I yeeted for years into the void for the love of it like many of you, but after selling my startup in 2020 I finally got to see it from the inside. Up close it was both amazing and terrible, like so many other companies and things in life. But, as we all now know, mostly terrible. So, so, *so* terrible. 

Still, “Don’t Build The Torment Nexus” was one of my all-time favorite sci-fi books as a kid so getting to work *on* The Torment Nexus was a lifelong dream come true. 

 As someone with a maniacal sense of urgency built into me, it often felt siloed and bureaucratic. Dumb power plays, and reorgs — not to mention there was a strong contingency of people who didn’t want to build The Torment Nexus. 

You couldn’t just be a builder — you also needed to be a Chthonic Priest of the Seventh Order who *did* want to build The Torment Nexus.