I am often torn about “extracurriculars” too - all the things outside of Ghia that keep me inspired, when indeed work has taken every inch of my brainspace too, but are not my core professional focus (which is 100% Ghia). I also struggle with separating my identity from my identity as the founder of Ghia.

I can’t tell you the number of times I have been introduced as “Melanie - Melanie is Ghia!”. It makes me scared: what if Ghia fails? I will be nothing.

I hope to someday get to a place where my company can live without me, and also be many other things to people :) and the Substack is a little bit of that. It’s me off duty, even though sometimes I also like to lift the curtain about what it takes to make a product, to be a founder: it sounds so official, but it actually just means flying by the seat of my pants most days and doing the best I can when I often feel unequipped.

Thank you for this note and for reading!