- 15 hours ago
From intern to founder, this is what it actually takes to build something from nothing.
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VIDEO TOPICS/TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 The Intern
2:12 The Junior Engineer
4:53 The Senior Engineer
7:44 The Product Manager
10:13 The Engineering Manager
15:47 The Director
18:12 The VP
20:42 The CTO
23:12 The Cofounder
23:52 The Ghost
☕ Support the channel & suggest my next video idea: https://ko-fi.com/masterpov
VIDEO TOPICS/TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 The Intern
2:12 The Junior Engineer
4:53 The Senior Engineer
7:44 The Product Manager
10:13 The Engineering Manager
15:47 The Director
18:12 The VP
20:42 The CTO
23:12 The Cofounder
23:52 The Ghost
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Level 1. The Intern
00:02You show up on a Monday in June, wearing clothes you bought specifically for this job.
00:06You ironed your shirt twice.
00:08You took the bus because you can't afford to park downtown.
00:11The office is on the third floor of a building that used to be a warehouse.
00:15Exposed brick.
00:16Concrete floors.
00:18A foosball table nobody uses.
00:20There's a kitchen with cold brew on tap, and a whiteboard covered in words you don't understand yet.
00:25Burn rate.
00:26Runway.
00:27Series A.
00:29You are given a laptop and a badge and a desk in the corner near the bathroom.
00:33Nobody tells you what to do.
00:35You sit there for two hours before someone walks over and introduces themselves.
00:39They're an engineer.
00:40They look like they haven't slept in three days.
00:43They probably haven't.
00:44They tell you to set up your development environment and ping them when you're done.
00:48You don't know what a development environment is.
00:51You Google it in a private browser window because you're terrified someone will see.
00:55There are 30 people in this company.
00:57Everyone seems to know each other.
00:59They have inside jokes.
01:01They reference meetings you weren't in and decisions you weren't part of.
01:05You eat lunch alone at your desk, scrolling through the company slack, trying to decode the culture.
01:10There are channels for everything.
01:12A channel for engineering.
01:14A channel for product.
01:15A channel for random memes.
01:17A channel called Wins, where people post screenshots of dashboards going up.
01:22You don't know what the dashboards measure.
01:24You don't ask because everyone else seems to know.
01:27Your first task is small.
01:30Fix a bug in the onboarding flow.
01:32A button that doesn't redirect properly.
01:34It takes you four days to fix something a senior engineer could do in 20 minutes.
01:38You submit your code.
01:40Someone reviews it and leaves 12 comments.
01:43You feel like a failure.
01:45You fix the comments and resubmit.
01:47It gets approved.
01:49Your code is now live.
01:51Thousands of people will interact with something you built.
01:54You feel a small pulse of something that might be pride.
01:57You want more of it.
01:58You're making $20 an hour.
02:01Some of your friends are making more at their summer internships at banks.
02:04But they're making slide decks.
02:06You're building something.
02:08At least, that's what you tell yourself when you check your bank account.
02:12Level 2.
02:13The junior engineer.
02:14They offered you a full-time role before your internship ended.
02:18The salary is $85,000.
02:21It sounds like a fortune until you move to the city where the company is based
02:25and realize that rent will eat half of it.
02:28You sign the offer anyway.
02:30They give you equity.
02:31Stock options.
02:330.05% of the company.
02:36It means nothing right now.
02:38The company is worth $15 million on paper.
02:41Your options are worth $7,500 if everything goes perfectly.
02:47You sign the paperwork without fully understanding it.
02:50A four-year vesting schedule with a one-year cliff.
02:53You'll Google that later.
02:55Your job is to write code and not break things.
02:59You are assigned a mentor.
03:01She's a senior engineer who has been here since the company was five people in an apartment.
03:06She reviews your pull requests with a patience you'll appreciate more in retrospect.
03:10You ship features.
03:12Small ones at first.
03:13A notification system.
03:15A settings page.
03:16A fix for a login issue that's been annoying customers for months.
03:20Every feature you ship goes to real users immediately.
03:24There is no staging environment.
03:26There is no QA team.
03:28You push to production and pray.
03:31Sometimes, things break.
03:33When things break at 2 a.m., your phone buzzes with an alert.
03:37You open your laptop in bed and fix it while your roommate sleeps three feet away.
03:42You attend stand-up every morning at 9.15.
03:46Fifteen people in a circle.
03:48What did you do yesterday?
03:50What are you doing today?
03:52Any blockers?
03:53You learn to summarize eight hours of work in two sentences.
03:57You learn that nobody cares about the details.
04:00They care about the output.
04:01You stay late most nights.
04:04Not because anyone tells you to.
04:06Because the engineers around you stay late.
04:08Because the culture rewards presence, even when it pretends it doesn't.
04:13You watch the first round of layoffs from your desk.
04:16Seven people.
04:17The CEO sends a company-wide email calling it a restructuring.
04:22Nobody calls it what it is.
04:24The Slack channels get quieter for a week.
04:26Then, everyone pretends it didn't happen.
04:29You learn something about startups that nobody mentions in the job posting.
04:33The mission only matters until the money runs out.
04:37Then, the spreadsheet decides who stays.
04:40You are 23 years old, and you are building software that people pay money to use.
04:45That fact still amazes you some mornings.
04:48Other mornings, you wonder how long you can keep this pace before something gives.
04:53Level 3.
04:54The Senior Engineer
04:55It took you three years to get here.
04:58Three years of shipping features, fixing bugs, and mentoring the new junior engineers who remind you of yourself.
05:04You've seen the company grow from 30 people to 120.
05:09The office moved.
05:10The new one has two floors and a receptionist and branded water bottles.
05:15The foosball table made the move.
05:16It's still untouched.
05:18You are now responsible for systems, not just features.
05:21You design the architecture for new products.
05:24You make decisions about databases and infrastructure that will either scale beautifully or collapse under load in 18 months.
05:32When a junior engineer makes a mistake, it affects a feature.
05:35When you make a mistake, it affects the platform.
05:39You sit in meetings with the CTO and argue about technical debt.
05:43Technical debt is the pile of shortcuts and quick fixes that accumulate over years of building fast.
05:49Every startup has it.
05:51Every startup ignores it until it can't.
05:54You're the one saying, we can't ignore it anymore.
05:57Nobody wants to hear that.
05:59Fixing technical debt doesn't launch new features.
06:02It doesn't impress investors.
06:03It doesn't show up on the roadmap.
06:06But if you don't fix it, everything gets slower.
06:09Every new feature takes twice as long.
06:12Every deploy is a risk.
06:14You're the person in the room saying the unsexy thing.
06:18Sometimes they listen.
06:19Sometimes they don't.
06:21You've stopped taking it personally.
06:23You also do code reviews now.
06:25Hours of them every day.
06:27You read other people's code the way an editor reads manuscripts.
06:30You catch mistakes before they become disasters.
06:34You leave comments that are firm but not cruel.
06:37You remember what it felt like to get your first code review back covered in red.
06:42You try to be better than that.
06:44You've become the person people come to when something is broken and nobody can figure out why.
06:48You like that.
06:50You also resent it sometimes.
06:52You haven't built something new from scratch in six months.
06:56You spend most of your time keeping old things alive.
06:59You're on the on-call rotation now.
07:01One week out of every four, you carry a pager that can go off at any hour.
07:06A database locks up at midnight.
07:08A third-party API starts returning errors at 6 a.m. on a Saturday.
07:13A deploy breaks the payment system and customers can't check out.
07:17You fix it all from your couch in sweatpants with a cold cup of coffee beside you.
07:21Your friends outside of tech don't understand what you do.
07:25They think you make apps.
07:27You've stopped trying to explain the difference between a front-end and a back-end
07:30because their eyes glaze over 10 seconds in.
07:33Your salary is $165,000 now.
07:36Your equity is worth more on paper than your salary.
07:40You try not to check the valuation updates.
07:42You check them every week.
07:44Level 4.
07:45The Product Manager
07:47You didn't plan this move.
07:49You were an engineer who kept asking why.
07:51Why are we building this feature?
07:53Who asked for it?
07:55What problem does it solve?
07:56Have we talked to the customers?
07:58Your manager noticed.
08:00She said you think like a PM.
08:02You didn't know what that meant.
08:04Now you do.
08:05You are the person who decides what gets built and why.
08:09You don't write code anymore.
08:10You write documents.
08:12Product requirement documents.
08:14Specifications.
08:15Roadmaps.
08:16You talk to customers.
08:18You sit on Zoom calls with people who use your product every day
08:21and listen to them describe problems you didn't know existed.
08:24You translate their frustrations into features.
08:27You prioritize those features against a hundred other requests.
08:31Everyone has an opinion.
08:33The CEO wants a new dashboard.
08:35The sales team wants a CRM integration.
08:38The engineers want to refactor the back end.
08:40The designer wants to redesign the onboarding flow.
08:43You have resources for maybe two of those things this quarter.
08:46You pick.
08:48You defend your picks.
08:49You make enemies.
08:51A PM's job is to say no to most things,
08:53so you can say yes to the right things.
08:56Nobody thanks you for the things you said no to.
08:58They only notice the things you didn't build.
09:00You run sprint planning meetings.
09:03You write user stories.
09:04You stare at analytics dashboards
09:06trying to understand why conversion dropped 3% last Tuesday.
09:10You find the answer.
09:11A button color changed in a deploy that nobody flagged.
09:15You fix it.
09:16Conversion recovers.
09:17Nobody notices.
09:19That's the job.
09:20You are the most cross-functional person in the company.
09:23You talk to engineering, design, sales, marketing, support,
09:27and leadership every single day.
09:30Everyone thinks you work for them.
09:32You work for the customer.
09:33At least that's the idea.
09:35The reality is you work for whoever is yelling the loudest that week.
09:38You learn to manage up and down and sideways at the same time.
09:42You learn that influence without authority
09:44is the hardest skill in any organization.
09:47You get good at it.
09:48You have to.
09:49You also learn that the best PMs
09:52are the ones who can kill their own ideas.
09:54You fall in love with a feature concept.
09:56You spend two weeks researching it.
09:58You build a case.
10:00You present it.
10:01The data says no.
10:02You kill it.
10:03That hurts more than you expected.
10:05You learn to hold ideas loosely.
10:07You learn that being right about the wrong thing at the wrong time
10:11is the same as being wrong.
10:12Level 5.
10:14The engineering manager.
10:16You manage people now.
10:18Not code.
10:19People.
10:20Eight engineers report to you.
10:22You do one-on-ones every week.
10:2530 minutes each.
10:26You listen to career goals and personal frustrations
10:29and complaints about the build system
10:31and confessions about burnout.
10:33You give feedback that you hope is honest
10:36without being crushing.
10:37You write performance reviews that take days.
10:41You decide who gets promoted and who doesn't.
10:44Then you sit across from someone
10:45and explain why they aren't ready yet.
10:47They try not to look devastated.
10:50You try not to feel guilty.
10:52You hire.
10:53Hiring is the most important thing you do
10:56and the thing you're least prepared for.
10:58You read 200 resumes for a single role.
11:01You conduct phone screens.
11:03You run coding exercises and system design sessions.
11:06You evaluate people in 45 minutes
11:09and decide whether to bet $150,000 a year on them.
11:14Sometimes you're right.
11:15Sometimes you're catastrophically wrong.
11:18You spend six months managing someone out
11:21because the interview didn't reveal what daily work would.
11:24That process is painful for everyone.
11:27HR gives you a script.
11:29The script doesn't help.
11:30You shield your team from chaos.
11:33The company is growing fast
11:34and the priorities change every month.
11:37The CEO comes back from a conference with a new vision.
11:40The board wants different metrics.
11:42A competitor launched a feature
11:44and now everyone is panicking.
11:46Your job is to absorb that chaos
11:48so your team can focus.
11:50You attend meetings so they don't have to.
11:53You translate executive panic
11:55into reasonable priorities.
11:56You are a filter between leadership
11:59and the people doing the actual work.
12:02You also run the promotion calibration meetings.
12:04You sit in a room with other managers
12:06and argue about whether your people deserve to move up.
12:09You advocate for engineers
12:11who don't know how to advocate for themselves.
12:13You learn that promotions aren't about merit alone.
12:16They're about visibility.
12:17The best engineer on your team
12:19does incredible work that nobody sees
12:22because it happens in the infrastructure layer.
12:24The mediocre engineer ships a flashy feature
12:27that the CEO mentions in an all-hands.
12:30Guess who gets promoted?
12:32You fight that.
12:33Sometimes you win.
12:35Sometimes you lose
12:36and have to explain the loss
12:37to someone who deserved better.
12:39You write almost no code now.
12:41You miss it.
12:43Some nights you open your laptop
12:44and write a small script
12:46just to remember what it felt like.
12:48You are 29 years old
12:49and you manage people who are older than you.
12:52Some of them resent it.
12:54Most of them don't care
12:55as long as you keep the nonsense
12:56away from their desks.
12:58You've learned that the best engineers
13:00don't want to be managed.
13:01They want to be unblocked.
13:03Your job is to remove obstacles
13:05and then get out of the way.
13:07Level 6.
13:08The Director.
13:09The company raised a Series C.
13:11$80 million.
13:13The valuation is $500 million.
13:17There are now 400 employees
13:19across three offices.
13:20The original 30 are scattered.
13:23Some left for other startups.
13:25Some left for big tech companies
13:26that offered double the salary.
13:28Some burned out and disappeared.
13:30A few are still here
13:32holding senior titles
13:33and early equity
13:34that is starting to look life-changing.
13:36You run the entire engineering organization.
13:3940 engineers across five teams.
13:41You don't manage individuals anymore.
13:44You manage managers.
13:46Your calendar is a wall of meetings
13:48from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
13:50Back to back.
13:51No gaps.
13:52You eat lunch during video calls.
13:54You do your actual thinking
13:56after 7 p.m.
13:57when the office empties
13:58and the Slack messages slow down.
14:00You set the technical strategy
14:02for the company.
14:03You decide what infrastructure
14:04to invest in.
14:05You negotiate headcount with finance.
14:07Every open role is a negotiation.
14:11Finance sees a cost.
14:13You see a capability.
14:14You present roadmaps to the board.
14:16The board asks questions
14:18that reveal they don't fully understand
14:19what your team does,
14:21but they understand
14:22the numbers attached to it.
14:23You've learned to speak in numbers.
14:25Everything is a metric now.
14:28Velocity.
14:28Uptime.
14:29Incident response time.
14:31Deployment frequency.
14:32The humans behind the numbers
14:34are abstractions at this level.
14:36You try not to let that happen.
14:38You still do skip-level meetings
14:40with individual engineers
14:41once a quarter.
14:42You ask them what's broken.
14:44They tell you things
14:45your managers didn't.
14:46That's always how it works.
14:48The people closest to the problems
14:50are the last ones asked about them.
14:52You've started losing people.
14:53Good people.
14:55People you hired and mentored
14:56and promoted.
14:57They leave for competitors
14:59or start their own companies.
15:00Every departure feels personal
15:02even though you know it isn't.
15:04You've learned that retention
15:05isn't about money.
15:06It's about meaning.
15:08People stay when they feel
15:09like their work matters.
15:11They leave when they feel
15:12like a line item.
15:13You also handle the crises now.
15:15A deploy goes wrong
15:16on a Friday night
15:17and the product is down
15:18for 90 minutes.
15:19Customers are posting
15:20on social media.
15:22The CEO is texting you.
15:24The board member
15:25who leads the audit committee
15:26is emailing the CFO.
15:27You run the incident response
15:29from your kitchen table
15:30while your family eats dinner
15:31without you.
15:32You fix it.
15:33You write a post-mortem.
15:35You present it on Monday
15:36like it was a learning experience.
15:38It was.
15:39The learning is that
15:40nothing is stable.
15:41The learning is that
15:42everything you build
15:43is one bad deploy away
15:44from a front-page disaster.
15:46Level 7.
15:47The VP.
15:49You are Vice President
15:50of Engineering.
15:51The title sounds impressive.
15:53The reality is politics.
15:56You sit in the executive
15:57team meetings now.
15:58You're at the table
16:00with the CEO,
16:01the CFO,
16:02the VP of Sales,
16:04the VP of Marketing,
16:05the General Counsel.
16:07Everyone is fighting
16:08for resources.
16:09Sales wants more features
16:11to close deals.
16:12Marketing wants
16:13better analytics.
16:14Finance wants
16:15to cut headcount.
16:17You defend your team.
16:18You justify every dollar.
16:20You present hiring plans
16:22that get cut in half
16:23by people who don't understand
16:24what your team does.
16:26You are responsible
16:27for the technical vision
16:28of a company
16:28that is now worth
16:29$1.2 billion.
16:31A unicorn.
16:33That word gets used
16:34in press releases
16:35and investor decks.
16:36It means nothing to you.
16:38It means the stakes are higher
16:40and the margin for error
16:41is smaller.
16:42You deal with outages
16:44that make the news.
16:45A 45-minute downtime
16:46becomes a Twitter thread,
16:48becomes a news article.
16:49You deal with security incidents
16:51that could destroy the company
16:52if the details leaked.
16:54You deal with a team
16:55that is growing faster
16:56than the culture can absorb.
16:58New hires don't know
16:59the old ways.
17:00Old employees resent
17:01the new ones.
17:02The scrappy energy
17:03of the early days is gone,
17:05replaced by process
17:06and hierarchy
17:07and JIRA tickets.
17:08You miss the garage.
17:11Everyone misses the garage.
17:12Nobody wants
17:13to go back to it.
17:14You fire someone
17:15for the first time
17:16at this level.
17:17Not a performance issue,
17:18a conduct issue.
17:20A senior leader
17:21who crossed a line.
17:22HR handles the paperwork.
17:24You handle the conversation.
17:26It takes 11 minutes.
17:28The person stares at you
17:29with a look
17:29you'll remember for years.
17:31You walk back to your office
17:32and close the door
17:33and sit there for 20 minutes
17:34doing nothing.
17:36Nobody prepares you
17:37for that part of leadership.
17:38The part where your decisions
17:40end someone's chapter
17:41at a company
17:41they helped build.
17:42Your equity is worth
17:44$3 million on paper.
17:46Paper is the key word.
17:47You can't sell it.
17:49The company hasn't gone public.
17:50There's no liquidity event.
17:52You're rich in theory
17:54and exhausted in practice.
17:56Your spouse asks
17:57when things will slow down.
17:58You say soon.
18:00You've been saying soon
18:01for four years.
18:02You have a recurring dream
18:04where your laptop
18:04won't stop buzzing.
18:06You wake up
18:06and check your phone.
18:08Three new messages.
18:09It's 4 a.m.
18:10You answer them.
18:12Level 8.
18:13The CTO
18:14The previous CTO left.
18:16He was a co-founder
18:17who built the first version
18:18of the product
18:19in his bedroom.
18:20He's brilliant.
18:21He's also burned out
18:23and tired of managing
18:24200 engineers
18:25when all he wanted
18:26was to write code.
18:27He takes a sabbatical
18:28that everyone knows
18:29is permanent.
18:31The CEO asks you
18:32to step up.
18:33You've been here
18:34six years.
18:35You know the code base.
18:36You know the team.
18:37You know where
18:38the bodies are buried.
18:40That's a metaphor
18:40for the technical decisions
18:42made years ago
18:42that everyone regrets
18:44but nobody fixed.
18:45You are now
18:46the chief technology officer.
18:47You report to the CEO
18:49and the board.
18:50You own the entire
18:52technical organization.
18:53Engineering,
18:54infrastructure,
18:55security,
18:56data,
18:57IT.
18:58300 people.
18:59You set the strategy
19:00that determines
19:01what the company builds
19:02for the next
19:02three to five years.
19:03You evaluate
19:05build versus buy decisions
19:06worth millions.
19:07You decide whether
19:08to acquire smaller companies
19:09for their technology
19:10or build it in-house.
19:12You represent the company
19:13at conferences.
19:14You do press interviews
19:15where journalists simplify
19:16everything you say
19:17into headlines
19:18that miss the point.
19:20You are the public face
19:21of the technology.
19:23Journalists ask you
19:24about AI.
19:25Investors ask you
19:26about AI.
19:27The board asks you
19:28about AI.
19:29Customers ask you
19:30about AI.
19:31Everyone asks you
19:32about AI.
19:33You integrate AI
19:34into the product.
19:35Some of it works.
19:36Some of it is theater
19:37designed to impress
19:38the market.
19:39You know which is which.
19:40The market doesn't
19:41always know.
19:42The board doesn't
19:43always care.
19:43You work 70 hours a week.
19:46Your calendar is controlled
19:47by an executive assistant
19:48who guards your time
19:49like a national resource.
19:51You make decisions
19:52that affect hundreds
19:53of careers
19:53with incomplete information
19:54in compressed time frames.
19:57Sometimes you're right.
19:58Sometimes the decision
19:59looks right for two years
20:00and then breaks.
20:01You won't know the difference
20:02until it's too late
20:03to change course.
20:04You also deal
20:05with the talent war.
20:06Other companies
20:07are poaching your best people
20:09with offers you can't match.
20:10Stock refreshers.
20:12Signing bonuses.
20:13Remote work policies.
20:15You lose your best architect
20:16to a competitor
20:17on a Thursday
20:17and spend Friday
20:19convincing his team
20:20that everything is fine.
20:21Everything is not fine.
20:23You spend the next three months
20:24rebuilding what he took
20:25with him when he left.
20:26Not code.
20:28Knowledge.
20:29The things that live
20:30in one person's head
20:31that nobody thought
20:32to document.
20:33You eat dinner
20:33with your family
20:34three nights a week
20:35if you're lucky.
20:36Your kid asked you
20:37last month
20:37why you always look
20:38at your phone.
20:39You didn't have
20:39a good answer.
20:40You still don't.
20:41Level 9
20:43The Co-Founder
20:44You weren't there
20:45from the very beginning
20:46but you were close.
20:48Employee number 4
20:49You joined when the company
20:51was an idea
20:52and a prototype
20:53and three people
20:54in a co-working space.
20:55You took a salary cut
20:56of 60%
20:57from your previous job.
20:59Your friends thought
20:59you were insane.
21:01Your parents didn't understand.
21:02You owned 5%
21:04of a company
21:04worth nothing.
21:05You slept on an air mattress
21:07in the office
21:07for the first six months.
21:08You ate ramen
21:10for dinner
21:10four nights a week
21:11because the company
21:12couldn't afford
21:12to pay you enough
21:13to eat properly.
21:14You built the back end
21:16that still runs
21:16under everything today.
21:18Layers of new code
21:19sit on top of your
21:20original architecture
21:21like geological strata.
21:22You have watched
21:23this thing grow
21:24from zero revenue
21:25to $200 million ARR
21:27annual recurring revenue.
21:29You remember
21:30the first paying customer.
21:32You remember
21:32the champagne.
21:33You remember
21:34the first angry customer
21:35too.
21:36You remember thinking
21:37this might actually work.
21:38You also remember
21:40the night it almost didn't.
21:41A server crash
21:42at 3 a.m.
21:43that nearly lost
21:44six months of customer data.
21:45You and two other engineers
21:47worked for 14 hours
21:48straight to recover it.
21:50Nobody outside
21:50the company ever knew.
21:52That was the night
21:53you understood
21:53what the word
21:54startup actually means.
21:56It means everything
21:57can end at any moment.
21:58The company has raised
22:00$400 million total
22:01across six rounds.
22:02Each round diluted
22:04your ownership.
22:05Your 5%
22:05is now closer to 2%.
22:07But 2% of something
22:08worth billions
22:09is still a number
22:10that doesn't feel real.
22:11You've been doing this
22:12for eight years.
22:13You're tired in a way
22:15that sleep can't fix.
22:16You've missed weddings.
22:17You've missed funerals.
22:19You work through
22:19the birth of your first child
22:21on a laptop
22:21in the hospital waiting room.
22:23There was a production outage
22:24and no one else
22:25could fix it.
22:26Your marriage survived.
22:27Barely.
22:28Other co-founders'
22:30marriages didn't.
22:31You know three founders
22:32personally who got divorced
22:33during their company's
22:34growth phase.
22:35You know two who had
22:36breakdowns that nobody
22:37talked about publicly.
22:38You know one who
22:39disappeared for six months
22:41and came back different.
22:42The company is preparing
22:43for an IPO.
22:45Investment bankers
22:46in expensive suits
22:46give presentations
22:47about market timing
22:48and pricing
22:49and lock-up periods.
22:50They use words like
22:51window and multiple
22:52and float.
22:53If the IPO goes well,
22:55your equity becomes real.
22:57Not paper.
22:58Real.
22:59Life-changing real.
23:01Generational real.
23:01If it doesn't,
23:03you've spent eight years
23:04building something
23:05that ends with a press release
23:06and a severance package.
23:08You try not to think about that.
23:10You think about it every night.
23:12Level 10.
23:13The ghost.
23:15The IPO happened.
23:17The stock opened at $32
23:18and closed at $47
23:20on the first day.
23:22You watched from a conference room
23:23surrounded by people
23:24you've worked with
23:25for almost a decade.
23:26Someone popped champagne.
23:28Someone cried.
23:29You felt something strange.
23:31Not joy, exactly.
23:33Not relief.
23:34Something closer to
23:36exhaustion
23:36finally being allowed
23:37to exist out loud.
23:39Your shares vested.
23:41The lock-up period
23:42ended six months later.
23:43You sold enough
23:44to pay off your mortgage
23:45and your parents' mortgage
23:46and set up a trust
23:47for your kid.
23:48You were wealthy
23:49in a way that still
23:50doesn't feel real
23:51when you buy groceries.
23:52You stayed at the company
23:54for another year
23:54after the IPO.
23:56But it wasn't the same.
23:57Public companies
23:58are different animals.
24:00Quarterly earnings calls.
24:01Shareholder expectations.
24:03Every decision filtered
24:04through how it affects
24:05the stock price.
24:06The soul of the thing
24:08you built
24:08got replaced
24:09by a spreadsheet.
24:10The conversations changed.
24:12People stopped
24:13talking about the product
24:14and started talking
24:15about the multiple.
24:16You left on a Tuesday.
24:18There was a happy hour.
24:19The CEO gave a toast.
24:21He called you a legend.
24:23You shook hands
24:24with people you'd bled
24:25alongside for the better
24:26part of a decade.
24:27Some of them you'll
24:28stay close with forever.
24:30Some of them
24:30you'll never speak to again.
24:32You know which ones are which
24:34and it surprises you.
24:35You take six months off.
24:37You travel.
24:39You sleep past 6 a.m.
24:40for the first time
24:41in eight years.
24:42You sit on a beach
24:43and feel your nervous system
24:44slowly unclench
24:46from a tension
24:46you didn't even know
24:47it was holding.
24:48Then the itch comes back.
24:50It always comes back.
24:52You start advising
24:53other startups.
24:54A kid in a coffee shop
24:56pitches you an idea
24:57on a napkin.
24:57He's 24.
24:59He's terrified
25:00and electric
25:01and he reminds you
25:02of yourself
25:02before the weight
25:03of it all settled in.
25:04You write him a check.
25:06Angel investing
25:07they call it.
25:08You call it something else.
25:10You call it
25:11trying to feel
25:12that thing again.
25:13That pulse you felt
25:14when you were an intern
25:15and your code went live
25:16for the first time
25:17and something shifted
25:18under your feet.
25:19You know it won't
25:20feel the same.
25:21It never does
25:22the second time around
25:23but you chase it anyway
25:25because the alternative
25:26is sitting still
25:27and sitting still
25:29was never something
25:30you were built for.
25:32Somewhere
25:32right now
25:33a college student
25:34is sitting in a dorm room
25:35staring at a laptop.
25:37They have an idea.
25:38It's probably bad.
25:40Most ideas are
25:41but they don't know that yet
25:43and that ignorance
25:44is the most valuable
25:45thing they own.
25:46They're going to skip
25:47class tomorrow
25:48to write code.
25:49They're going to pitch
25:50their roommate
25:50on being a co-founder.
25:52They're going to Google
25:53how to incorporate
25:54a company in Delaware
25:55and feel a rush
25:56of adrenaline
25:56when the form
25:57asks them
25:58for a business name.
25:59They have no idea
26:00what they're signing up for.
26:02The sleepless years
26:03and the failed hires
26:04and the investors
26:05who say no
26:0650 times
26:07before someone
26:07finally says yes.
26:09The loneliness
26:10of building something
26:11that might not work
26:12and might not matter.
26:13The weight
26:14of being responsible
26:15for other people's livelihoods
26:17before you've figured
26:17out your own.
26:19They'll learn.
26:20They always do.
26:21The cycle continues.
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