Frank Greeff recently shared something that caught my attention: "Not sure why everyone’s sharing photos from 2016 but turns out it was a pretty good year." Then he quickly grounded it in the kind of details founders don’t forget: he was 23, four years into a business with his brothers, and "at the start of the year we hadn't yet cracked $1M revenue."

That combination of nostalgia and hard numbers is exactly why the post resonated. It’s not just a highlight reel. It’s a snapshot of what it actually looks like when a team is still early, still uncertain, and still choosing to bet bigger anyway.

In this article, I want to expand on what Frank described: the sacrifices, the pivot, the "crazy goal" mindset, and why these moments matter a decade later. Not as a fairy tale, but as a practical template for anyone building through constraints.

The 2016 pattern: sacrifice, focus, then momentum

Frank wrote that he and his brother Jacques "sold our apartments to fund the business and dropped salaries to $400/week." They even "rented a 2 bed apartment together with our (now) wives." That sentence contains three realities that rarely show up in polished startup lore:

Bootstrapping is often personal before it’s strategic.
The cost isn’t just financial, it’s lifestyle.
The people closest to you are part of the risk.

"Jacques and I sold our apartments to fund the business and dropped salaries to $400/week."

If you’ve never bootstrapped, it’s easy to interpret moves like this as reckless. But when you’re inside it, it can be the cleanest form of alignment: your spending matches the truth of your stage. It strips away the illusion that you can build something meaningful while living as if the outcome is already guaranteed.

What I take from Frank’s story isn’t that everyone should sell assets or slash pay. It’s that founders often need a conscious, explicit decision about what they are willing to trade for time, runway, and focus.

A useful question for founders

If your revenue hasn’t caught up to your ambition yet, ask: What am I protecting that’s slowing the business down?

Sometimes it’s comfort. Sometimes it’s optional complexity. Sometimes it’s the fear of looking "small" while you’re still becoming real.

The pivot: from signboards to tech company

Frank’s line that matters most to builders is simple: "This is the year we pivoted from real estate signboards to a tech company." That’s not a cosmetic change. That’s an identity shift.

Pivots get romanticized, but they’re usually uncomfortable because they force clarity on three fronts:

1) Who are we really serving?

A signboard business can be a strong, steady service. A tech company implies leverage: repeatable product value, scalability, and often a different buyer relationship. Moving from one to the other means re-checking who the customer is, what they pay for, and why they stay.

2) What are we uniquely good at?

The best pivots don’t discard all prior work. They repackage it. A team that understands real estate operations, on-the-ground workflows, and industry pain has a head start building software that actually gets adopted. The trick is translating expertise into product.

3) What does success look like now?

Service businesses can grow with hustle and operational excellence. Tech businesses demand product discipline: roadmap decisions, usability, pricing, onboarding, retention. You don’t just "do more"; you choose more carefully.

The quiet truth of many pivots: you don’t just change the product. You change the rules you’re playing by.

If you’re in a pivot today, Frank’s story is a reminder that the timing is rarely perfect. You pivot while underpaid, under-resourced, and still figuring it out.

The power of a "crazy goal" (and why it worked)

Frank shared a classic founder move: set a target that’s both concrete and emotionally charged. "We set a crazy goal to add $1 million in revenue (and if we pull it off, we go to Japan)." By year end, they "hit $1.7m revenue and jetted off to Japan to hit the slopes."

This is worth unpacking because it’s not just motivation. It’s execution design.

Concrete metrics create clean decisions

"Add $1M in revenue" is specific enough to force tradeoffs:

Which customers are most likely to buy?
Which product changes move deals forward fastest?
Which marketing channels actually convert?
What do we stop doing that feels busy but doesn’t drive revenue?

Ambiguous goals create ambiguous weeks. Specific goals create measurable sprints.

The reward matters because it becomes culture

The Japan reward is more than a vacation. It’s a shared story that encodes values: we set bold targets, we keep score, we celebrate wins together.

A great incentive isn’t a bribe. It’s a symbol: "This is what winning looks like for us."

And importantly, the reward was tied to a team outcome, not an individual hero narrative. That’s a subtle but powerful way to keep a business built with siblings (and partners alongside them) moving in one direction.

Building while life is happening (not after)

One of the most human parts of Frank’s post is that 2016 wasn’t only about revenue. He wrote: "I took my highschool sweetheart back to my home country (south africa) where I proposed to her at Kruger National Park." And because money was tight, "we had our engagement party in our signboard factory."

That detail matters because it’s the opposite of the "delay life until after the exit" mindset.

When I talk to founders, I often hear an unspoken belief: once the business is stable, then I’ll do the personal milestones. Once revenue is predictable, then I’ll celebrate. Once funding is secured, then I’ll breathe.

But the years don’t pause.

Frank’s engagement-party-in-the-factory moment is a reminder that you can honor life inside the constraints, not outside them. And honestly, those are the stories people remember. Not because they’re glamorous, but because they’re true.

A practical takeaway

Don’t wait for perfect conditions to mark meaningful moments. Design celebrations that fit the season you’re in. The point is the commitment, not the venue.

A decade later: ambition matures, it doesn’t disappear

Frank closed with a line that made me laugh because it’s so recognizable: "Now 10 years later, I've just got more wrinkles on my eyes and a hairline that's screaming for help each day… but at least I'm even more offensively ambitious than ever before."

That’s the deeper thread: ambition isn’t a phase you grow out of. For builders, it often sharpens with experience. The difference is that older ambition tends to be less about proving and more about building something that lasts.

If you’re early in your journey, it can feel like the hard season is evidence you’re doing something wrong. Frank’s 2016 story suggests the opposite: sometimes the hard season is the entry price for the next level.

The goal isn’t to avoid the scrappy years. The goal is to use them to become the kind of operator who can handle what comes next.

What to copy (and what not to)

Frank’s story is inspiring, but the healthiest way to learn from it is to copy principles, not tactics.

Copy these principles

Make the runway real: align lifestyle with business reality.
Choose a measurable target: revenue goals clarify execution.
Build a shared story: team rewards create culture.
Pivot with purpose: change the rules only when you’re ready to commit.
Keep life in the picture: celebrate inside constraints.

Don’t blindly copy these tactics

Selling assets: it can work, but it’s not a badge of honor.
Extreme underpay: sustainable effort beats heroic burnout.
Pivoting just because it sounds exciting: pivots must solve a real constraint.

The lesson isn’t "suffer and you’ll win." The lesson is "get honest, get focused, and place smart bets when you’re still small enough to move fast."

This blog post expands on a viral LinkedIn post by Frank Greeff, Building Kinso | $180mil Exit from Realbase. View the original LinkedIn post →