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.

Twenty Years

The arc of building

2000 – 2010

The Arrival

Landed in Latvia. Didn't speak the language. Learned by doing. Built TrueVision into a respected development and design company. First lesson: showing up matters more than having a plan.

2010 – 2020

The Builder

Multiple ventures across media, consulting, legal tech and EdTech. Mentor, speaker, advisor. Ran Eegloo and Intelligence Boutique. Cofounded Avokaado. Became the person others came to when they needed things built.

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, differently.

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.

What I'm Building Now

Iron & Oak.
A community for men.

I started Iron & Oak because Sebastian already lived everything I'm trying to teach. 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. It is not a place where men are told women are the problem. It is a place for men who are done pretending — done pretending they have it figured out, done pretending grief is weakness, done pretending that real love is something to be ashamed of.

We make men think. We give them a safe place to be challenged. We build brothers, not followers.

Join Iron & Oak → Read the Manifesto

Iron & Oak

Founded 2025 · Riga, Latvia

A community for men who want to be better — not louder, not harder, not more dominant. Just better, in the fullest and most human sense of that word.

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.

Grieving Dad · Part IV

I got robbed of a bright future. Or am I?

The latest in an ongoing series about what happens to a man when the thing he never planned to lose is gone.

Grieving Dad · Part III

Surviving in Between

There is a space between the acute grief and the rest of your life. No one prepares you for it.

Grieving Dad · Part I

In August 2025 I turned 45. And this was the year I died.

Where it begins. The year a father loses a son and has to decide what to do with the rest of his life.

Iron & Oak · Manifesto

A Manifesto for Men Who Are Done Pretending

What Iron & Oak is. What it isn't. Why it was built in memory of a twenty-year-old who already knew all of it.