Lately I've been questioning why I wanted to join a startup at all.
Was it the myth—the cinematic allure of risk and creation, the story of people who build something from nothing? Maybe. But as I peel back the layers, I'm discovering something more precise, more subtle.
I remember that DeepMind cocktail party—how electric it felt to be among people who think. It wasn't about prestige; it was about proximity to minds that moved with curiosity and clarity. Maybe that's what I've been chasing all along—not a startup, but a gravitational field of intelligence and creation.
Big companies give scale, but they dull agency. I like shaping things—the architecture, the design, the texture of how something comes to life. Maybe it's not the form I crave, but the freedom to build—to be surrounded by people who care enough to make something beautiful and new.
I don't think I crave “startup” in the abstract anymore.
What I crave is a tight group of smart, hungry people—the kind who care about ideas and aren't afraid to get their hands dirty. I crave agency—the ability to shape the direction, the culture, the invisible parts of a system. I crave creation—the act of turning nothing into something, of watching a vision take shape from raw code, raw inference, raw intention.
It's less about the American-dream version of entrepreneurship, and more about being part of something that matters, together.
At big companies, you can't avoid feeling like a cog. In startups, maybe I was chasing the version of myself that leads, that's visible, that counts. But I'm noticing: if I tie self-worth to the form—to the theater of hustle or the founder-mode persona—I risk losing the feeling I'm really after.
What I want is: a field of creation. A signal-rich mesh of minds. The room where code, design, and vision collide and something resonates. If I can name the feeling—alive, together, making—then I can chase it anywhere, not just in the startup myth.
Maybe that's what the recent opportunity was for—not to advance me, but to clarify me. To strip away the glamour and reveal the true shape of my wanting.