#42 The start-up phase. Chronicles of a Founder Dad.

And the message that sits over the top of the whole thing is simple: don’t forget to imagine the best case too.

The last three episodes have probably been written from the bottom of a dip. A proper challenging period. And when you’re in those moments it’s very easy to only see the worst-case scenarios. Your brain runs there automatically. What if this doesn’t work? What if things never change? What if this is just how life is now?

But now it feels like we’re starting to come out the other side of that dip. And when you start climbing out, even just a little bit, perspective comes back. You can reflect on the hard stuff while also seeing the direction you’re travelling in. So that’s the theme of this episode. Yes, it’s been tough. But there are signs that things are shifting.

Let’s start with Indi, because let’s face it, how Indi is doing largely determines how everything else in our life goes.

The last six weeks have been tough. You’ve read about that. But about a week ago after a month of fighting, we finally got to change her medication. We moved onto a new one and started slowly, just a quarter tablet a day (hidden inside a raspberry). The first week was… interesting. We knew things were going to change, we just didn’t know how. What it meant in reality was basically no sleep.

She’d end up in our bed from midnight most nights, fully awake, which meant I ended up downstairs with her until about 7am. That went on for the whole week. So yeah, operating on fumes, but weirdly it was okay because we knew it was part of the process. And during the day you could already see something shifting. She felt happier. More regulated. Like her nervous system wasn’t permanently on edge.

Then on Sunday we doubled the dose.

And that’s where things really started to move. Getting her down to sleep is now seriously easy, which is a massive win. I mean, genuinely massive. She’s still waking up around midnight and climbing into our bed, but instead of being wide awake and needing to go downstairs for hours, she’s just restless. Arms, legs, body moving everywhere. You spend the night getting kicked. It’s not perfect. But compared to where we were, it’s progress.

The bigger shift though has been during the day in the last few days. We’ve always held onto the belief that if we can get her more regulated, her brain might finally get the chance to do some of the things it wants to do. And yesterday we had one of those moments where you stop and look at each other like… did that really just happen?

She produced three new words in one day.

At kinder pickup, Rachel told us they were handing out muffins and Indi clearly said “big one” because she wanted the bigger muffin. Later at dinner Allie was holding a block of cheese and Indi looked straight at it and said “cheese”. And then the best one - she was wandering around the house looking a bit uncomfortable and we swear she said “I done poos.”

Now all of them needed interpretation. It’s not perfect English. The sounds aren’t crisp. But they were clearly there and clearly linked to the moment. We’ve had glimmers like this before and then been brought crashing back down to earth, so we’re not getting ahead of ourselves. But maybe… just maybe… these meds are the right ones for her. Maybe they’re starting to unlock something.

And honestly, forget the words for a second. If she can start telling us before she’s done a poo, that’s the real win. That’s the moment I’m waiting for.

With that bit of hope in the air, it also feels important to acknowledge the tough period that came before it. The last several years have been challenging, but the six weeks leading into this episode were particularly hard. And now that we’re starting to come out of it, I’ve been asking myself a question: maybe we needed that low?

Sometimes things happen in life and you’re not sure why they had to get that bad. But maybe the dip had to be deep enough to force change. That month pushed me to rip up the entire front garden and build the in-ground trampoline setup. It pushed us to have difficult conversations with the care team and move forward with an NDIS change of circumstances process. It pushed us to get Allie the car she needed so she can take more control of things. And it pushed me to rethink how I structure my work and my energy.

If that dip had only been a medium dip, maybe none of those changes would have happened. Maybe we needed the tough month to create the momentum for something better.

Which brings me onto the NDIS review.

When they originally assessed Indi two years ago, they were looking at a two-year-old toddler who was developmentally delayed. That’s the plan we’ve been operating under ever since. But she’s not that child anymore. She’s a four-year-old, fast, athletic, disabled girl who needs a completely different level of support.

So we’re submitting a change of circumstances. Everything is being tracked on the indi app obviously, and when I laid it all out this week there were twenty-two separate tasks that need to be project managed just to get the submission ready. Twenty-two. That’s on top of everything else in life, which already feels like several full-time jobs.

We’ll get it done. But stepping back and looking at the system objectively, it’s pretty brutal. It relies on parents who are already under enormous pressure having both the knowledge and the perseverance to navigate a very complicated process. We’ll get what we need from it, but I can completely see how so many families just get overwhelmed and fall out of the system entirely. Hopefully the app starts changing that and makes the process more accessible for others.

Outside of all that, life is starting to find a bit of rhythm again. I’m back running, which feels good. The mindset shift over the last few weeks has definitely helped my legs feel lighter again. I’ve even managed to sneak in a gym session. Getting into the city for work has now become a bit of a once-a-week treat, so I’m making the most of those days.

My AI tooling has also gone next level. Our product & engineering team are already pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with AI, but behind the scenes I’ve now connected my entire working stack so a lot of the repetitive tasks run automatically in the background. It means I can focus more on the higher-level thinking and the things that actually move the company forward. The way companies are going to be run in the next few years is fundamentally changing. Equal parts exciting and slightly terrifying. I might share my top ten AI hacks in the next episode.

And then there’s the life stuff that fills in the rest of the picture. We went to the F1 on Sunday, which has now become a bit of an annual tradition. Allie and I managed to sneak out for a date and went to see The Streets, which was epic. Beckham has started playing rugby. And Harper’s Edithvale Giraffes had their first proper session together.

Oh and we have new indi merch!! If you want to be one of the cool kids at the park donning an indi cap (see the pics below), it’s very simple. Download the app. Use it. Voice note me each day what you love, what you hate, what’s missing etc etc.

So after a few episodes that were very much written from the bottom of the dip, this one feels different. There’s still a long way to go, but there are signs of progress. Signs that things are moving.

And through it all, the reminder i sometimes need - don’t forget to imagine the best case too.

Have an epic week - Orrin xoxo

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