despite the challenge, I still think being a founder or early employee is incredibly awesome
coding, product, design, marketing, really all kinds of building for a user - is the ultimate test. it's empirical, challenging, uncertain, tactical, and very real.
if you succeeds, you make something self-sustaining that continues to do good. if you fail, it will do bad. and/or die.
strongly agreed except that...
continues to survive and continues to do good are not guaranteed to be the same and often are directly opposed. it is much easier to build a product that keeps getting used than one that should.
it's possible that yours is good for the world, but I suspect mine isn't. I regret helping make it.
1Sinclair Chen
it's easy to have a mission and almost every startup has one. only 10% of startups survive. but yes, surviving and continuing to do good is strictly harder.
what was your company?
I'm the other founder of vast.ai besides Jacob Cannell. I left in early 2019 partially induced by demotivation about the mission, partially induced by wanting a more stable job, partially induced by creative differences, and a mix of other smaller factors.