Luke Davis went from “employee #31” at a fast-growing tech scale-up to co-founder of Diversifying.io, a job board tackling workplace diversity long before it was headline news.

In this conversation we cover:

• Bootstrapping in real life – why Luke still hasn’t taken VC money and how that forces “creative discipline.”
• Fund-raising vs. reality – the hoops a Black female-led team still has to jump through (including an invoice-financing deal that disintegrated the moment ID was requested).
• The $20,000 domain lesson – how ignoring the “.com” cost Luke’s team a chunk of runway.
• Life-threatening illness mid-startup – Luke’s colon-cancer battle, what it did to his mental health, and the power of therapy and marathon training in the aftermath.
• Why “hire another person” is not the default answer to every scaling problem.

If you’ve ever wondered what it really feels like to juggle growth, cash-flow panic and a health crisis—while the market mood swings on diversity—Luke lays it all out.