28. No idea if this makes me old or young. Don't care. I'm pretty sure I'm not fundable because I just don't see the value in being a billionaire. Ever. I'd ge

28. No idea if this makes me old or young. Don't care. I'm pretty sure I'm not fundable because I just don't see the value in being a billionaire. Ever. I'd get off around $10 million if money were the only motivation. Solving interesting problems, helping people, teaching people so the knowledge I have doesn't die when my body does, those are interesting to me. Scoring huge "exits" to make rich people richer? Meh. Not averse to it, but I don't care. Why would I? That rich people don't have enough money isn't even on the top 100 of the world's most serious problems. And if any VC ever shot a term sheet my way that had participating preferred or multiple liquidation preferences on it, I'd feel like I was punched in the face and never deal with him, or his firm, or anyone connected with him, again. The TL;DR of this sense: You know what's not cool? A billion dollars. Unless you're Louis CK, because he'd have fun with that shit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_XiA4U_XsE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_XiA4U_XsE I'm reaching the age where "just a programmer" positions (without, at the least, informal technical leadership) aren't acceptable, and I definitely like the blank-sheet creativity that's possible with startups, but I don't see myself as being VC-istan "founder material". I won't have the necessary connections to get funding till at least 35, and I stopped seeing any value in being a billionaire around 24, when a short-term but scary health problem convinced me of the utter-fucking-uselessness of material ambition. It's not that I wouldn't be awesome as a founder. I have as good or better odds than anyone else. I just have to recognize that by the time I'll be fundable, having acquired the connections, I'll probably care even less about billion-dollar exits.