Five Years In: A Letter to My Future Self

Dear Future Inga,

Hi 👋 It’s me. If you're reading this, it’s Reference Medicine's 10th anniversary and I hope you are doing as I am now, and taking a moment (or a few) to look back, reflect and celebrate.

I am writing this to you on the eve of our 5th anniversary with a bit of nostalgia and a full heart. 

Based on my experience with how memory works, five more years from now, I'll probably remember the milestones, the awards, the big customers, and the numbers. What I don't want to forget are the little things. The butterflies before signing our first customer. The excitement of seeing our logo on a shipping box for the first time. The happy dance I did in my kitchen when we got our first $1M deal. The moment we found ourselves brainstorming a job description for a front desk receptionist and thinking, Wow… have we actually made it? But also the late nights convincing myself everything would somehow work out while literally kissing a worry doll, tucking it under my pillow, and sending one more little wish into the universe for Reference Medicine to keep chugging along. Those moments deserve to be remembered just as much as our LinkedIn-worthy headlines.

The easiest place to start is the now-vs-then comparison. 

Time has a funny way of changing a person’s definition of success. When I started Reference Medicine, I was coming off a season of significant career burnout. The pandemic had changed my perspective on work, family, and how I wanted to spend my time. I wanted more control over my future, and I was fascinated by stories of founders who built successful companies and exited within a few years.

So, five years ago, success looked like a few years of building, an acquisition and an early retirement. Today, success looks a lot more like walking into an office full of people I genuinely love being around, and getting an email from a customer saying, “you’re amazing,” and knowing that across the globe, many scientists are making progress and living out their own definitions of success because our team did its job well. Somewhere along the way, I stopped building a company I wanted to sell and started building one I don’t want to leave.

That realization didn't happen all at once. There wasn't some dramatic movie moment where everything suddenly clicked. It happened gradually. One customer at a time. One teammate at a time. One conference, one challenge, one shared laugh, one impossible project that somehow came together. Small victories still feel magical. Customer feedback still makes my day. Hearing that we've made someone's job easier still gives me the same feeling it did when we first launched. Before I realized it, Reference Medicine had become so much more than a business. It became a community I genuinely wanted to keep building.

Looking back, I have a lot of affection for our early chapters. Living through them was another story.

Year one was exciting - everything was new and we were thrilled to be building, planning, and dreaming. Then reality arrived. The bank account seemed determined to move in the wrong direction, we had nothing to market, and I wondered whether anyone actually wanted what we were making. There was doubt. There was stress. More than a few moments where I questioned almost everything. I had put my family's livelihood on the line. More than once, I wondered if I had made the biggest professional mistake of my life.

But Future Inga, we learned early on to never underestimate the power of transparency and community. 

During some of our toughest financial periods, I sat down with the team and showed them exactly where we stood. We talked openly about cash flow, risk, and uncertainty. I remember rehearsing those conversations in my head over and over. I'd convince myself that this would be the meeting where people lost confidence, started polishing their resumes, or quietly planned their jump off our little ship. Instead, I watched the exact opposite happen. 

Instead of pulling away, people leaned in. They brought ideas, creative solutions, encouragement, and support. Some of the hardest conversations I've ever had as a leader ended up becoming some of the most meaningful. Some advisors told me not to share every detail, citing all the reasons that I already feared. What I learned instead was that transparency builds trust much faster than protection ever could.

And maybe… we just don’t hire a bunch of quitters. 

So, in their true and beautiful form, Team Science showed up. They rallied around one another, around the company, and around the mission. Looking back, I think those difficult seasons shaped our culture just as much as the victories did.

And Future Inga… have you knocked off that imposter syndrome yet?

In the early days, I spent a lot of time looking for someone else to tell me the right answer. I spent hours on phone calls like a sponge, trying to soak up the secrets to success from founders, seasoned executives, investors, and industry experts. I figured if enough smart people all pointed in the same direction, surely that had to be the right path. Some of that advice was incredibly valuable. Some of it was... spectacularly wrong.

It took me a while to realize that every piece of advice comes from someone else's experiences, biases, successes, and failures. People can lend you their perspective, but they can't lend you your conviction. If you're trying to build something that doesn't look quite like everyone else's, eventually you have to trust your instincts and write your own playbook. 

Maybe that's the real lesson. Believe in yourself. Believe in the people standing beside you through every storm. They usually see your strengths long before you do. Listen to others, learn from them, but never let someone else's confidence become more important than your own.

Speaking of conviction, here's another lesson I hope you haven't forgotten: hire selectively, but don't hold on too long when you know something isn't working.

Looking back, most of our hiring mistakes weren't because we hired bad people. They were good people who simply weren't the right fit for our environment. For a long time, I convinced myself that if I coached a little more, waited a little longer, or gave it just one more chance, things would click. Sometimes they did. More often, they didn't.

I eventually realized that every time I delayed making a difficult decision, I wasn't being kind - I was simply postponing discomfort for everyone involved. The faster I learned to recognize a mismatch, the healthier our culture became. Protecting culture isn't about hiring perfect people. It's about making sure the people who belong have the chance to thrive.

And speaking of culture...

I don't think I anticipated how passionate I would become about the experience of working at Reference Medicine. Let's be honest, we're a company that provides oncology biospecimens for research. On paper, that doesn't exactly scream "fun." And yet, somehow, we've become the fun specimen company. I love the little things that make us different. The clever out-of-office messages. The ridiculous sticker ideas. The conference giveaways. The shipping boxes. The little surprises that remind people there are actual humans behind our emails.

People may forget what you did for them. They rarely forget how you made them feel.

I hope we've never lost that. I hope Future Inga, as you navigated through all of the challenges of scaling Reference Medicine and taking us into year 10, that you - and everyone on the team - has not forgotten to have fun, make fun, share all the fun. 

As I write this, our fifth year has brought validation I never expected. EY Entrepreneur awards. Phoenix Small Business awards. Invitations to sit in rooms with leaders I've admired for years. I’m curious… at year 10, are those experiences still equal parts flattering and uncomfortable? Do you still have a little voice in your head that wonders if somebody accidentally mixed up the applications? If things haven’t changed, that is ok, but remember and appreciate that those recognitions aren't really about us.

They're reflections of what our team has built together.

And in this moment, that's what I'm proudest of.

Not our growth.

Not our revenue.

Not the headlines.

The people.

The culture.

The fact that we've built something that feels genuinely special.

Future Inga, if there's one thing I hope you've protected over the next five years, it's that.

When people talk about Reference Medicine at year ten, I don't hope the first thing they mention is our revenue or growth rate. I hope they say something much simpler.

"I want to work there."

Because if talented people still feel excited to join the team, if customers still feel genuinely cared for, and if the culture still reflects the values that mattered so much in year five, then I think we've built something worth celebrating.

Happy Birthday Reference Medicine!

Forever grateful,

Inga

P.S. I hope the worry doll finally got to retire. She's earned it.