If you had asked me ten years ago where I’d end up, “founder” probably wouldn’t have made the list.
Software engineer? Sure. Building enterprise products within a scrappy startup? Absolutely. Becoming the person who fixes everyone’s production issues at 2 a.m.? …Well, thankfully that life has missed me, but never say never.
But “founder“? That felt like something reserved for people who always knew they wanted to change the world.
I just wanted to build cool things.
When I was a kid, my dad would joke that my first pet was a computer mouse. I was constantly messing around with Photoshop, making animated comic books in PowerPoint, or leveling up in RuneScape.
I loved–love–art, computers, and games. I didn’t touch a terminal until high school when I took my first computer science class (Java) and then the whole world opened up.
Wait, I can make a life and career out of playing on my computer? Hell yeah.
I was thrilled when I was accepted into the School of Engineering at Santa Clara University. It felt like my life was unfolding exactly as planned.
One of the things I appreciated most about SCU, too, was that engineering wasn’t treated in isolation. The curriculum blended technical rigor with liberal arts, communication, ethics, and opportunities to collaborate across disciplines. I didn’t realize it at the time, but learning how to present ideas, work with people from different backgrounds, and think beyond the code would become just as valuable as learning how to write it.
Every internship reinforced that feeling, and when I accepted my first job at Cisco as a software engineer, it seemed like I’d made it. My career was following the script I’d written for myself, right in the heart of Silicon Valley, a tech lover’s paradise.
But the funny thing about making plans and following a script is that life has a habit of improvising.
In 2019, we packed up and moved to Oregon. San Jose is… expensive… and I was fortunate that many of my family and close friends had already made the move, or would soon follow. I had community. I had a backyard. And, long before remote work became the norm, I was already working from home full-time. And honestly? I loved it.
I loved skipping the commute. I loved having the flexibility to structure my day. I loved that I could take my dog for a walk at lunch or throw in a load of laundry between meetings. Years later, people still ask if I’d ever go back to an office, and my answer is almost always: not if I can help it!
But flexibility came with a tradeoff I didn’t fully appreciate at first.
As the months passed, it became easier to go entire workdays without a real conversation. Team lunches disappeared. Hallway chats disappeared. The little moments that make coworkers feel like… people… slowly faded into calendar invites and Slack notifications.
Then 2020 accelerated everything. Suddenly everyone was experiencing what I’d already begun to notice.
Don’t get me wrong, remote work isn’t inherently the problem: it was actually one of the best things to happen to knowledge work. But many companies hadn’t figured out how to preserve the human side of work when people were no longer sharing the same office.
As an engineer, my instinct wasn’t to complain about the problem. It was to build something.
At first, that something was simple: office-friendly, Jackbox-style games I could play with my teammates during the next virtual game night I had planned.
The idea wasn’t random. Games have always been one of my favorite ways to connect with people, and is probably one of my love languages. Whether it’s crushing my friends at Overcooked, settling in for a three-hour strategy board game, or passing the controller back and forth to make it through a scary cutscene, I genuinely love the way shared play brings people together. (I also think I’m real fun at parties, but my husband would tell you he often has to reign in how many boardgames I bring places.) …So building something that involved gameplay felt like the obvious solution.
But around the same time, I had started my MBA at Portland State. What began as a side project quickly became something more. When Conello took first place in Portland State’s Everyday Entrepreneur competition, it was one of the first moments I thought, “Oh, this isn’t just a problem I’m experiencing…”
The judges, mentors, and remote workers I designed alongside all were excited about the possibility of building a more connected future of work. That validation gave me the confidence to keep building, but it also pushed me to ask a bigger question: What does it actually take for people to truly thrive at work?
The deeper I got into my coursework on organizational management, motivational theory, and workplace psychology, the more I realized I’d been looking at the problem through too narrow of a lens. Healthy workplace cultures aren’t created by a single initiative; they emerge from meaningful relationships, recognition, opportunities to grow, trust in leadership, and a sense of purpose. Those elements reinforce one another. No single game, survey, or perk can create a great culture on its own.
Conello stopped being a games platform and became something much bigger: a platform designed to help distributed teams build genuine relationships through play, recognition, and continuous learning. It grew from a product idea into a real company.
Of course, saying “I built a company” makes the journey sound much cleaner than it actually was.
The reality looked more like this: building every spare moment between my full-time job and MBA night classes. Discovering that selling software is an entirely different skill than building software. Hustling and flying around to different conferences and networking events in hopes of getting in front of the right people. And realizing that, as the founder, there was no longer someone else making the hard decisions.
There were plenty of moments where quitting would’ve been easier.
Thankfully, I have a couple professors from my MBA program who love reminding me that entrepreneurship isn’t about avoiding mistakes, it’s about surviving long enough to learn from them.
That became my strategy: not chasing perfection or waiting until I felt 100% confident before moving on something… I just had to get a little better every day.
Looking back, all of this would have felt impossible to a younger version of myself. I realize now that growth didn’t happen in isolation. It happened because of the people, communities, and educational experiences that invested in me long before I believed I could build a company.
Santa Clara University taught me how to think like an engineer. It gave me the technical foundation that launched my career and ultimately made Conello possible.
Portland State University taught me how to think like a founder. It was where Conello transformed from “a problem I couldn’t stop thinking about” into a real company. Conello was born out of the Everyday Entrepreneur competition, but its philosophy was shaped just as much by the classrooms, professors, mentors, and startup community that surrounded it.
Earlier this year, I had the privilege of returning to Everyday Entrepreneur—this time as the keynote speaker. Standing on the other side of that stage, speaking to the next group of builders, was one of those rare moments that forces you to pause and appreciate how far you’ve come. Around that same time, I made the leap to building Conello full-time.
Now, another full-circle moment is on the horizon.
This summer… I’ll be returning to Santa Clara University as part of the eighth cohort of the Bronco Venture Accelerator, a four-month program that culminates in Demo Day in front of Silicon Valley investors.
There’s something incredibly humbling about that. One school taught me how to build software. The other taught me how to build a company. Together, they helped me become the kind of person who could build something with a mission that’s deeply personal: helping people feel more connected at work.
Looking back, maybe my career wasn’t following a script after all.
Maybe it was writing a better one.
Thank you for reading!
Kyra Boveda
CEO & Founder, Conello
July 10, 2026
