I used to have a favorite brand of Kona coffee. I drank it religiously every morning. Told all of my friends about it. Recommended it to anyone who would listen. Then one year, my wife and I were vacationing in Hawaii, and I decided on a whim to drive out to the address printed on the package. When we arrived, I was a little confused. There was a showroom...but no coffee farm anywhere in sight. The poor girl behind the desk was even more confused when I asked if we could tour the farm. Turns out, there was no farm. It was simply a business that bought excess coffee beans from a variety of farmers in the area, packaged them under its own brand, and sold them. The level of betrayal I felt is difficult to describe. And, in hindsight, completely unfair. They had never claimed to own a farm. They had never told me the coffee was single-source. I had simply created an expectation in my own head of what I thought the brand was supposed to be. And reality didn't match it. The next morning at the Airbnb, I brewed another cup of that coffee. Except this time, it tasted different. I actually found myself wondering why I had ever loved it so much in the first place. So for the next few days, I toured real Kona coffee farms. I walked among the coffee trees. Met the people growing them. Saw how the beans were harvested and processed. Learned the stories behind the farms. Eventually, I found one I absolutely loved. Seeing where the coffee came from, meeting the people behind it, and watching the process made me fall in love with a brand in a completely different way. And it is still, to this day, the best coffee I've ever had. It's what I drink every single morning. Moral of the story? Authenticity matters. People can forgive imperfections. They can forgive small teams, rough edges, and things still being built. What is much harder to recover from is the moment someone realizes the thing they believed they were looking at isn't actually what they thought it was. Build something real. Then let people see it. Transparently. 🫡 From the depths — The White Whale 🐋