Once upon a time, before the demos broke and the investors ghosted and the AWS bills appeared like thunderstorms, there was just a quiet little idea.
It lived in Baby Deer’s head.
It was small.
Fragile.
Ridiculous, honestly.
But it wouldn’t leave.
So Baby Deer did what Baby Deer always does when something won’t leave, he opened a spreadsheet.
Because spreadsheets are safe.
Spreadsheets don’t laugh.
Spreadsheets don’t say this will never work.
Spreadsheets just… wait.
Baby Deer was not brave.
People thought he was, because he wore hoodies and talked about roadmaps and said words like runway and architecture and traction like they were normal.
But really, he was just someone who cared too much about things that might break.
He cared about:
- people losing jobs
- customers trusting him
- the tiny team that believed in him
- the idea that maybe, just maybe, he could build something good
And caring that much makes everything heavy.
So Baby Deer learned a trick.
He hid inside work.
He stayed up late.
He answered every Slack.
He rewrote the same pitch deck seventeen times.
If he kept moving, maybe no one would see how scared he was.
Because startups are strange forests.
You enter them thinking you’ll find treasure.
Instead you find:
mystery bugs
empty bank accounts
people who say “circle back”
and nights where you stare at the ceiling and whisper
“…I don’t know if I can do this.”
But Baby Deer kept going.
Because once you’ve promised something to the people who believe in you, you don’t just walk away.
And then, one day, while he was in full founder tunnel mode:
- hoodie
- coffee
- tabs everywhere
- three half-written investor emails
- one existential spreadsheet open for no reason
something unexpected happened.
A thought of someone who saw him clearly popped up.
Not his company.
Not his metrics.
Him.
And Baby Deer leaned back in his chair, stared at the ceiling, and muttered,
“…goddammit.”
Because he realized two things at once:
First,
he was not alone.
Second,
that might be the scariest part.
This is the story of Baby Deer.
A founder who was brave only because he was terrified.
A builder who kept going even when the forest was dark.
A person who learned, slowly, painfully,
that companies are made of code,
but founders are made of hope.
And hope,
like a tiny deer in a very big world,
is fragile.
But stubborn.
And real.
✨🦌
Love you 🫶
With heart,
— Rhea Lynn Mascarinas
Cybersecurity GTM Researcher | QuietConversion
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