When does a company stop becoming a start-up? At first, I thought maybe we had reached the next phase when we finally had health insurance. Then I thought we had evolved when we finally invested in a pallet jack. So, have we made it yet? If by making it, you mean literally making everything by hand, then yes, I think we've made it. We're still wrapping pallets, still cold-calling stores, still hand writing love notes on your orders, and still hold that crazy blinded "start-up" belief in our product and the people behind it.
Maybe we just like the thrill of always being on the edge. Maybe we need that motivation of always working toward something bigger. But the truth is, we will always be a start-up. We don't follow the clear linear capitalist model of squeezing profit margins, streamlining solutions, and automating. Heck, all of our boxes are handmade!
Our product is the investment in people. We exist to provide women, farmers, and orphans opportunity.
It was fun to be starting up in our 20s, high on beliefs and deep in the weeds of practicality. Sara and I are now in our 30s and we've gone through the hard start-up growing pains. We now feel less of that anxious need to prove ourselves and more of a deepening sense of gratitude.
Thank you for helping us get this far. Together let's keep drinking tea, keep employing women, and keep bright and driven scholars in school.
Keep your sense of purpose and your tea strong,
Kate, Sara, and Ann
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And with each of these rituals, in each of these small moments over the next few weeks, our heart aches. We want our Ajiri scholars to feel these small moments of love as they go to school. We want there to be someone to drop them off at school and embarrass them with a hug. We want there to be someone waiting at home to talk to them. We want them to feel frustrated when their parents try to help with their physics homework.
Angela, Wesley, and Damacline were now hopelessly off course. They had managed to scale that final fence and were walking down toward a forest. I wanted to run to them, set them on the right course, explain scale and direction and how they should put the compass on the map. But instead I watched them from the top of the hill. They were now making pretend owl calls to each other, quite literally hooting from one group to another and then bursting into laughter.
See, there is this tip-toeing around issues in business. No company should align itself too "political" for fear of alienating customers. But to have opinions and emotions—well, that's just human. As a society, we've become too corporatized—too sanitized to believe that companies shouldn't have a voice. Of course politics affect our business. Tariffs on tea! The war in Iran means higher costs of shipping our tea. The elimination of USAID and its direct impact on our community in Kenya. But more so than something directly affecting us and our business, we still care about policies that affect our neighbors and people across the world.
Kate Holby
Author