I graduated from survival mode

On building a life that can hold my ambition

I built my life on scrappiness. At first, it was out of necessity; I was dropping out of high school and into the world of startups and needed to get my foot through the door. Being scrappy made me creative, fast, and relentless.

But along the way, scrappiness stopped being a tool and became my identity. I started treating scarcity like a proof of character: not paying myself, not resting, not asking for help, doing everything alone. In startups, this posture is easy to romanticize.

The thing is, scrappiness can only take you so far: you can’t build something durable, let alone scale it, if you aren’t giving yourself permission to receive and spend the resources needed to get there.

I’m writing this as I reflect on 2025, a year that looked, from the outside, like a string of wins. I launched Nautilus. I went on a tour, giving lectures in universities across Europe while scouting for talent. I got my O-1 visa and moved to San Francisco. I raised money, found a space to host the Nautilus’ cohorts, and launched the first batch which turned into a great success.

And yet, alongside the pride, I’m feeling frustrated:

At what point did I convince myself that in order to grow my org, I had to sacrifice my entire wellbeing?

That question is uncomfortable because the answer isn’t “because I had to.” Not fully. Yes, some early sacrifices are real, and starting something from scratch demands focus, trade-offs, and intensity.

But in my case, sacrifice became a belief system.

In tech, there’s a version of founder virtue that gets rewarded: the martyr founder. The one who sacrifices everything for the mission. The one who is always grinding, always “in it,” always barely making it, always proving they want it badly enough. This mindset leaks into how you schedule your life, how you hire, how you collaborate, how you plan, how you fundraise, how you lead.

Grind creates momentum. But it can also turn into tunnel vision, strategic mistakes, and burnout.

I was making my life harder than it needed to be because I unconsciously thought struggling was noble.

My work is the most important thing in my life. And I realized that my scarcity mindset has become a liability to building something that lasts. Nautilus can’t be built from scarcity, when its mission is to support artists, scientists, and founders exit survival mode to build the future.

So in 2026, I’m updating my inner software. Concretely, it looks like:

Tempo

• Stop manufacturing urgency. Build ambitious but realistic timelines, and honor them.

• Catch myself when I think “I don’t have time”, and start feeling like “I am rich in time”, while being more deliberate with my day-to-day.

Receiving

• Pay myself. Let the project support the person building it.

• Spend what’s needed to do things well, instead of defaulting to “make it work” at any cost.

Collaboration

• Share unfinished work earlier, and invite feedback instead of performing independence.

• Build with peers more: co-create and make room for partnership.

Capacity

• Train my body for higher energy and focus.

• Protect my fun as a primary need and creative input.

• Create space for resting every single week.

Survival mode got me here. Now, it’s time for the abundance arc.

The Sense of Taste, Rubens & Brueghel, 1618

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Thanks to Isabel and Zack for the many conversations on this subject, and to Cate for publishing an essay on burnout here + great convo on the matter.