Entrepreneur · Builder · Father

I build things.
I lose things.
I keep going.

Twenty years building digital products across Europe. One life-altering loss. A community for men being built from both.

"The iron in you is what gets forged under pressure. The oak in you is what grows slowly and holds."

From the Iron & Oak Manifesto

The Story

Built from nothing. More than once.

I arrived in Latvia not speaking the language, with no network, no map, and no guarantee it would work. That was the first time I built something from nothing. I figured it out the way I figure everything out — by showing up and refusing to quit.

"In the new world, it is not the big fish which eats the small fish. It's the fast fish which eats the slow fish."

Over two decades I co-founded companies across web development, media, legal tech and product — TrueVision, Intelligence Boutique, UNAGI MEDIA, Avokaado. I mentored founders, ran accelerators, spoke at conferences from Riga to Helsinki. I built teams, lost teams, rebuilt again.

I thought I understood resilience. I was wrong. Resilience is not a professional skill. I didn't learn what it actually was until April 2025.

Three Decades

The arc of building

1992 – 2000

The Formation

I came from Kiev, Ukraine. Put into a Russian-language school with a rigid, USSR-type education system — discipline first, questions never. Memorize, obey, repeat. It taught me to survive systems, not to thrive in them. But survival is its own kind of education.

2000 – 2025

The Grind

Landed in Latvia. Didn't speak the language. Learned by doing. Built TrueVision, then kept going — Intelligence Boutique, UNAGI MEDIA, Avokaado. Mentor, speaker, advisor. Then management consulting, more ventures. Some worked, some didn't. Lost businesses, lost money, lost confidence more than once. But kept getting up. Every single time. That's the only trick there is — you get back up.

2025 →

The Reckoning

April 2025. Black ice. A red 1986 Audi 100. Sebastian. After that, a choice: go quiet or build something that means more than anything that came before. I chose to build. This time, for him.

2004 – 2025

Sebastian.

"Fear not the sun — for you are a Phoenix as much as you are Icarus."

He was twenty years old. He shot photos on film cameras because he wanted to slow down and see. He wrote stories in ink — three bottles, different colors, one labeled Writer's Blood. He played guitar. He read. He thought. He talked.

Our dinner conversations were the best thing I have ever had in my life. A boy of eighteen speaking like a stoic with a thousand years of experience. Challenging me. Laughing with me. Seeing me — clearly, honestly, without judgment.

He was not just my son. He was the mirror I needed to finally look into.

He made me better. He made our family whole. In April 2025 he got into his dream car — a red 1986 Audi 100 he had bought thirteen days before, a car he wanted to restore and one day drive his mother around town in. Black ice. A road he had driven a hundred times. He did not come home.

Everything I build now, I build in his name. Not as a monument. As a continuation.

Sebastian Mauris · 2004 – 2025 · He already knew.

Sebastian in Cyprus

In His Name

Iron & Oak.
Letters from a grieving father.

I started Iron & Oak after Sebastian's passing, because he already lived everything I'm still learning. He was kind without being soft. He loved out loud. He took responsibility. He stayed curious. He was twenty years old and he was the most complete man I have ever known.

Iron & Oak is not a self-help newsletter, and I'm not a coach. I write as testimony, not instruction... about love, grief, strength, family, work and what actually matters when your world got shattered into a thousand pieces. When something there sounds like advice, read it as "here's what I'm trying."

If you carry the same weight, the place is yours too. If you stand next to someone who grieves, you might find a taste of what they carry, and a way to help them better. And if you're neither and still get something from it, good. If not, I'll keep going anyway.

Join Iron & Oak →

Iron & Oak

Founded 2025 · Riga, Latvia

Letters written as testimony, not advice. Some are heavy, some will surprise you by being light. Free, always... come as you are, leave when you need to.

The iron in you is what gets forged under pressure. Every loss, every failure, every moment you wanted to quit but didn't — that is iron.

The oak in you is what grows slowly and holds. The roots you plant in your family. The values you pass to your children. The quiet, unshakeable presence that tells the people you love: I am here. I am not going anywhere.

Writing

What I've been putting down.

Iron & Oak · August 2026

Shields Down

On feelings we bury at home.

Iron & Oak · August 2026

Digitally Forgotten

There is a message no parent should ever have to read. On the platforms that quietly delete our dead, and the archive nobody can delete.

Iron & Oak · August 2026

Travel

Why a grieving family keeps boarding planes. Because you have to...

Iron & Oak · June 2026

Grief Is Love

With nowhere to go. What a man does with all the love that no longer has an address.

What I Do Now

Contracts, taught to think.

By day I'm CPO and co-founder at Avokaado, a contract lifecycle platform for legal and business teams in the Baltics and beyond. We're building Avo, its contract intelligence layer... drafting, review and analysis done by AI, held to account by human judgment.

In 2025 I rebuilt the way I build: prompt-first. The spec became the work, AI agents took the heavy lifting, and my job settled into architecture... deciding what and why, and letting the how move at machine speed. It changed how my team ships, and it changed what I believe product work is.

avokaado.io →