I recently left my job at Stripe to fulfill a life goal of starting my own software company. This is all very recent so I'm not quite sure where this is going to take me, but I wanted to take some time to put down thoughts about what I would like this company to be about.
The first question to answer is what type of company this is. Fast growing companies raise money, grant employees equity, and then iterate to product market fit. Once they find this, the race is on to scale as quickly as possible, reaching an escape velocity establishing barriers to entry against the inevitable competition. Large companies will try to acquire, copy, or eliminate you. I think this type of startup is for people who want to go big and potentially make an enormous amount of money, but it is less ideal for those who simply don't want the stress or burnout, or even just want to control and maintain the vision of what the endeavor is about. The other type of startup business, for one that could eventually be a team but isn't looking to raise money to grow as quickly, is the "bootstrapped" variety. Here there is the opportunity for those who want a less all-encompassing lifestyle. The conundrum, however, is that without money to fuel growth any genuinely powerful idea is likely to be outmuscled upon product market fit. The conventional wisdom in today's age is that the second type of company needs to go small on purpose to avoid that fate. Examples could include building an e-commerce business on a platform or a consulting or contract-based shop.
Out of these two, I am aiming for the second, but not for the reasons above. I am inspired by the idea that one can have a meaning to their life's work, and that this meaning can be more important than the reasons people typically start companies - striving for fame, status, or wealth. What if this slower growth business can be the vehicle for more freedom in meaning behind my work? A way to explore and find what that meaning is as I make my way through building and writing and marketing a set of software tools. My adult life has been spent being educated and working for the world's best software companies in building products powered by machine learning. In industry I was a product manager, and my peers were and became CEOs. I was much more than an engineer, I was at the middle of research, design, and marketing in launching products. As an artist may paint, a musician make songs, it would make sense for me to continue to create tools used on computers as my life's work.
So, then, what is the vision for these tools? Our experience of life consists only in moments, and we fill those moments with tasks or activities that map to games we are playing, things we do to keep us alive, or thing we do that numb our minds and make us less conscious. We don't have the control over how we fill these moments the way we think we have, and it's gotten worse as more of our day is filled interacting with computer-mediated content on screens. These 'screens' grab our attention in service of business goals of the companies building the apps we use, and their goals are often time spent with the app - as this leads to business profits (more ads served.)
It doesn't need to be this way. What if the apps we used were tools that were instead in service of our goals and intentions? What if instead of grabbing our attention to numb it, these tools made our lives more fulfilling and beautiful in so many ways? This is what I want my life's work to be. This new software company, provisionally named Feather, will be a suite of AI-powered tools that optimize for you by helping you fulfill conscious, positive intentions to learn, grow, be with the people you love, tell stories, and make art.
Who knows where this journey will lead. Ultimately, I think we need an operating system to do this, not just a set of apps. It may even be that this journey has me joining a bigger effort or someone else's company with an aligned vision rather than building out my own.
That is the beauty of beginnings. The future is wide open.