Komby in 14 Steps: Step 14: The Undertaker, the arena where you can’t stay on the mat

Fourteen tracks to get here: the arena. Emails, bugs, prospect silence, software giants. The Undertaker is deliberately over the top: an homage to men who fought without a filter. In 1990s wrestling you fell, you got up. In entrepreneurship the rule is the same.

The trial: holding the ring

After CEO, the question comes back every round: can you still hold? The arena is the day-to-day. SEO without a war chest. Clients who stack you against a giant. Reviews that push you to "dominate" when you want to serve the field.

Sometimes you imagine a less exposed life. Then the ring rule comes back: you can fall; you don't stay there.

A memory

One midnight: a competitor ships a feature I'd refused because it broke Make It Easy. Instinct wanted to copy before dawn. I held my way. An inner win, invisible. That's The Undertaker too: the long game in a world obsessed with the short term.

Why this title

Because I'm a fan. Fan of Hulk Hogan ripping his shirt on stage. Fan of Thunder in Paradise, the series he produced and starred in in 1994. Fan of Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, and The Undertaker himself.

Those men stood, for the teenager I was, for raw freedom: you could speak loud, larger than life, without a filter, without asking permission from the righteous types. The 1990s, for me, remain the best years: what there was before the permanent lectures, before the networks that lecture the whole world. What there was before was good. Back then, those people didn't wait for Instagram to exist; they didn't need a hashtag to tell you how to live. Today the righteous types own the debate; they've got nothing to teach me. Let that be said.

In my album, The Undertaker is a willing caricature, a nod, an homage to fighters without a filter, and to the lesson: the ring is sacred, you get up. Hulk Hogan left us in July 2025; the lesson doesn't retire. Neither do I. I keep fighting to avoid the end of the match.

Dominating, for me, is staying on your feet and serving better than those who raise money to ignore the independent.

Letting it land, end of series

The Komby album lets out what I could no longer keep locked up, and puts it in the world. On France Je Te Quitte, the journal goes on. Komby the project grows in the background.

If you've read all fourteen: thank you. If you've only read one: start wherever you want.

The Undertaker. Fourteenth battle mark. End of the album. The fight continues.

Get up.

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Alexandre Auger, CEO of Komby

*Step 14/15. Previous: Like a Dragon (13). Next: The Investor (15)*