1
I love problem solving.
I mean the kind of problem that gets into your head and refuses to leave.
The kind that follows you into the shower.
That is why I am drawn to startups.
A startup is problem density at its highest.
- Every day has a real constraint.
- Every decision has a cost.
- Every solved problem moves the company forward.
2
I have started thinking seriously about how I actually want to live.
Life is not the dream you describe. It is the day you repeat.
- Repeat comfort long enough and it becomes your ceiling.
- Repeat passive work long enough and it becomes your personality.
I refuse that.
I do not want to optimize for salary, title, or comfort.
- I want hard, meaningful problems.
- I want work that makes me sharper.
- I want work that puts weight on my name.
- I want work where effort converts into movement.
The bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity.
The more uncertain the path, the more room there is for AGENCY.
3
- I want to be close enough to the problem that my decisions matter.
- I want to feel the company move when I push.
- I want to be in the room where the answer is still unclear and somebody has to figure it out.
That is why startups make sense to me.
Startups are alive, man! And, I want to be alive too!
Also,
You know what scares me? It is spending my life around mediocre people who never force me to become anything exceptional.
That phase is over.
4
There was a time I thought I wanted to become a quant.
I heard it was one of the highest-pressure rooms you could enter, and something in me respected that immediately.
I thought if I could survive there, everything else would feel possible.
The instinct was right.
- I was chasing pressure.
- I was chasing proof.
- I was chasing a room that would force me to become harder to kill.
I still respect that world. Some of the smartest, fastest-learning people I know are in quant.
The problem was that I started realizing how specialized the path can become. I realized I do not only want to optimize for one narrow arena.
Right now, I am learning machine learning, software engineering, systems, and anything else that helps me solve hard problems.
5
I like becoming broadly dangerous.
- I like building skills that transfer across industries, products, and environments.
- I want pressure with impact.
- I want intensity attached to a product, a customer, a company, and a real problem in the world.
- I want the kind of the work where the skill transfers into everything I want to build next.
- The kind where I do not just become employable in one elite corridor.
I become useful anywhere there is chaos, urgency, and something worth building.
That was an important decision.
Also, I know good startups want people who are insanely cracked. Good. That is exactly the room I want to enter.
I am not cracked yet. That thought made me procrastinate on applying and reaching out.
But why do I feel this way? It is because "The more you know, the more you know you don't know. Isn't it?"
You know what else I bring?
- I learn fast.
- I figure things out.
- I do not need hand-holding.
- I care past the point where most people mentally clock out.
- I stay with a problem when it becomes ugly, boring, unclear, and uncomfortable.
Many want to solve the clean version of the problem.
I want the real one.
- the version with missing context
- the version with pressure
- the version where nobody has the full answer
If I join a startup, I will treat it like a mission:
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I want the company to win,
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the product to work,
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the problem to die,
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the customer to feel the difference.
I want the thing to exist in the world because we forced it to exist.
I do not want to be a passenger in someone else’s ambition. I want to carry weight.
If I believe in the mission, I cannot imagine being outworked.
Not even by the founder.
I am not being arrogant here. That is the kind of standards I set for myself!
If I say I care:
- my calendar should show it
- my attention should show it
- my output should show it
- my pain tolerance should show it
- my learning speed should show it
Because if I believe in the problem, losing feels unacceptable.
I will always find the work that demands that version of me: the version that becomes dangerous because the mission is worth becoming dangerous for.
Also, just to clarify, when I say startup, I do not mean company size.
I mean the place where this kind of work happens.
It could be a 10-person company. Or, it could be a team inside a much larger company.
I just care about the operating reality.
So, it could be anywhere the work is urgent, owned, and carried by people who refuse to be passive.
That is the kind of place I am talking about.
I might have burnt bridges to some places by writing this blog. That's absolutely fine. And, I actually want that.
Keeping every bridge open can become a way of never choosing a life. Optionality can become a slow poison:
- it can make you rationalize a path you never wanted
- it can make you keep doors open while the person inside you closes
I do not want that.
I would rather be known for choosing too clearly than spend my life being acceptable to people building nothing I respect.
Some paths need to close. Some versions of you need to end.
- the version that wants to be chosen before it chooses itself
- the version that keeps one foot in safety and calls it strategy
I am done with that version.
6
This is how I want to live!