stop making startups

You probably read that first line and are asking yourself what authority does a 17-year-old have, who's never built anything generational or IPO'd, telling people to stop building startups. I agree, and honestly I want people to build.

But I hate the term "startup". I can't even lie, saying you're a startup founder sounds so sexy on LinkedIn, but this leads to people forcing startups. Let me explain with my own scenario.

Hawaii, March 2025. The perfect word to describe that time of my life was serenity. I ate well and had the time of my life, though every inch of free time I had when I was back at the hotel, I was trying to build something. I didn't know what, but I was obsessed with AI search engines and Venture Capital. Tried making a hybrid of the two, but it failed.

I came back home and decided to work on something adjacent, but also learn more about RAG + Data Scraping. I was tired of cold emailing startups and VC firms for internships (it never worked out lmao), so what if I built a search engine for that? I realized Apollo and these weird ass sales tools already did that.

I saw a trend on LinkedIn of high schoolers doing research. Bingo, no one built a search engine for that. So I did. I made a promise saying if I can figure this out, then I can build something in VC.

Made a LinkedIn post with the expectation that it was a project. The word startup never came about. It went viral, and then my first "startup" came to life. Then months later, everything fell apart after I got banned on LinkedIn + a bad fit team.

I was pivoting. I wanted another startup idea. I didn't know what the fuck to do. I tried, I did some internships and client work here and there, but I tried building and nothing worked out.

I tried analyzing what ideation technique worked well for my first startup, and I realized that it wasn't that I found some insane problem, nor was it that I entered the space at the right time, but it was because of no expectations.

I never thought I would make a startup. I put the least amount of pressure on myself, and not to mention I wasn't spending 10 hours a day trying to figure out something generational.

I also realized it wasn't just because I was sitting down all day and a eureka moment came, but because I actively tried stuff out. But the key is this: I never expected it would be a startup idea.

It's so hard to just tell your brain to stop, and honestly even today being burnt out trying to figure out a startup idea, I accepted that just building for the love of the game is more meaningful than trying to roleplay as a startup founder.

With the constant dump of YouTube videos on your feed saying "make 10K MRR using AI" or some other bullshit, it makes startups feel like a get-rich-quick scheme. Maybe it has worked out for some people, but startups are never a math equation where if you do x and then y, it will happen.

It's an art.

That's what makes startups intriguing. Some of the greatest ideas were never meant to be startups.

Don't build for status. Build for meaning, for love, heck, build for fun. It's tempting; when everyone else is building something, you feel left out. But honestly? What's worse: you building something that was never going to work out, or maybe works for a bit but you hate it, or taking a little longer to bloom to build something that's actually fun, meaningful, and most importantly, you're happy.