I Never Wanted to Be a Founder

For most of my adult life, I called myself a founder.

I only recently realised that I had the whole thing backwards.

I just wanted to build cool shit with people I liked working with.

I thought founding a company was the only way to do that.

I started my first company at 21. Since then, I have co-founded four startups.

For years, being a founder was a huge part of how I saw myself. It was what I did. It was how I introduced myself. It was also how I measured whether I was moving forwards in life.

It was my identity.

As my companies grew, I built less and managed more. I had built myself out of the work I loved.

I wrote about how I tried to fix that until I burned out in my previous essay.

At 34, I took my first real job.

My first real job

A few months ago, I joined Chalkie, a company that helps teachers create great lessons and worksheets, as a founding engineer.

What attracted me was the founding team.

They knew the education space, but they had also reached product-market fit without hiring anyone. They were super lean.

That told me a lot.

They had stayed close to users. They had made careful decisions. They had built what the product needed without building a large company around it.

I wanted to work like that again.

At Chalkie, I can take a product problem and explore it from different angles. I have room to experiment, try different solutions and make decisions based on what we learn.

The best part is being able to ship it and get feedback immediately.

Build. Ship. Learn. Improve.

I had forgotten how good that felt.

AI has made that loop faster than ever. I can build something, put it in front of users, and iterate almost immediately. If you are obsessed with building great products, there has never been a more fun time to build.

AI also made me realise that I did not miss being a founder.

I missed the joy of building, the thrill of getting feedback, and just the pure delight of hitting that merge button.

I can focus on making the best possible thing without thinking about making payroll, investors, runway or HR at the same time.

My responsibility is smaller. But I have more space to do my best work. I have freedom to do the work that I love.

Founding was never the goal

I am absolutely loving my time at Chalkie.

Neither being a founder nor being an employee is better. They are just different ways to build.

I may start another company one day. I may not. Who knows.

But if I do, it will not be for the title.

It will not be for the status.

And certainly, it will not be just to build something.

It will be because there is something I desperately want to exist and people I want to build it with.

Founding is not the goal.

It is just one way to do the work.

For years, I confused the role with the reason I chose it.

I never wanted to be a founder.

I just wanted to build.

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Originally published on X.