the board of directors for Heath Company, the legendary century-old manufacturer of Heathkit educational electronics kits most famous for inspiring Steve Jobs as a teenager to learn about circuitry and computers prior to founding Apple. Suddenly, I was in a position to assume control of the company and make it a Kirkwall subsidiary, and bring the company’s electronics prototyping and R&D capabilities in-house. We had numerous naysayers who couldn’t see the long-term vision in this move. We ignored them and proved them wrong.

I flew to California where the old manufacturing facility was located, and my brother and I spent three days in the pouring rain packing up a UHaul truck to relocate the facility to Fargo and consolidate it with Kirwall’s office in the NDSU Incubator. We sorted through decades’ worth of old electronics prototyping materials and inventory and began transporting it through a rainstorm in the Santa Cruz mountains set to a soundtrack of Wu-Tang Clan, Atmosphere, and Biggie Smalls.

We also gave a cash bonus to the team members, thanked them for bearing with us during the transition period, and authorized them to work fully remotely, which is in line with our philosophy of hiring smart people and treating them incredibly well. This was also the moment that my brother Simon took the plunge and moved from California to Fargo to join the team and support our electronics and sensor efforts.

Pulling in the Heathkit line was a complicated move— we wanted to ensure we didn’t become distracted from our goal of growing the Kirkwall software but recognized that having an in-house electronics and sensor prototyping wing was a highly valuable vertical integration play for the company as well as an additional revenue source. We were also confident that we could streamline company operations and increase profit margins for this side of the business, which we eventually achieved with over a 90% reduction in overhead.

One of the biggest challenges as a startup founder is finding good advice—when you first found a company, every single person in your life offers advice. Over 99% of it is terrible advice that will bankrupt your company. The challenge is finding that 1% that gives incredible advice and trusting them deeply while doing the exact opposite of what the remaining 99% recommends. The further along you get as a company, the harder it gets to find good advice. We were fortunate enough to find some incredible advisors early on, but this is one of the biggest challenges for early-stage founders.

April 2024

Kirkwall had won the first-place grand prize as the No. 1 startup operating in South Dakota. We were blown away as we were relative newcomers just expanding into the state, and this was a huge win for us. It promptly led to multiple follow-on awards and allowed us to leverage the best of both North Dakota and South Dakota’s economic development incentives as a multistate software company. We continued to keep costs incredibly low and set up in the downtown Startup Sioux Falls co-working space and entrepreneurial incubator. This allowed us to work closely with the entrepreneurial and academic communities across multiple states and further expand in the Midwest.

May 2024

This month, we kicked off Kirkwall’s first summer internship program. We didn’t know what to expect and had no idea how to build out an internship program but knew that regional universities represented an outstanding talent pool that we didn’t want to pass up. Having heard that workforce and hiring was a challenge for a number of regional companies, we took a unique approach: we announced that all interns would be invited to join us on a company skydiving trip, and would receive training on how to use the company flamethrower. Within 72 hours of listing the vacancy, we were flooded with nearly 100 great applicants.

Lots of companies pay tens of thousands of dollars per head in fees to expensive recruiting firms, and for $200 in skydiving fees and $20 in flamethrower gasoline per intern we built up a strong pool of applicants. More importantly, it also helped us filter for the type of applicants we wanted from a cultural fit perspective. The venn diagram intersection of tech enthusiasts and adrenaline junkies turns out to be a great recruiting ground for early-stage startups where every day is different and teams move fast. We took eight outstanding students from across North Dakota and South Dakota with deep expertise spanning fields of study from computer science to cybersecurity.

We made sure to take full advantage of the state programs available, which substantially lowered our costs. We were approved for North Dakota’s Operation Intern and InternGF programs as well as South Dakota’s SD SEEDS program. This allowed us to pay our interns good wages at minimal cost to our company while giving them a great educational experience. Juggling eight interns across two states was a challenge; we split the team into “North Team” and “South Team” based on geography, but also quickly discovered it made sense to have cross-state teams that allowed interns to collaborate on specific projects. In retrospect, we grew the team far faster than we were prepared to handle this summer. Our saving grace was that we had made excellent hires who were self-motivated. When we ran out of projects, they proposed and sought out new projects on their own and brought new opportunities to the team.

Interns ultimately rise to the level that you empower them to. If you treat interns as if their greatest talent is fetching coffee, they will never rise above that level. If you empower them to represent the company and bring you great ideas, they will rise to the occasion.

One key element here was placing our full trust and faith in the intern team, and empowering them to represent the company. We gave them company polo shirts, sent them to conferences on our behalf, and encouraged them to immediately flag inefficiencies and ways we could improve. Some of our best ideas came from the summer intern crew, primarily because they weren’t afraid to immediately highlight what we were doing wrong. This required setting egos aside, and understanding that interns ultimately rise to the level that you empower them to. If you treat interns as if their greatest talent is fetching coffee, they will never rise above that level. If you empower them to represent the company and bring you great ideas, they will rise to the occasion.

June 2024

We realized at this time that one challenge was our lack of inbound leads. We were excellent at closing deals with outbound outreach but had little to no inbound sales leads. We assessed that we were making the mistake of coming in far too technical and overcomplicating our product, and needed to invest in marketing to put our technology in layman’s terms to drive inbound leads.

June was the month Kirkwall made the commitment to kick off our Venture Capital raise. We had been through both the gener8tor gBeta investment accelerator as well as the Plug and Play AgTech accelerator in Silicon Valley, and had a solid and polished pitch deck and executive summary. We were both post-MVP and post-revenue and feeling confident. As it turned out, we picked one of the worst times in decades to launch our round. Silicon Valley Bank had just collapsed in the weeks prior, VC firms were in cash conservation mode, and the investment environment was absolutely brutal for founders.

We knew that investment rounds often took longer than planned, but the environment was far worse than we had imagined. Dozens of our friends were fellow founders seeking to raise their rounds, and none were getting a single dollar across the board. It became apparent that VC firms were looking for horses that had already won the race before placing bets.

Due to our prior success with state grant funding, we began pitching to a number of North Dakota state funds ranging from Agricultural Products Utilization Commission (APUC) to North Dakota’s Bioscience Innovation Grant. We had previously been passed up for APUC funding in favor of a pumpkin patch for dogs (possibly our most amusing failure to date), but felt that our pitch was stronger and our financials would prove that we were worth investing state funds in. We were wrong and were rejected across the board for every program we applied for. June was a month of nonstop rejections, and morale was low. Our finances were starting to get tight.

We realized at this time that one challenge was our lack of inbound leads. We were excellent at closing deals with outbound outreach but had little to no inbound sales leads. We assessed that we were making the mistake of coming in far too technical and overcomplicating our product, and needed to invest in marketing to put our technology in layman’s terms to drive inbound leads.

Fortunately, I had recently met a new marketing founder named Kseniya who had recently relocated to the Midwest from New York City during an entrepreneurial bootcamp session. Kseniya had prior experience in boiling down deeply technical concepts into simple language– exactly what we needed. I was born in New York and went to school in New York City. As a fellow New Yorker, I recognized that our strategy sessions with Kseniya moved at quadruple the pace of my discussions with other prospective marketing firms primarily because our fast-paced New Yorker rate of speech allowed us to fit quadruple the number of words into every strategy session. We made the decision to double down and invest in simplifying our overly technical language as a way to drive inbound leads and fix the looming revenue shortage.

July 2024

In July, our finances got even tighter. We had multiple state programs that were reimbursement-based and had fronted a large amount of cash to pay for intern salaries and expenses. I promised the team that if it ever came down to it, I would pay them before paying myself. I told them that if they had to pick up a second job on the side to make ends meet, I wouldn’t blame them—a statement that was embarrassing for me to make.

We soon became fast friends, and before long he made an offer to invest in Kirkwall. This investment spurred a series of follow-on checks from other regional investors. Without this chance encounter, we might not have survived.

To their credit, every single member of the team refused and told me they wouldn’t abandon the mission and were dedicated to remaining full-time no matter the circumstances. I was at a low point as a leader and was blown away by the faith that our team had in our collective mission even when times were hard. This was solid reinforcement that we had put the right people on the team, from the C-Suite to the interns. I couldn’t have asked for a better team.

Around this time, I met our very first investor. All of our prior VC pitches had been met with the dreaded “Great pitch—please add us to your mailing list and keep in touch.” While working in the communal kitchen area of Startup Sioux Falls, I heard the fighter jets from the local air base perform an incredibly low pass over town. I set aside my laptop and ran outside to see if I could catch a glimpse of them, and struck up a conversation with a fellow entrepreneur who had likewise run outside to see the fighter jets. We soon became fast friends, and before long he made an offer to invest in Kirkwall. This investment spurred a series of follow-on checks from other regional investors. Without this chance encounter, we might not have survived.

August 2024

In August, things were looking up for us—we had signed our first investor, had enough runway to survive, and had won some additional state funding programs to keep us afloat. Our software was looking better every day, and the interns were contributing heavily on a daily basis to development. The Venture Capital environment was still brutal, but any entrepreneur will tell you that the first 90% of effort is spent getting the first check, and the remaining 10% is getting follow-on checks.

We had cleared the worst hurdle. We had a number of promising follow-on meetings with venture capital firms and angel investors who suddenly regained interest following our first investor check. In retrospect, we spent too much time chasing the “maybes.” Just like marriage, very few people use logical reasoning to convince someone to marry them who previously didn’t want to. Likewise with investment if the initial spark of excitement is absent, your odds of winning over an investor are incredibly low and place you at risk of sinking a large amount of time in communications that will never yield investment. We ultimately learned that rejection is great because it prevents a founder from wasting time. An immediate no is far better than a slow maybe. We would gladly accept a middle finger from an investor before a request to “add me to the mailing list and reconnect as you gain traction.” Time spent failing to convince a hesitant lukewarm investor could have been better spent contacting ten new VC firms.

In retrospect, we spent too much time chasing the maybe. Just like marriage, very few people use logical reasoning to convince someone to marry them who previously didn’t want to. Likewise with investment if the initial spark of excitement is absent, your odds of winning over an investor are incredibly low and place you at risk of sinking a large amount of time in communications that will never yield investment.

This month yielded our best case study yet—while onboarding a multinational animal health biotechnology client, Kirkwall’s automated monitoring system detected a critical failure in a laboratory freezer system. Both temperature and humidity sharply increased, with a change of over 25 degrees Celsius in under 45 minutes. Kirkwall leadership confirmed the on-site laboratory and quality control manager were aware of the alerts and had been successfully notified through our alerting system, and that the laboratory was not conducting an intentional test or defrosting of the freezer. A subsequent visual inspection of the freezer system revealed a barely cracked door that would have gone unnoticed without Kirkwall’s automated alerts.

During an after-action call with the client, it was noted that the freezer contained multiple years’ worth of archived cancer research samples from animal health oncology studies, DNA samples, and valuable chemical compounds sensitive to temperature variation. Laboratory staff confirmed that a human would not have detected the failure until the following workday, and none of the contents were lost thanks to Kirkwall’s automated alerts. This was a huge win for our team, and we were ecstatic that we had saved years’ worth of cancer research.

September 2024

As we concluded our internship program, we had the great pleasure of delivering on our promise to throw our interns out of a perfectly good airplane. Our inaugural skydiving day was a huge success and a true culmination of the summer. Our interns had a great time skydiving, and an even better time learning how to use the company flamethrower. We made an offer to Riley DuBord (one of Ujjwal’s fellow Emerging Digital Academy graduates) to join the team as a full-stack developer. Riley was an outstanding intern, and immediately hit the ground running as a full team member.

This month, we also brought on a professional accounting firm to manage our books. Having previously completed my MBA with a concentration in financial businesses, I had taken enough accounting courses to manage our early-stage finances, generate P&L statements, and keep our banking partners happy. At this point, however, the pace of financial documentation required for our activities stretched beyond my capabilities, and outsourcing our accounting work allowed me to focus on longer-term strategy, business development, and corporate partnerships in a way I previously could not due to limited manpower. We promptly signed our second investor, who joined the company as Chairman of our Board of Directors.

As we neared the end of 2024, my wedding pushed me to finally take some time to enjoy life with my soon-to-be wife and celebrate the wins Ujjwal and I had achieved over the prior two years since founding the company.

On a personal note, this was the month I got married to my wife, Dayna. Planning a wedding while growing a startup and attempting a Venture Capital raise is, at best, an insane proposition. Two of the hardest things for founders to do are to celebrate their wins and to take time off. Every single Founders Meetup that we hold in either Fargo or Sioux Falls begins with the same three questions: “What’s your name, what are you building in one or two sentences, and what’s a win you’re celebrating this week?”

The final question of those three is the most important. All founders struggle with imposter syndrome and celebrating achievements, and we rarely take time off to enjoy the big moments in life. Both Ujjwal and I have struggled with this. As we neared the end of 2024, my wedding pushed me to finally take some time to enjoy life with my soon-to-be wife and celebrate the wins Ujjwal and I had achieved over the prior two years since founding the company.

October 2024

Shortly after my wedding, we were thrown another curveball—my aunt, who had previously managed the Heathkit presence in Pennsylvania, was retiring from the company. We had under 30 days to relocate another electronics facility to Fargo and were now faced with cramming another building’s worth of materials into our small Fargo office.

Our team rose to the occasion, flew to Pennsylvania, took a full inventory of the electronics components on hand—and promptly packed another UHaul truck to the ceiling and drove it across the country to North Dakota.

After two years, this was one of the first months that we finally felt good about our position. We were notified that we had just been awarded a major federal subcontract in partnership with the University of North Dakota to leverage Kirkwall’s software to monitor and secure America’s electrical substation infrastructure.

Our space at the NDSU incubator was quite literally packed to the ceiling, but we had finally consolidated multiple facilities into one for a truly integrated operation. We had all software development, electronics R&D, defense contracting, and logistics under one roof for the very first time—and were saving many thousands of dollars per month by operating out of the NDSU incubator rather than leasing expensive coastal real estate in California and Pennsylvania.

After two years, this was one of the first months that we finally felt good about our position. We were notified that we had just been awarded a major federal subcontract in partnership with the University of North Dakota to leverage Kirkwall’s software to monitor and secure America’s electrical substation infrastructure. Against all odds we had survived over 24 months, raised venture capital, moved two electronics factories across the country, won awards, actually started paying ourselves, launched an internship program, and hired employees. After two years of barely scraping by, we finally had some breathing room.

November 2024

I would encourage any founder to consider what happens in the moments following success and plan accordingly.

This month was consumed by corporate partnerships. We were finally at a place where we had software we were proud of, a capable team, and enough runway to focus on key client accounts and major wins rather than short-term cash flow and putting out fires. Many of these discussions remain underway, but our early successes allowed us the gravitas to meet with larger corporations and discuss strategic partnerships. This was a whole new ballgame of negotiations—we had gone from small pilot programs to meetings with multi-billion dollar companies.

One of the biggest lessons we learned this month is to prepare for the moments after success—many founders fear failure and don’t think beyond the moment of a client saying “yes.” We encountered instances where prospective clients said yes far faster than expected, catching us off guard. Rather than considering what happens if you fail, I would encourage any founder to consider what happens in the moments following success and plan accordingly.

December 2024

As the year drew to a close, we received amazing news—a regional investment fund was prepared to invest in Kirkwall with a sizable sum. Ujjwal and I quickly found ourselves in an unexpected position—after two years of scraping by, we were suddenly in a position to drive explosive growth by deploying that capital.

Immediately we began discussing hiring strategy— we had the cash on hand to hire, but also were tempted to stockpile cash to defend our runway. We’re now at the precipice of another leap of faith as we prepare to hire multiple individuals to augment the team—a move that further increases our burn rate substantially. We’re confident that this is the right decision for expansion, but every increase in monthly burn rate is daunting. This balancing act is one of the most challenging elements of startup expansion, and one we wrestle with daily. One of the key lessons that we embraced early on is the idea that the pit in your stomach that you feel every day as an entrepreneur is the feeling of acceleration rather than something to be feared.

What will happen with Kirkwall in 2025? Follow along to find out!.

William CromartyLinkedin | /william-cromarty-1704b31a5/