From Zero to One

There’s a moment in this process that I keep coming back to. Not the idea… first pitch… or first meeting with a serious investor. The moment I keep coming back to is the first yes. It was literally the tipping point for mentally.

Before the Yes

I want to be honest about what the early days looked like. I was bombing pitches. Not occasionally, consistently. I would get in front of people, share the vision, walk through the concept, and walk away knowing it didn’t land the way I needed it to and I kept going back out. That’s the part nobody talks about when they tell founder stories. The stretch of time where you are putting in real work, real effort, real hours, and the scoreboard does not reflect any of it yet. I reminded myself constantly that I was doing my time. That all I needed was reps. That the only way to get better at something hard is to do it badly enough times until you start doing it well.

What I didn’t fully understand yet was that I was asking the wrong question. I was walking into those early conversations thinking the pitch was about HUMN. The concept, the model, the market opportunity, the competitive landscape. I had done the work. I knew the answers but I kept leaving rooms without the outcome I was looking for and eventually I had to be honest with myself about why.

The Question Was Never About the Idea

The question was never would people invest in this. The question was always would people invest in me. Once I understood that, everything about how I showed up changed. I stopped leading with slides and started leading with story. I stopped trying to prove the concept and started letting people get to know the person behind it. I thought about my corporate career and what those big companies were actually doing when they invested millions of dollars in resources and training into me. They were not betting on a territory. They were betting on a person they believed could go into that territory and figure it out. The same dynamic was at play here. HUMN was the territory. I was the bet.

That reframe was not comfortable because it raised the stakes in a way that felt deeply personal. When the pitch is about the idea, a no is just feedback on the concept. When the pitch is about you, a no lands differently. But here is what I learned on the other side of that discomfort. When people say yes to you as a person, the relationship is built on something real. It is not a transaction. It is a belief and that is a completely different foundation to build on.

What the First Yes Did

When it happened, something shifted that I did not expect. It was not just validation of the concept or even of me as a founder. It was proof that you can go from zero to one with nothing but words in a notebook and the willingness to keep showing up. That sounds simple and it is one of the hardest things I have ever experienced in real time. I went from an idea with no committed capital to an idea with a real person behind it who believed enough to write a check. That changes the internal narrative in a way that is difficult to describe from the outside. I went from asking myself if this was possible to knowing that it was. Those are not the same mental state and they produce completely different work…

and now it makes sense as to why this was such an epiphany. All I knew was corporate.

The Reps Nobody Sees

What I want people to understand is that the first yes did not come easy and it did not come fast. It came after awkward calls, missed pitches, conversations that went nowhere, and a lot of time sitting with the discomfort of not being there yet. Every one of those reps mattered. Every bombing pitch made the next one sharper. Every conversation where I left the room knowing I had not landed it told me something I needed to know. That is the work that does not show up in the highlight reel but it is the work that made the yes possible when it finally came.

I am still in this process. The conversations have gotten more complex, the investors more sophisticated, and the stakes are higher. But the foundation underneath all of it is the same thing it was when I got that first yes. Someone believed in me before there was much to show them. That is something I carry into every room I walk into now, and it is something I will carry into every room for as long as I am building HUMN.