I've been asked some version of this question many times: "Why do you want to start a company?"
The honest answer is that I want to work on something large enough and hard enough that it's worth spending a decade on. Not because starting a company is glamorous — it's not — but because building something from nothing is the most direct way I know to create impact at scale.
What "matters" means to me
Not every company matters in the way I'm thinking about. A company matters if:
- It solves a real problem for real people
- The problem is large enough to justify a decade of work
- The solution creates value that compounds over time
- The world is meaningfully different because the company exists
I'm not interested in marginal improvements or incremental optimizations. I want to work on problems where the upside is enormous and the difficulty is the barrier to entry.
Why the physical world
I'm drawn to the physical world because that's where the hardest and most important problems are. Software has transformed how we communicate, transact, and consume information. But the physical world — how we build, move, produce, and operate — is still largely untouched by the kind of intelligence that software has brought to digital systems.
Robotics, physical AI, infrastructure — these are the domains where the next wave of transformative companies will be built. And they require a kind of builder who's willing to deal with atoms, not just bits.
What I'm looking for
I don't have the idea yet. But I have a framework for evaluating ideas:
- Scale: Is the problem humanity-scale?
- Difficulty: Is it hard enough that most people won't attempt it?
- Timing: Is now the right time, given technology and market readiness?
- Fit: Am I the right person to build this, given my background and interests?
I'm actively searching, and I'll know it when I find it.
A personal reflection, written at Stanford.