Give up, don't quit
A dinner with Anjan Katta at Casa Nautilus
San Francisco,
July 17, 2025
Dear young polymath,
This is the fourth installment of a series where we share insights from guests at Casa Nautilus. Nautilus is a 3-month residency for young polymaths. Proteges’ stay in SF is fully funded with accommodation, food and equipment included, so they can dive into their craft and build ambitious projects.
Tonight, we had the privilege of hosting Anjan Katta, Founder and CEO of Daylight, at Casa Nautilus. From the moment he walked in I noticed there was nothing performative about his presence; he was here to connect and effortlessly remembered everyone’s name at the dinner table within 10 minutes. That wasn’t just some networking trick, I would later find him to be the most kind and unique CEO I’ve ever met…
As a GenZ Girardian, I often run an experiment when I meet people in tech. I ask myself: “Who are they mimicking? Gates? Jobs? Zuck?” For Anjan, as the CEO of a computer company, I admit I was looking for any "Jobs" within him. I’m genuinely excited to say that I saw only Anjan Katta, so much so I told him:
“Hi Anjan. Nice to officially meet you.”
This is rarer than it should be, but the tech space has way more blind copies than “n of 1”s. At the end of tea time, Anjan told us his favorite parable. Maybe you’ve heard it before:
A farmer’s only horse runs away.
The neighbors say, “This is such bad news!”
The farmer says, “We’ll see.”
The horse returns with twenty wild horses.
“Such good news!” They cry.
“We’ll see,” says the farmer.
His son breaks both legs taming one horse.
“Tragic,” the neighbors say.
“We’ll see.”
Then a war breaks out. Every able-bodied son is drafted—except the farmer’s.
“You must be so happy,” the neighbors say.
The farmer repeats, “We’ll see.”
This parable became the way I was able to process the entire night with Anjan. Every insight he shared echoed these truths:
I. Give up, don’t quit
(The horse runs away.)
Every founder experiences loss and failure. A failed launch. Broken product. An investor ghosting you. Your instinct might be to panic and fix whatever needs fixing to win.
Anjan wants you to think critically: “There’s a difference between stress and strain.”
In physics, stress is a temporary force, but strain is what permanently bends or deforms you. When the horse runs away, many would spiral into despair, but not the farmer. He says, “We’ll see.” The key is not to avoid stress, but to be flexible enough to move through it without letting it bend your spirit.
He’s been there before. Anjan’s point is that “giving up” means letting the soil settle, and then coming back better.
Think of the Chinese finger trap:
“The harder you pull, the more stuck you get. When you soften and get loose, you slide free.”
This ability to soften and surrender — without abandoning the mission — is what allows you to keep playing long enough to succeed. So when things appear to be falling apart, just say to yourself, “we’ll see”. That’s the farmer losing his horse. It looks like a disaster, but only time can reveal its true shape.
Your job isn’t to label the moment as a win or loss.
Your job is to endure and keep moving forward.
II. Surrender to Intuition Over Ego
(The horses return.)
Suddenly, you’ve got 21 horses. A big break. Press attention. A wave of users. Investors are dm-ing you. Validation feels good.
What could go wrong…?
(Son breaks his leg.)
The farmer is unfazed. Even if we don’t get broken legs often, we suffer in some form:
Anjan was vulnerable and shared, “Depression was my teacher. It humbled me. I had to surrender my desire to control reality.”
This surrender became central to how he built Daylight – Like the farmer, Anjan uses his intuition as his compass.
“Computers should feel different to your eyes and to your headspace.”
That’s why he used to demo Daylight as many as 30 people a day, to get people to feel it.
But even then, setbacks will always happen so surrender.
Anjan said:
“Things have to get worse to get better. We’re not trying to win. Just trying to get from basecamp to basecamp.”
III. Sow Daily
(The draft comes. The son is spared.)
Daylight isn’t your typical startup. They build at the pace of amplifying human potential, what computers were supposed to do:
“Other companies aren’t starting from scratch and working backwards for humanity. We are.”
They raise bit by bit.
They build feeling by feeling.
They avoid the Venom-like symbiosis between humans and their devices that other startups normalize.
“We used to wait for letters. Now we text before we’ve regulated our emotions.”
Their goal isn’t to dominate as fast as possible. It’s to slowly deprogram.
(The final “we’ll see.” of the parable)
For three years, Anjan sent emails every two months to a dream collaborator.
No reply. For three years. Then one day he got his yes.
This collaborator now helps power Daylight.
“People are really nice if you email them,” he smiled.
We forget this when things go quiet. When all of our horses run away.
But Anjan reminds us:
You can give up, but don’t quit! Whether you’re losing your horses, dealing with an injured son, or avoiding war…
You need to hold your horses haha (as my Ma used to tell me)
Don’t try and force an outcome.
Don’t narrate your life in past tense when you're still mid-chapter.
Stay human, and just say: We’ll see.
Check out Anjan’s Favorite Song Lately here.
We’re saving you a seat at dinner: apply to Nautilus’ next cohort.
Yours very truly,
MacKenzie Fisher, Philosofounder and a Nautilus protege
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