The president resigned.
He was staying involved as a board member, but it was still another hole in the company and another decision the rest of us would have to absorb.
My immediate reaction was not polished.
“As if I didn't have enough shit to deal with...”
Reality Check had already become harder than I expected. The technical work was real, and so were the customers, but the larger plan kept moving around. I had joined because I thought I could help build a growing company. By late summer, I was no longer sure the people at the top wanted the same company.
At the same time, I had restarted a conversation with Shutterstock. Monk Networks was taking shape on the side. School had started. The calendar was full before the resignation landed.
This was the part of startup leadership that never made it into a job description. Someone leaves, the org chart changes, and the work does not pause while everybody develops a healthy point of view about it.
The title did not matter much in that moment. CTO still meant the servers had to work, customers needed answers, and the technical team needed to know what came next even when I did not have a complete answer myself.
You answer the next email. You cover the next meeting. You try not to make a permanent decision based on one bad day.
I was upbeat by nature, but optimism did not require pretending everything was fine. It meant believing there was still a good next move and then doing the work to find it.
By then, I was looking pretty hard.