When AWS Went Down, Vestingnotes Took a Break Too.
Vestingnotes Newsletter - 28.10.2025
Ciao e benvenuti đ
As you might have noticed - or maybe not (perhaps some of you were secretly happy to get one less notification from Vestingnotes đ ) - I didnât manage to publish last week.
Funny enough, the same week AWS (Amazon Web Services) went down, Vestingnotes decided to take a short break too - though mine didnât involve servers.
At first, I took it as a small failure. After just two months, I had already missed a week. But it wasnât about lack of ideas, motivation, or consistency. The last few weeks have just been⌠a lot. Different priorities, and not enough hours to sit down and write.
The feeling reminded me of losing a hockey game - something every player knows well. It hurts for a moment, but you know the season is long. And if I remember correctly, there are 52 games in the regular season. You lose one, you move on, you show up for the next.
So yes, I missed a week.
But it also gave me space to think - about balance, focus, productivity, and execution - and the chance to enjoy some time in Lugano with family and friends after a while đ
And now Iâm here again, writing Vestingnotes - for those of you who keep reading, week after week.
Recap from last week
Last weekâs newsletter (the one before the skipped one đ) was all about emotions, conviction, and champagne - about what it means to close a pre-seed round.
I wrote about how preparation often matters more than the moment itself - about conviction over validation, and clarity over complexity.
I shared the journey leading up to our pre-seed at nestermind, the lessons from pitching week after week.
Because just like in hockey, momentum is built one shift at a time.
If you missed it, you can read it here đđź
When Growth meets structure
In the beginning, everything feels intuitive.
Decisions are made in two minutes on Slack, every piece of information lives in a chat or a shared file, and the goal is simply to make things work. But after a funding round, priorities multiply.
You have more clients, more requests, more people, and more channels open at the same time. Thatâs when you realize that speed alone is no longer enough. Because growing in a healthy way doesnât mean adding more - it means organizing better.
Not just doing more, but doing it right.
And the first challenge is to make visible what was once implicit:
How do we manage a new client from start to finish?
How do we collect feedback that actually improves the product?
How do we share information so it doesnât get lost?
How do we maintain the same quality even when everything doubles?
Every startup reaches that point where a step toward maturity becomes necessary.
Not to become âcorporate,â but to be able to replicate what works.
Thatâs where real scalability begins - when chaos turns into method.
Building scalability into the everyday
When people talk about scalability, they often think about technology, automation, and numbers. But in reality, scalability starts much earlier - and much smaller. Not just for the product you build, but for the company itself.
It means creating clear processes that reduce the margin for error.
It means that every client receives the same experience, no matter who they work with.
It means that every offer, every meeting, every activity follows a trace, a logic, a standard.
For us, itâs been a gradual journey: standardizing client onboarding, defining internal checklists, centralizing information, automating where it made sense, and simplifying where things were getting unnecessarily complicated.
Scaling isnât about adding layers - itâs about removing friction. Eliminating unnecessary steps, making workflows feel natural, and giving the team time to focus on what truly matters. Technology can help - a lot - but itâs never enough on its own.
Every time you remove a manual step, clarify a flow, or create a repeatable logic, youâre building scalability.
One piece at a time.
The trade-off mindset
Every startup, at some point, faces the same temptation: to automate everything.
To build perfect flows, spotless dashboards, and processes that update themselves.
And yet, reality is more nuanced. Every automation, every attempt to make something more scalable, comes with a price. Sometimes itâs money, sometimes itâs time - but most often, itâs focus.
Because every time you choose to improve a process, youâre also choosing - at least temporarily - not to work on something else.
So the point isnât to automate more, but to automate better.
In our case, we realized early on that we didnât need perfect systems - we needed systems that could hold. Processes that could evolve, not models destined to break at the first change.
The truth is, in the early stages of a startup, almost nothing stays stable for more than a few months. The product evolves, the number of clients grows, workflows shift. Every time you think youâve found the right formula, something happens that forces you to rethink the process.
And thatâs not a failure - thatâs the game.
Thatâs why it doesnât make sense to spend days building complex automations or hyper-defined processes when the context itself is still moving. Itâs better to start from a clearly defined problem and solve it with the simplest, fastest, and cheapest solution possible.
Then, only when the flow starts to stabilize, does it make sense to make it more sophisticated. Itâs a constant balance between efficiency and adaptability. Because every hour spent optimizing a detail is an hour taken away from asking whether that detail should even exist.
We can call it the trade-off mindset - in a startup, everything is a compromise. Every decision has its trade-offs. Every organizational choice carries one question:
Are we solving a real problem, or just simplifying our perception of control?
A concrete example: deciding whether to automate an onboarding process or keep it manual. On one hand, automation saves operational time. On the other, it removes direct contact with clients - and the subtle signals that only human interaction can reveal.
So the real question becomes: when is the right moment to automate?
For me, the answer is always the same:
If tomorrow ten times more clients arrived, what would happen to this process?
Would it hold? Would it break? Or would it stretch until it becomes unmanageable?
It sounds simple, but it can guide a lot of decisions. It forces you to take perspective, think in scenarios, and ask yourself how far a process can really scale.
A startup isnât meant to look like a perfect machine - itâs meant to behave like a living organism that adapts. And every time you choose not to over-engineer something, youâre protecting its ability to evolve.
The Takeaways
After the round, growth doesnât come from more resources - but from more structure. Funding gives you time, but real progress comes from how you build processes and habits.
Scalability â complexity. Itâs not about adding layers - itâs about creating clarity. Remove friction, donât add control.
Automate less, but better. Every automation is a trade-off between time, cost, and focus. Start with the clearest problem and the simplest, cheapest solution.
Ask the right question: âIf tomorrow ten times more clients arrived, what would happen to this process?â Itâs the most honest stress test you can run on any system.
True scalability is cultural. It doesnât live in the tools or procedures, but in how the team thinks, communicates, and adapts.
Closing Thought
Scaling isnât just about adding people, tools, or automations.
Itâs about building systems that adapt when things start to move faster. The goal isnât perfection - itâs resilience.
Every decision comes with trade-offs, every process has limits, and every improvement should leave space for change.
Scalability isnât a static target - itâs a balance you keep adjusting as you grow.
In the end, progress isnât measured by how much you build, but by how well what youâve built holds when everything accelerates.
If youâve been through this phase too, Iâd love to hear how you handled itđđť
Vesting Community
A space where first and early hires can share what the early days really feel like.
Where students and university associations curious about startups can ask questions directly to those already in the trenches.
And where founders and investors can exchange perspectives on what truly makes teams work.
Somewhere between stories and reality - a place for the lessons that never make it into pitch decks or headlines.
No slides, no polish - just honest talks.
So if this sounds like something youâd like to be part of, send me a message.
If youâve made it this far, drop a like so I know youâre actually reading along đ
And if youâre curious why I chose the name Vestingnotes, leave a comment and take a guess!
Why Vestingnotes
Why bother writing all this down?
Because the messy, unexpected, human lessons usually vanish in the rush of startup life.
I donât want to forget what it feels like right now. And maybe by writing, I can give something back - to students curious about startups, founders searching for a first hire, and investors wondering what really happens in the trenches.
Thanks for reading - and if you subscribe, welcome to Vestingnotes! đ
See you next week đśď¸
Cheers,
Jona
nestermind
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