Happy Nation – Founders’ story

Do a quick Google search and you will find overlapping lists of the qualities that every startup founder should have: vision, grit, passion, determination, persistence, resilience, to name a few. It’s easy to believe that you possess these traits when sitting comfortably at home reading Ben Horowitz’s “The Hard Thing About Hard Things” on the couch dreaming up your next business idea. It’s another thing to be in the thick of it (no 9-5 during good times) and then throw in surprising legal issues, a lockdown one day before your planned app launch after years of work, crashing markets, the deaths of four loved ones in 1.5 years, depression and burnout (personal lives don’t stop), then you’re tested on the experiential level and get to see whether you live those traits. Is the founder still standing with their vision clear in sight?

We are Adam and Amelia and this is only a small part of our story but it is ours. The last three years were undeniably the worst we have both experienced not only as startup founders, but also as human beings in this world. We can fill a book of all our experiences (and maybe one day we will) but one thing we know is that we can take the punches and we are still here because Happy Nation needs to exist.

The seed of Happy Nation was planted in 2017 and it went through all the phases – side and weekend hustle, bootstrapped endeavor, supported by friends and family – and along the way, we did our best to learn and mature as startup founders, leaders, and people. We started with no startup knowledge and experience to wearing all the hats and leading teams of up to 30 people. But more importantly, we learned to survive on almost nothing, and got up and adapted when hit by unforeseen circumstances – all that because we know that the Happy Nation will help a lot of people to thrive.