The first post of a tech startup should be filled with tech talk. Right? Well… maybe. I promise that future posts will be filled with tech talk, updates about our company, products, etc…

But not today. Today I want to talk about what got us here: passion, friends, and of course, our love for software.

It all started during an asado (an ancestral Argentine ritual that we try to honor as often as possible so as not to anger the meat gods, barbecue ) with a group of friends. All of us were working on something we relatively liked, yet, something was missing, everyone of us had a complaint. Not one was completely happy. We all love software, definitely love doing great work, are passionate, driven, committed…

So why weren´t we happy in our work? Why couldn´t we be happy?

It doesn´t make sense… we love what we do.

This sour bunch had been trough the trials and tribulations of college together… Long sleepless nights working on class projects…. And for once, the world-saving, country-fixing, football-changing? discussions that are the sum of an asado, yielded something more than a headache:

That night LVK was born.

Naturally, it wasn´t as it is today.

Today we are on the verge of releasing our first product, and a couple of months away from putting our second product in the hands of every school boy in Argentina (and we have a cool logo ). But all of this is besides the point, I´ll risk sounding like the worst cliché of them all:

the most important thing, the thing that be will with me till my last day, is the road that got us here and the people we shared it with.

The decision was made. We dreamed up our first product, and got to hacking.

It didn´t take us very long to realize that hacking, just hacking as we knew it wouldn´t cut it. Suddenly we needed a graphic designer, a couple of Macs and maybe a writer. But we didn´t have enough money. So we got funds from a government grant, but to get that money we needed something called a business plan and an accountant. We needed a lot of things that fine keyboard cowboys like us didn´t even imagine. All of this with day jobs, families, personal problems, etc…..

It´s been a long winding road and not one of us is the same as when we started.

Every day we ploughed through, hacking when we could; writing dialogs, working with artists, and dealing with accountants when we couldn´t. We plough through surgery, bad breakups, you name it.

But it is awesome and we are happy. We are doing fantastic work, the work we want to do, with great people. And this is just the beginning…

Not all who started are here today:

To them (and this is the only time I´ll speak in name of all LVK), thank you. It was great working with you. The passion, the drive, allowed us to do work we dreamed of. The road wouldn´t have been the same without you. Best of luck in all your future endeavors!! Professionally, I´m sure our paths will cross again.

‘Till then, well, we have an asado coming up, don´t we?

To the new ones we picked up along the way: the road is hard, the road is long, and the road is fun. We will always have a lot of hard work for you… but a pat on the back and a laugh shared with a friend will come with it. We will build great things. I promise.

And to all the rest, thank you for sticking trough my writing: this is LVKs story.. the beginning.

Days before we release our first product, I deeply feel that we have already succeeded. We are happy with what we are building, and I am talking about LVK, not our product. If this one doesn’t sell, the next one will or the one after that… We are not our resumes, the sum of our tech skills… We are a bunch of friends who love software, and are committed to building great things and doing great work.