Bison Hill was registered as a company in February 2022. The first official week of the brand’s existence was not dramatic. It was a series of practical tasks, a lot of emails, and the specific strange feeling of doing familiar things under a name that had only just become real.
What the First Week Looked Like
We set up business banking. We briefed the manufacturing partner on the fourteen changes identified from prototype one and initiated prototype two. We registered the domain. We sent the first official communication as Bison Hill — not to a customer, because there were no customers yet, but to the manufacturing partner confirming the updated brief.
None of these are heroic acts. They’re the administrative infrastructure that makes the other things possible. The brand pillars — FIRE-TESTED, UK-MADE, SMALL BATCH, BUY ONCE — were already written. The brief was complete. The material was chosen. Prototype one had been tested. The company registration was, in a sense, the least interesting event in the sequence that led to it.
What We Had and What We Didn’t
In February 2022, Bison Hill had: a clear product concept, a tested prototype, a manufacturing partner, a material supplier, a written brief, and four brand pillars that defined exactly what kind of company we were building.
It also had: no revenue, no customers, no reviews, no confirmed funding, no finished product, and no certainty that prototype two would be better than prototype one in all the ways that mattered. The Gaucho BBQ Grill Apron was still three prototypes and nine months away from launch.
What Starting Actually Looks Like
There’s a version of this story where the founding of the company is a moment of confident clarity. That’s not how it felt. It felt both completely ready and completely unready simultaneously — which is probably how it should feel if you’re being honest about what you know and what you don’t.
We knew what we were building. We knew why it was needed. We knew how to build it properly. We didn’t know if anyone would buy it at the price that “properly” cost. That question had one answer and it was on the other side of a lot of work.
Bison Hill was registered. The work was already in progress. That’s what starting looks like.
