i became the person i wanted, and it’s not enough.
The solace of my childhood was the tech industry. I loved it. An antidote to a shitty home was being able to watch young people do anything. You don’t need college, you need a go-getter attitude and to hustle. You need to be an innovator.
I would rot in my room and dream about going to San Francisco or a big city and living with my friends to build a business.
I wanted to be apart of something more meaningful that what I was: waiting to die in a bedroom where I could try to kill myself and no one would notice.
I joined my first startup when I was 13, in the summer between 8th and 9th grade. I told a meeting of people I had never met that I had to leave early because I had homework, only for the CEO to ask how college was treating me. My tenure with the company didn’t last when I told him I was an incoming high school freshman.
I started an education tech startup with some WWDC friends, which imploded as companies run by teenagers usually do. And then I built a startup from scratch for a marijuana mogul at 17 while developing a fundraising platform for Godiva, which both imploded due to COVID.
Then, a stop at a short lived dating app. I left for a stable job at a travel company, and was then tapped to join a new company friends were coming up with. I left my stable (yet drama filled) job at the travel company, and moved into a walk-in closet in SF.
I left that company on rough terms, and worked at another startup which was the final death blow to my ambitions. Chewed up and spat out, I sat in burn out getting high out of my mind trying to forget about the fact I sacrificed my teenage years for a career, which provided neither the support nor money I needed to justify it.
Then, began the year long journey (that I’m still on) to pull myself out of it and to start to rebuild dreams that I don’t know if I believe in.
Years of rejection (8 at this point) from every accelerator, grant, VC pitch, and this week — I just got my first accelerator acceptance with Faura. Valkyrie and I called about it, and I remarked, “I thought I would be less anxious but now I’m even more anxious because of the logistics”. Achieving your dreams is just as terrible as not achieving them at all.
Just 2 months ago, we got an interview at YC and I strived to divest myself emotionally. I remember still, being 17 and applying Astra for it every application cycle, just trying to get the money to leave home.
We had an amazing interview, and got rejected. They didn’t believe our product delivery was the way to go, and the anxiety that fell us for a week turned into a dead, hushed, and heavy silence.
Valkyrie and I consoled each other through call, and I felt good knowing she had a lot of people in the industry she could talk to and people who would push her forward.
While taking comfort in the fact she had people to confide in, I came to the realization I didn’t. I felt the tendrils of the thing that pushed me so far choking me: there’s nothing to go back to.
When I got the news we got in yesterday, it landed the same. This is something that has happened, and there is no one to share it with who will understand.
I called another activist friend after turning 22, bemoaning the fact I was old as fuck and Mother Time was going to bust down my door to carry me to a retirement facility.
They simply responded, “but you did it”. I almost laughed it off, and said “Not really, I didn’t get into YC or on Forbes 30u30, or the Thiel Fellowship.” A moment of silence, and then “It’s crazy you think that, because you literally got on Teen Vogue’s 21 under 21. You did it, I didn't.”
History is written by the “victors”, but the weight of it is carried by everyone but them.
I realized then how ridiculous I sounded, because it became transparently and horrifyingly true in that moment: I didn’t want to win, I wanted people to believe in me. I wanted to collect every achievement like evidence in the locker of my own head that I wasn’t a piece of shit.
I wanted proof my own survival and work transcends my own need. I’m not just a person, I’m someone who’s wanted. Look at this proof that others believe in me, that they want me here.
This is proof someone, somewhere, finally wants me. There will never be enough proof.
A couple of weeks ago, I got an email from my friends whose startup I left my stable job to join. They wrote they were dissolving, but they had no ‘turnover’. They had wrote someone into the company’s founding who wasn’t there, and wrote me and another developer who left into oblivion.
I remember what someone who was once my friend said to me when I left, something along the lines of “I love you but I don’t want to accommodate you because it would slow us down”. Reading the letter that contained that line made me leave the company, and ruined that friendship forever for me. Reading the email, I realized more than losing my place in the history, I lost a friend I thought I would share a life with over a company that didn’t exist anymore.
A stupid loss, over a dead company.
Someone who used to be my best friend ditched my 21st birthday (a birthday I never thought I would see) because they didn't want to miss a day of work. I sat on the beach in California by myself, got high to numb the pain, and wondered what the point of having a successful career is, if the people who inspire it don’t show up to your birthday.
Every time I face any issues, I want to call them and ask what to do. I’ve tried, and every time we talk, I remember the most important birthday of my small life meant less to them than one work day. I don’t call them anymore.
I thought maybe, if I became someone important, all of the abandonment and pain would turn into fuel. That through success, I would achieve salvation from the price of what it cost: from who it turned me into.
Now, I’ve “won”, but it doesn’t feel like it. I’m a CTO at 22, and our first fundraise is going well amidst an environment that seems harsh, and we’ve gotten into an insanely competitive accelerator. It seems I’ve finally got it right. And it hasn’t changed anything.
The person who I want to be more than anyone else, was teenage me. I was miserable, but earnest. I was so enveloped in being kind to the world, and 16 year old me thought there would be no greater life than the one I’m in.
I was kind and soft.
I cared.
I was 16, and I really, genuinely cared about changing the world and I believed I could do it.
That’s a very beautiful trait for someone to have, and I was careless with it.
I don’t regret losing the people who I thought were close friends, but I do regret that it’s splashed into my friendship with Valkyrie and other new friends. I regret I’ve never developed the courage to trust new people in the industry, so that I could finally have people to lean on.
I don’t regret chasing my career, but I do regret thinking my salvation would be success in the startup industry, when it’s in the love and community I share my success with.
There is no winning, there is just the aftermath that you must be able to stomach without regret.
I regret not telling myself at 16 that I did have everything I needed, and I didn’t need to get tougher, smarter, or meaner. I hope I can become her again, because her joy and love for others is real salvation.
