For five years, my parents told people I was the Harper family’s cautionary tale—the daughter who had abandoned Boston, run off to California, and never quite figured her life out. What they didn’t know was that while they were quietly mourning my “failure,” I was quietly building a health-tech company that would eventually be valued at $340 million.

I also made a deliberate choice to stay mostly anonymous. Internally and in company materials, I used only my initials—AH—and let a more experienced executive be the outward-facing presence in some investor settings. Part of that was strategic. Female founders receive less funding and more skepticism, and I had no interest in giving bias more room than necessary. But another part was personal. I did not want my family to know. Not while the company was still fragile. Not while failure was still possible. I refused to hand them another story about “that thing Allison tried in California.”