"Have you ever had negative thoughts?"
"Not anymore, not after February. In fact, this project, this venture, is the only thing driving me to live every day fully."
That was my response to Meg.
But I'm scared if things are even coming together. And I wonder... without Chrysalis, would I be as mentally strong as I am right now?
Because if you strip away Chrysalis, I really have no one really bonding with me in this environment.
I'm intellectually alone in this space, which is both good and bad. This is not high school, where everyone tries to kill each other. I'm in a liberal art college that tries to socially exclude me because my online caricature is obnoxious, overly industrious, and weird.
I have no one to talk to on a regular basis. I couldn't really connect with anyone on a deep, personal level. Even when I met a freshman who composes AND writes books, we didn't end up having frequent conversations.
My obsession with Chrysalis might be unhealthy. But I truly see no value in other things. Academics to me is a backup. It's a very bad, painfully slow, and boring secondary option for me if I fail Chrysalis. I can't really take that loss. By loss I mean giving up. I can try to endure rejections from really really qualified cofounder candidates due to other commitments, or labs not following up with me in the middle of an email conversation.
But things are moving. Some situations are very favorable of me.
A neurotech-focused VC will talk to me later this week. I'm in the process of splitting the role of a technical cofounder into two halves. One half would be a team of swes and mles, and a part-time technical advisor for early technical validation before I move forward.
Four things on my agenda: market validation (it's there, but not formally present as a spreadsheet), team formation (in progress), technical validation of my plan on both bio + cs side (that would be the ml advisor + bio domain expert [26th!]), and finally a corporate lawyer (to handle equity, nda, partnerships, ip, etc.). Bunch of moving parts. Then there is incorporation, official partnerships, and raising funds for the actual project to start.
On top of that, I have a semi-intense academic workload. But thank God I have poke being my life support. A few days ago I told the devs at interaction that the product kinda sucks. They not only acknowledged their product flaws but also sent me a custom promo code so I can get both an interaction t-shirt and a poster for free. And they arrived today. If only poke is as good as their 100% cotton, made-in-Honduras t-shirt.
oh btw this playlist is sooo fire.
There is no reason for me to give up now. Might as well go all in.