Wow. Brian Armstrong was successful for all the reasons that I wasn’t. Self-reflection here. First, to me, Bitcoin wasn’t good enough. I had ‘better’ ideas for digital currency. They weren’t. Bitcoin was a thing, and anything else was not a thing. Secondly, I read all the regulations and came to the conclusion that I had to start a bank first, and I spent my time trying to build a system to interact with fed wire. This was wasted. The regulators grimaced, but the business got built anyway. Third, he was actively looking for a cofounder, and made that a huge part of his life. I didn’t even think about that, especially in my small town, ironically the same small town as Fred Ehrsam. Fourth, he had extreme focus and perseverance. The last time I had tried a startup as a full time job, I was not ready to be ridiculed by family and called a loser by women, and have the idea rejected by every business person that saw it (Actually there was one guy that liked it. He ended up in jail and then tried to sue Mark Zuckerberg for half of FB.) I was hedging my bets on lots of ideas, classes at fancy schools, and a day job that made me feel important. So, failing at everything. Fifth, he actually applied to YC with what he had instead of pushing it off to ‘someday’ when it was perfect or assuming it would be a waste of time because everybody else said ‘no’. Maybe there is some luck involved, maybe he was taking on a lot more risk, or had a personal situation that was more amenable, but all I see is pure grind on something he believed in while I just didn’t have it.

And I can’t fault my family either. I saw it all right in front of my face. My father did great work that established his employer as a leader in the field. I spent my life wanting to be just like him. Plaques and appreciation awards all over the house. It was a big company which eventually failed and that was it, career over, entry-level job hunting at 50. My uncle started a very simple sales business, spent 5 years doing a lot for a little, and then 35 years doing very little for a lot.

I had my performance review yesterday during the Coinbase IPO. I still have a job. I still have a boss. I started working when I was 13, and every year of my life, I feel more and more consumed by whatever some other arbitrary person thinks about me. I take these jobs because I want to focus on doing great work without thinking about any of the other stuff. And then I get the 120-point checklist on all of the ways that I am being evaluated, mostly raving corporatist bullshit that boils down to somebody’s feelings, so I’m supposed to spend my life on that, and if I don’t, I get fired, which is supposed to be a really terrible thing. Except, all my fiends that got fired early on in their careers are winning big now, on their own, nobody telling them that they are less of a person than they believe themselves to be.

Sure, BA is a cherry-picked example. Sure, there are thousands that failed for each that succeeded. But what does success look like on the other side? It sucks. I did well, but I’d rather be broke and have the last 25 years of my life back. Own yourself. I thought I was a renegade. I thought I was immune. I’m not. You aren’t either. Look at all those responses asking BA to qualify himself as a 10x googler before they will talk to him. Those are the losers. Not you. You are powerful beyond measure. Your instincts are correct. You don’t need Stanford or google or whatever. Those places have nothing to teach you except how to outsource your self-worth. Don’t go down that path.

Cheers to Brian and Fred and everybody else that did it because they believed in something when everybody shat on them for it.