Garry Tan

Like there were all these unexamined demons from my childhood.

You know, I sometimes wonder if I'm making the same mistake too.

I might be just by coding all the time right now.

Back then I was like the hero engineer.

Like I just wrote all the code.

I did all the design.

I even like kept the servers up, which was very inadvisable.

And then now after a lot of therapy, I realized, oh, that's my hero complex.

You know, I had to carry my family.

My parents were my parents, but like I had to sort of parent them as well.

And that's what caused me to be the way I am.

But also, it caused me to fail, caused me to not be able to manage people, not be able to transition, not be able to make the decisions to help my startup, my YC startup in 2008 had a shot.

We could have been a contender.

And I think a lot about that.

You know, if you don't know who you are or you haven't worked through the things that are really going on inside of you or how you make decisions, if you're not an integrated person, this stuff all comes out again.

I'll just argue the other side of that.

Sometimes the people who are fully integrated can't go to the inhuman, unrealistic extremes necessary to break through.

Like sometimes it's because of that damage that you can just keep hammering.

yes i'm not suggesting that as a choice but it's just the reality that sometimes it takes that yeah i haven't reconciled that yet i mean that's definitely true like when we meet people and they're all the way turned on it's like that's coming from some place it's not always a positive place but that might be the energy to get over the gap and then once it works then they can work on themselves and have time during the race you can't focus on anything but the race

you're hitting on something very deep and I'm just going to be super vulnerable here.