Why won't those stupid idiots let me into their crappy club for jerks?

This weekend’s anxiety concluded in me finding out that my partner and I didn’t get funding for our startup. In all honesty, that’s probably for the best. The more we look at the space, the more obvious it is that there’s a business here - but not a billion-dollar one. A 10-million-dollar one? Yes, seems like. Along the way, I would get to learn all about satellites and geopolitics and weird stuff which is great, but perhaps not the most fundable thing. It also removes the obligation of having to keep up with the startup world’s performance aesthetic which I can no longer countenance.

I am not sure I enjoy the startup life all that much, or enjoy coding, though CEO-ing was a bit of a different gig. Overall, I don’t find myself inexplicably drawn to the startup world because I love the people - there are aspects of the energy I do like, but I don’t feel locked out of heaven. It is far from a crappy club, there are few to no jerks involved, and overall I had a really great time at EF. I just don’t know if venture-startup is right for me.

A negative way to portray this is to say “Saurya doesn’t have what it takes.” A positive way to say it would be “Saurya has a bunch of things in his life that give him copious amounts of joy so he no longer seeks it in his career.”

I can’t help but be saddened by this a bit, because there’s this idea of “What if I had found that perfect startup idea and team, then I would have all my wishes fulfilled!” It is essentially the same as soulmate talk, but in business. Turns out hardcore romantics remain hardcore romantics regardless the field.

I have a lot of people to thank for the awesome journey of the past few months - my partner Alex Ghaïtanellis, everyone we met at EF, David, Karen, the list goes on!

My mind is already buzzing with the potentialities of the next year - while COVID rages on, I feel like it is the perfect time to dive deep into all of the personal projects I had been putting off for years. I started working on a Wiki for my life and I am pretty excited about that.