Zach Lipton

It was like some combination of like entitlement and decadence and a sense that like, well, I got a master's degree.

You know, I applied to YC.

Why aren't you giving me $20 million or something?

And, you know, I was a jazz musician in, like, 2000, you know, early, like, mid-aughts through early 2010s in New York City.

And, like, my is at a different universe and a different world in terms of the extent of, like, competition there.

of just like economic reality.

And, you know, like a state where you can only be doing what you're doing because you absolutely love it and can't imagine doing anything else.

And also, even then, you better be one of the like,

hundred or so best players in the world to even like get a gig paying like $40 at the local bar, because it's only like, there's all the best jazz musicians in the world to send in on New York.

And there's maybe like any given night to like 20 places that have little gigs around town.

And I used to in like 20, I don't know, 2010 or something.

I used to have, I was like, ran the house band playing like the 1am set, like, which was like, we'd play a set and run the jam session at a

at a dive on the Lower East Side called the Moldy Fig.

And on a good night, we maybe got between like 30 and 40 bucks a man.

And we used to like, it became like our unit of currency.

Like, you know, you thought about like, oh, like my car got towed.

Like how many moldy figs do I have to, you know, did that cost?

And it was like, it was like four nights of work.

Yeah.

Six nights of work, maybe more.