Komby in 14 Steps — Step 7: Underdog Man, the rage of the one they do not see coming

In a room — virtual or real — someone is always talking about term sheets, decks, advisors and a ten-million seed. I showed up with bootstrap, a credit score built on a two-hundred-pound limit, nights of code and a rage nobody saw, because the outsider learns very early to smile while they look down on you.

Underdog Man is the track of that rage. Not the one of final victory, but the one of posture: the fighter they underestimate because he has neither a TechCrunch headline nor a premium LinkedIn account, and who stays in the arena anyway.

The trial: playing a match whose rules are not yours

Being an outsider is not an identity to slap on a t-shirt. It is a daily situation where you do not have the same resources, the same visibility, or the same network as those who have already raised. You code almost alone, you support almost alone, you sell almost alone, while hospitality / retail / tertiary software giants line up marketing budgets bigger than your annual revenue, hundred-person teams and stands at HOSTELCO.

The rage does not come from envy. It comes from the gap between what you know of the field and what the market values. You know the field — you were the guy in an apron at seventeen, you lived hospitality in sales, then retail and tertiary — and you know what they really want. Yet they make you understand, sometimes politely, sometimes bluntly, that without fundraising, without scale and without “blitzscale”, you will not count. Underdog Man does not cry about it. He takes the hit. But taking the hit leaves marks in the jaw and in the fist clenched under the table, especially during a Zoom demo where the prospect compares your product to a giant.

One demo, one silence, a clean rage

I remember a hotel of about thirty rooms, limited budget, prospect surrounded by two colleagues. He was comparing with a giant — I will not say which — that promised him “everything integrated” for double our price. On Zoom, alone facing them, I showed what I had built: one place, not fifteen tabs. When he asked why me and not the giant, I could have talked only about price. I said something else: because when you have a problem on a Saturday night, you will have me, not ticket number 847291.

He nodded. He did not sign that day. He signed three weeks later. That evening, I did not celebrate. I had a clean rage — not against him, against the system that forces you to justify existing when you serve the field — retail, tertiary, restaurants like offices — better than those who raise millions to ignore it. Giants often hire profiles who have never set foot in a kitchen; I have the memory of three years of apprenticeship at sixteen to nineteen, then radio, courts, London and a credit score at zero. That is not a LinkedIn CV. It is a field advantage — and permanent fatigue.

That fatigue has a physical form: the feeling of never being “credible” enough in the eyes of those who confuse fundraising and legitimacy. You over-prepare, you over-deliver, you reply at midnight because silence might be read as amateurism. Underdog Man is that anger too: having to prove twice what someone else proves once, with ten times fewer resources.

Y Combinator, 2026: too wide for the box

There are prospect rejections, and there are rejections that resonate differently. In 2026, facing Y Combinator, the answer — or what I understood of it — came down to two words I already knew from salaried France: too much. Too wide. Too many surfaces. Too much interest already captured elsewhere.

Because Komby is not a mono-SaaS. It is a MetaSaaS. The wording on komby.io is clear: restaurants, offices and nightclubs; reservations, CRM, reviews, social media, website, recruitment, payments, online sales, GEO and SEO, Capsule browser / workstation, and the rest of the modules. For a fund that already has dozens of mono-SaaS in portfolio, the question turns icy: why invest again in a tool that does one thing, when a MetaSaaS can already cover what several of their startups sell separately?

They need the world to stay fragmented — CRM or booking or reviews or social or site or recruitment or payment or SEO. I built the opposite, because an independent — restaurant, shop, office, nightclub or tertiary trade — does not have thirteen minutes for thirteen tools. They had already told me “too much” as an employee in France; they tell me again in 2026 as a founder. Same phrase, different arena, same sensation in the jaw. I am not telling this to boast about a prestigious rejection. I tell it because it is exactly the outsider's battle scar: when you are invisible, they ignore you; when you are too wide, they refuse you. The industry wants boxes. Komby refuses the box. Underdog Man carries that.

Why this track came out of me

Underdog Man was born after a lost demo — not the one where the prospect signed three weeks later, another one, where I was politely told I was passionate but they needed “scale”. As if thirty years on the field did not count. As if serving merchants and tertiary trades — restaurants, offices, nightclubs and beyond — the essence of real ground, was a weakness. The track then grew with other closed doors, including those you think are prestigious.

I went into the studio with something burning. Not tears: anger. It had to come out before it ate me. The beat came hard, rebellious; Amanda Leen sings the outsider not as a loser, but as a fighter they underestimate who shows up anyway. Composing was releasing the rage you cannot show clients — you have to smile, stay professional, accept the uneven match without screaming. Music is where you can finally scream. Sharing the track was handing that rage to those who play without a net: independents, bootstrappers, all those looked down on who keep going.

I did not write Underdog Man to sell a “David versus Goliath” narrative. I wrote it because my head could no longer hold this anger alone. Since then, I sometimes listen to this track before moments when the arena feels too big — not to puff up with pride, but to remind myself that well-placed rage is energy. The outsider has not won the global match. He has won the right to stay in the arena without apologising for entering without an invitation.

What this step fed

The Komby album is quasi-autobiographical. Underdog Man documents the trial of invisibility: playing a match whose rules favour those who have already won elsewhere. On France Je Te Quitte, I have told other fights without a net — departures, exiles, rebuilds. Here, the rage is that of the market, of the gaze, of permanent comparison.

In the background, this trial taught me not to play the giants' game and to serve where they do not look: one client, one neighbourhood, word of mouth. Komby inherited that agility not by slide strategy, but by the necessity of staying in the arena. What comes next — The Takeover — arrives when the market stops ignoring you and pressure changes shape. But first comes Underdog Man, seventh battle scar: the track you listen to before a hard demo, or after a defeat, to remember you are still moving forward.

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Alexandre Auger — CEO of Komby

*Step 7/14 — Previous: London Lights (06) · Next: The Takeover (08)*