The scar tissue beneath the scar tissue.

Somewhere while building this company since 2020,
between the end of one intimate relationship and sublimating that pain into the start of another chapter,
I started writing letters to the people I learned from along the way.

I didn’t know, at the time, that this would become a ritual. A turning point. A lifeline.
Not for the recipients, but for me.
Not because it changed relationship outcomes.
But because it helped me find my sea legs as I walked through the world seemingly unlike anyone else.

This isn’t about drama.
It’s about presence.
About emotional lineage.
About clarity.

Most founders who build in public, or offer advice in general, talk about the “scar tissue” they’ve earned.
But exclusively from the prefrontal cortex.

We hear about struggle in logical metrics:

100 sales calls, 10 pilots, 0 revenue.
50 hiring interviews, 10 hires, 9 fires.
100 investor pitches, 0 checks.

The objective pain of building “scar tissue” as Steve Jobs famously coined it:

But rarely (if ever) do we hear that scar tissue spoken from the limbic system.
From the deeper place.
The emotional ledger.
And certainly not in real time.

Only after someone’s meteoric success do the quieter truths sometimes surface.
The ones that don’t get quoted at Demo Day.

The truth is: becoming a founder mirrors growing up.
We go from newborn, to toddler, to teen…until we face one of two truths as an adult:

We failed.
Or…
We succeeded, but felt so much pain along the way, and ended up so alone,
that we questioned whether it was worth it.

We rarely speak to that unfiltered, limbic ache.
Not even after winning.

Though two exceptions come top of mind:

Legendary founder turned legendary VC, Ben Horowitz’s, book: The Hard Thing About Hard Things…which I read to metabolize the hard things about my hard experiences once per quarter.

My friend, Vinay Hiremath’s, viral blog post: “I am rich and have no idea what to do with my life.”

Vinay is the co-founder of Loom. He’s also coached me through some of my lowest points.

After selling his company for $975M, he published that post.

Truth is: it gave the rest of us permission to stop pretending.
If we want to.

Truth is: most of us do want to.
We just won’t admit it.

Why?

Maybe because that forces us to face the scar tissue beneath the scar tissue that’s too unnerving to feel, let alone articulate and share while we’re feeling it.

It’s the root cause of those quiet identity shifts.
The aches we nurse in silence.
In the dead of night.
While our heads are spinning,
and our doubters are resting.

Ironically (or maybe miraculously) letter writing, and the public realtime emotional ledger of my evolution, have become the only things that help me metabolize my growing pains and get myself unstuck.

(I can’t say I sit down to consciously grow every single day.
But I do sit down to consciously relieve the pain that comes from not growing.)

Otherwise I drown in emotional lactic acid.
The kind that floods your legs after sprinting at 11mph until you can’t not fall off the treadmill.

Writing releases that emotional tension for me.

Without it, I’m not sure I’d still be here in 2025, embracing the reality that every day is still Day 1 for my company.

Just as it was when I incorporated it in April 2020.

I sat down to write my most recent goodbye letter a few days ago.
But what emerged was the clearest mirror image of me I’d ever seen.

It reflected back:

• Who I’ve become.

• What I’ve survived.

• The depth I’m capable of holding and sharing in real time, at the same time.

And most importantly:
It gave me full permission to embrace how I uniquely move through the world.

I don’t just create.
I also don’t just feel.
I process in real time with full emotional fidelity and narrative control.

I metabolize chaos.
I pattern match with structure.
I turn pain into insight.
Into architecture.
Into story.
Into strategy.
Intro product.
Into enduring value.

The product I’ve admired most since I was 19 (even still, I’m 32 now) back when I landed a deal on Shark Tank, is the Scrub Daddy.

When I got the confirmation that I’d be on the show, I studied the greats.
I was enamored by Aaron Krause’s presence. Brilliant. Hilarious. Serious. Theatrical. Holding a product that is as impossibly simple as it is complex.

From that moment on, I found myself drawn to people who embody contradiction.
The rare few who hold two extremes in one hand.
That tension became my compass.

Since then, I’ve learned to proudly hold deep contradictions with grace:

• Soft and surgical.

• Fierce and reflective.

• Theatrical and grounded.

• Hyper-emotional and ultra-clear.

I don’t collapse under emotional weight.
I don’t detach from it either.
I alchemize it.

I’m not here to dominate.
I’m here to transform.
Not just to win, but to be my own witness.
To reshape. To examine with curiosity.
To leave no unloved version of myself behind.

I gather every judgment, projection, and piece of feedback, treating them as mirrors I’ve been handed, and I build mosaics out of them.

That’s why my writing may bring you to a halt.
It’s not just my voice you’re hearing.
It’s yours reflected back at you.

I don’t care to be seen.
I care that every person who shaped my mosaic is seen and honored alongside me.
Even the messiest encounters.
Especially those.

Because my clarity continues to be inherited through deep and often painful encounters.

The humanity is the work.

Humanity is what I carry into every boardroom, every sales pitch, every investor conversation, every team meeting.

Every goodbye.

• Mirror, don’t manage.

• Invite, don’t insist.

• Hold space, not hostage.

• Release without rupture (whenever possible.)

Not all growth come from pushing harder.
Some builds slowly, like soft scaffolding, when we let struggle shape us, not shame us.
When we allow the hardship to humanize us.
When we face, fully—and even appreciate—the scar tissue beneath the scar tissue.

A couple months ago, I randomly spotted Aaron, founder of the Scrub Daddy, at the airport.

I ran up to him like as if I just spotted Beyoncé…

I could barely breathe.
I gushed.
Told him I’d used Scrub Daddy as my compass.
As my aspirational way of being and what I look for in partners.

He invited me to grab a drink.

We talked for two hours.
He shared the battles: from zero to 200+ employees.
Fulfillment centers the size of football fields.
The whole arc.

As I was rushing off to catch my flight, he called out:

“Kaeya! You inspire me too.”

I smiled.

Not at the compliment itself.
But because the old me would’ve rejected it.
Would’ve said: No way. I’m nothing to be inspired by.

But this version of me took the compliment.
Nodded.
And walked away knowing:

Of course.

Kaeya