My Philosophy On Life

As of Sept 23, 2025

Live intentionally.
Time and energy are precious, so spend them on the people you love and the work that challenges you. The way you live speaks louder than anything you could ever say. Your children, colleagues, and friends are always watching, learning more about you from your actions than your words.Take action.
Growth happens when you take action, not when you think about it. You'll never feel completely ready, and that's okay. Start anyway. Try new things, fail quickly, learn from it, and keep moving. Be eager to act but patient with the results. Real progress builds slowly through showing up consistently, day after day. Talent is merely a pursued interest. Anything that you're willing to practice, you can do.Be authentic.
Say what you mean with honesty and care. Listen with your full attention. Being genuine matters more than looking impressive. Accept what you can't change, but take responsibility for what you can. Peace isn't something that happens to you - it's something you choose, even when circumstances are difficult.Embrace resilience.
You're stronger than you know. Hard times will come, but how you respond is up to you. Pressure often means you're carrying something important. Face challenges with both strength and grace - work hard when it's time to work, rest deeply when it's time to rest, and notice the small joys that others miss.Choose kindness.
Be a good person. Be kind to everyone you meet. Give generously before expecting anything in return. Help others grow, even if it means watching them make their own mistakes. The relationships you build with care and gratitude are your true treasure.Show up fully.
Take care of your body, keep learning, stay grateful. How you approach small things reflects how you approach everything. Take pride not in being perfect, but in giving your honest best effort.Believe in yourself.
You have more potential than you realize. Think clearly, feel deeply, and act with conviction. Don't try to be better than others - focus on becoming better than who you were yesterday. That's what makes a life worth living.

Entrepreneurial Transitions

Aug 12, 2025

About a year ago my co-founder and I shut down our first VC backed startup, inStryde. We still have IP in flight and may sell it, but the company as a living thing has ended.inStryde was our first attempt at a moonshot. We tackled everything simultaneously: hardware, software, a novel image-based scanning system, scan-to-print manufacturing workflows, custom integrations to make disparate parts feel like one seamless product. Add custom-fit products that couldn’t be resold after returns and you get a masterclass in startup complexity.After shutting it down, we pivoted to “easier” things. RocketHire (an AI resume writing tool), Kick TV (a place to watch soccer with friends online), Hitch (an AI wedding planner). Within weeks learned a brutal lesson: there is no easy startup. You don’t escape complexity by switching categories - you just trade one difficult set of problems for another.This sounds obvious until you’re living it. But founders don’t learn through advice; we learn by touching a hot stove.So we took a break. Not a “plan the next sprint” break, but a “let’s stop thinking about building anything for a while and exhale” break.Then life compressed everything into three weeks. Zero runway left. Job hunting with no income. A surprise $8,000 bill to remove a dying oak tree in our front yard. A personal health scare that translated into medical bills. And to top it all off, my dog, the dog I rescued 10 years prior, died the morning before starting a new job. Reality hit hard.But transitions create clarity. My new W-2 job steadied everything. Predictable income, defined hours, no 3 AM customer emails, no midnight tweaks to the e-commerce page. My wife and I could have an evening together without discussing finances. For the first time in years, life felt sustainable.With genuine distance from the startup world, I could finally see the whole picture. I was learning to prioritize differently: presence over productivity, stability over growth, family time over market opportunity. My days still included ambition and building, but they no longer consumed everything else.This distance forced me to confront an uncomfortable question: Do I actually like being an entrepreneur?I’d always claimed to, but after we ended things, I wasn’t so sure. Entrepreneurship has real costs. The emotional rollercoaster isn’t startup mythology - it’s daily reality. There’s stress you bring home, money you can’t spend, the exhaustion of betting on yourself every morning. This 24/7 posture that tries to coexist with raising kids whose childhoods you don’t want to limit, to sacrifice against. Some days “founder” means “absent” in ways you only recognize later.So I kept asking myself: knowing what it actually costs, would you do it again?This question has become my filter. If my answer is yes now, after genuine rest and reflection, then I know I am not chasing a story or optimizing for status. I wind up actually enjoying the work. I know, from this place, that starting again wouldn’t be about proving anything or winning validation. It would be about doing work I find intrinsically rewarding, even when I could clearly see the full cost.Here’s what I learned: If you’re unsure whether you’re truly an entrepreneur, stop pushing. You won’t want to, but if you can, take a real break. Exhale. If months later you’re still designing solutions in your head during your commute, still solving problems, still building - you have your answer.During those six months, I discovered something fundamental: even knowing the true cost, I still couldn’t stop building. The difference is I could now see clearly what was driving me - not the idea of being an entrepreneur, but an actual need to create and to solve problems.Shutting down a company felt like failure, but it turns out I was, of course, just finishing a chapter. The complexity is still there, and it always will be. But now I am solving the right problem.--Thanks R for the edits, and Alek K. for the clarifying chat.

Entrepreneurial Transitions

About a year ago my co-founder and I shut down our first VC backed startup, inStryde. We still have IP in flight and may sell it, but the company as a living thing has ended.inStryde was our first attempt at a moonshot. We tackled everything simultaneously: hardware, software, a novel image-based scanning system, scan-to-print manufacturing workflows, custom integrations to make disparate parts feel like one seamless product. Add custom-fit products that couldn’t be resold after returns and you get a masterclass in startup complexity.After shutting it down, we pivoted to “easier” things. RocketHire (an AI resume writing tool), Kick TV (a place to watch soccer with friends online), Hitch (an AI wedding planner). Within weeks learned a brutal lesson: there is no easy startup. You don’t escape complexity by switching categories - you just trade one difficult set of problems for another.This sounds obvious until you’re living it. But founders don’t learn through advice; we learn by touching a hot stove.So we took a break. Not a “plan the next sprint” break, but a “let’s stop thinking about building anything for a while and exhale” break.Then life compressed everything into three weeks. Zero runway left. Job hunting with no income. A surprise $8,000 bill to remove a dying oak tree in our front yard. A personal health scare that translated into medical bills. And to top it all off, my dog, the dog I rescued 10 years prior, died the morning before starting a new job. Reality hit hard.But transitions create clarity. My new W-2 job steadied everything. Predictable income, defined hours, no 3 AM customer emails, no midnight tweaks to the e-commerce page. My wife and I could have an evening together without discussing finances. For the first time in years, life felt sustainable.With genuine distance from the startup world, I could finally see the whole picture. I was learning to prioritize differently: presence over productivity, stability over growth, family time over market opportunity. My days still included ambition and building, but they no longer consumed everything else.This distance forced me to confront an uncomfortable question: Do I actually like being an entrepreneur?I’d always claimed to, but after we ended things, I wasn’t so sure. Entrepreneurship has real costs. The emotional rollercoaster isn’t startup mythology - it’s daily reality. There’s stress you bring home, money you can’t spend, the exhaustion of betting on yourself every morning. This 24/7 posture that tries to coexist with raising kids whose childhoods you don’t want to limit, to sacrifice against. Some days “founder” means “absent” in ways you only recognize later.So I kept asking myself: knowing what it actually costs, would you do it again?This question has become my filter. If my answer is yes now, after genuine rest and reflection, then I know I am not chasing a story or optimizing for status. I wind up actually enjoying the work. I know, from this place, that starting again wouldn’t be about proving anything or winning validation. It would be about doing work I find intrinsically rewarding, even when I could clearly see the full cost.Here’s what I learned: If you’re unsure whether you’re truly an entrepreneur, stop pushing. You won’t want to, but if you can, take a real break. Exhale. If months later you’re still designing solutions in your head during your commute, still solving problems, still building - you have your answer.During those six months, I discovered something fundamental: even knowing the true cost, I still couldn’t stop building. The difference is I could now see clearly what was driving me - not the idea of being an entrepreneur, but an actual need to create and to solve problems.Shutting down a company felt like failure, but it turns out I was, of course, just finishing a chapter. The complexity is still there, and it always will be. But now I am solving the right problem.--Thanks R for the edits, and Alek K. for the clarifying chat.