The call that stops everything

A month ago, my father passed away.

I knew this was coming. We all did. He'd been sick for over two years, Alzheimer's slowly taking him away piece by piece. We'd mentally prepared ourselves — or thought we had.

But when the moment actually arrives, it doesn't matter how much you prepared.

That call at 9 a.m…

My mom's voice, quiet: "Papa died."

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The ground disappears beneath you anyway.

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I stood there, silent, unable to speak. Images flashed through my mind.

The 90s in collapsing Soviet Union. My father, an engineer at the mine, watching his world fall apart. My mother, a journalist at a small local paper. Neither of them had any idea how to navigate the new brutal reality.

I watched classmates die from overdoses. Others went to prison for robbery. Some were killed in gang wars.

And through all of it, my parents did everything they could to throw us — me and my brother — into a future that didn't exist for them anymore.

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I remember when my father left for Moscow for three years to work at a shoe warehouse. An engineer with a university degree, loading boxes. Because the mines were closing, salaries stopped, but Moscow paid in dollars — and that money kept me in university.

All of this played in my head while I stood there, phone in hand, unable to say a word.

Finally, I exhaled: "We're coming."

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Three years ago, my wife's mother died. Cancer. Two months from diagnosis to funeral. That was sudden, terrifying, brutal.

My father's death was expected. But it still hit like a truck. Because life doesn't ask if you're ready. It just comes.

Sometimes as a slow, expected goodbye. Sometimes as a violent blow with no warning.

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It doesn't ask if you've prepared, if your personal life is in order, if your business can survive without you for two weeks.

It doesn't ask. It simply arrives.

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I have two kids now — 20 and 9. And I think about what I can give them to prepare for this new, incomprehensible world where AI and robots coexist with wars and poverty. Where the landscape is shifting faster than anything my parents faced in the 90s.

And life doesn't care if we're ready for that either.

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There's a line from Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita that's been in my head for weeks:

"Yes, man is mortal, but that would be only half the trouble. The worst of it is that he's sometimes unexpectedly mortal — there's the trick!"

Yes. That's the trick.

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What this has to do with your business

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It feels uncomfortable to think about these things. Like acknowledging the possibility somehow makes it more real.

But if you're a parent or a founder, you're already carrying the burden of other people's lives. And that means thinking about the storm when the sun is shining and everything feels permanent.

This is why I talk about systems and architecture so obsessively.

Because when the terrible thing happens — and it will, eventually — you don't leave the people you love without support. You have something that holds when everything else collapses.

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My parents didn't have that feeling of stability. They couldn't. They just didn't know how.

So they survived on willpower alone. And it cost them their health.

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The question I avoided for years

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People ask: "Can you leave your business for two weeks without anything breaking?"

Most founders hear that as: "Can I take a vacation?"

But that's not the real question.

The real question is: "If something happens tomorrow and you have to drop everything and leave — immediately, indefinitely — does your business survive?"

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I didn't take that question seriously for a long time.

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Then our bank accounts got frozen the day before payroll. That was my wake-up call.

That's when I started building emergency policies. Instructions for the team if I'm unreachable. Documents for lawyers in case something happens to me — so my family isn't left alone in the worst moment of their lives.

You can't predict every risk. Black swans are black for a reason.

But a founder's main job is to make decisions. And one of those decisions is to prepare for what you can prepare for, even if it feels distant.

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Because as Bulgakov said: sometimes it happens unexpectedly.

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One thing you can do today

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Before you close this email, ask yourself:

If your phone rang tomorrow morning with news that forced you to leave — right now, for weeks — what would break in your business?

Who wouldn't know what to do? What decisions would stop? What would collapse?

Write it down. Not to scare yourself. But because knowing the answer is the first step to fixing it.

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I'm sorry this one was heavier than usual. But some things need to be said.

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P.S. My father gave everything he had to push us into a future he couldn't reach himself. The least I can do is make sure the people who depend on me won't face that same uncertainty.