The Letter from FINMA

January gave us our first cashflow-neutral month. It also gave us a painful letter from FINMA telling us we couldn’t call ourselves nobank any more.

That pairing is about as honest a picture of building a company as I’ve got. One number finally says you’re going somewhere, then an envelope arrives telling you to rename the thing.

The rest of the month didn’t slow down either. Raphael, our lead developer at NBK Labs, and the company parted ways, so I stepped into a much bigger frontend role. The CSS and React refresher I’d started at the beginning of January stopped being homework and became the job.

My dad and I are starting a new chapter together. The family also squeezed in a week in the Austrian Alps: half work, half holiday, entirely cold. And I finished dry January with my friend Tamas, mostly by drinking alcohol-free beer together and not making a heroic project of it.

February has three jobs. Sell enough to stay in the green. Keep the January habits without needing a month named after them. And find a name the regulator will let us keep.