Beginnings always hide themselves in ends

This post is a part of the Iowa Startup Collective. If you haven't already, check out the other writers at IowaStartupCollective.Substack.com.

In 2014, Irish immigration told me I had to go home.

But where was home to me?

It wasn’t back to my family farm in Southeast Iowa.

It wasn’t back to Denver, Colorado.

It was back to Ames, Iowa.

I brought a sense of pride back to Ames with me.

I switched all my energy from poker to startups.

And over the past 11 years, I’ve given my all to building from Iowa, employing from Iowa, and trying to grow from Iowa.

In my eyes, I’ve failed at most of these attempts.

I told myself to have a give-first mentality to anyone and everyone.

I’ve tried to answer every email, every call, speak to every class, and try to keep it real with every audience.

I’ve given thousands of hours of time away.

But then reality smacked me in the face for the thousandth time, earlier this year.

My company wasn’t growing. We had failed every single attempt in finding a next location.

Since my company wasn’t growing into a next location, it meant just one thing. It was dying.

When it got down to brass tacks (thanks to a mentor throwing cold water on me), I realized I was personally starving to be around more builders. More impatience. More opportunity.

A couple weeks later, I found myself in San Francisco hanging out at Founders Inc. Furqan took a chance on us and invested over 4 years ago, before the fund even existed.

While I walked throughout the Founders Inc offices—where 100s of portfolio company founders, builders, and collaborators are—I realized it was THE example of what I had tried to build in Ames with our past coworking space.

But there was one major difference.

In Ames, while we hosted multiple community events such as hackathons, the day-to-day saw more referees (everyone else) than boxers (founders).

I can’t force more people to start companies. Most people shouldn’t start companies.

And I don’t have the answer to why more people should start companies from Ames, even though I believe the town could support 100,000 people (current pop. 65,000).

So the reality is this.

My 11 year attempt has come to an end. I’ve failed, but at least I tried.

Now it’s time to transition from a mindset of wanting to be liked and having pride, to simply one focused on winning.

If I win, my company will give back millions of years to humanity through healthy fast food.

With only 125,000 people served and 250,000 years given back so far, I’ve decided I need catapulted forward, no matter how steep the learning curve and landing is.

The destination is San Francisco. That’s where we’re going. That’s where more Clayton Farms Salads will be.

And while everyone else is building in AI, we’ll be farming.

Everyone’s gotta eat🥗