Getting Back on the Horse
What shutting down my startup (and starting over) taught me about forgetting fast, moving faster, and why momentum matters more than overthinking.
Four months ago, I shut down my startup.
Three weeks later, my girlfriend broke up with me.
It felt like I'd been bucked off hard out of the company I'd poured everything into, out of the relationship I thought I could lean on. For a minute, I thought maybe I'd just stay down.
But the only thing I really know how to do is get back up and build.
The Pattern
I've noticed something about myself and maybe about men in general.
We tend to self-sabotage. We burn things down, sometimes consciously, sometimes not, just to see what's left. It's painful, but there's also freedom in it.
Starting fresh clears the board.
Forgetting as a Feature
The only way I've managed to keep moving is by forgetting quickly.
Forgetting the wasted hours doing busywork at Quiib. Forgetting the projects that never shipped. Forgetting the experiments that didn't matter.
Forgetting gives me space to start again clean.
My Setup Now
Today, I work from one simple setup: a clean monorepo.
I can spin up a project in seconds, deploy on Vercel instantly, or run long tasks on Railway. Auth, payments, and subscriptions are already wired up with Stripe.
I can launch something real in a day, not a month.
That's the biggest lesson: don't rebuild what already exists. Use what's out there.
The rate you adapt is the difference maker.
Where I Get Stuck
Where I still struggle is knowing when to quit.
I don't plan much, I just start. That's my edge, but also my kryptonite. If I stay too long on a project with no signals, I burn out. And then I beat myself up for not shipping sooner.
It's weird. Overthinkers procrastinate by waiting.
I procrastinate by criticizing myself.
Both feel like different flavors of the same problem.
What I Know
I'm still working on it.
But here's what I know: you'll never hate yourself for starting.
You'll only hate yourself for waiting.