Varun Raghu

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• 07 Dec, 2025 *

i am a startup founder based out of the bay area. not the million dollar ones like you read about. my startup is bootstrapped. our cash flow is uncertain. it has only 3 people. me and my co-founder are full-time. we have two other co-founders part-time. (1+1+0.5+0.5 = 3)

We try to build products that help people. We try to solve mostly problems we ourselves face using tech. We are nerds, misfits, borderline insane people driven by a passion to build. we could probably get a job in big tech if we tried as hard as we try building our own startup. but we don’t want to. in fact we can’t. we’d have to kill a little (actually a lot) of ourselves to do that.

we are not techbros scamming crypto coins or building ai products that destroy the very fabric of society.

i hate everything big tech stands for today. facebook openly admitting they earn millions from scam ads. VCs funding straight up brainrot or gambling.

Big tech is not even pretending to be good these days. i lose motivation. i want to just leave tech and become a teacher or a fisherman or something that keeps me away from the laptop. but i can’t. tech is all i’ve known all my life.

if tech loses people like us, all it’ll have left are psychopath. look i’m not trying to take a holier-than-thou stance her. i’m just saying objectively it seems insane what’s happening in mainstream tech these days. i could also be frustrated at our genuine attempts that keep failing.

this is not unsustainable. we will have brighter days but we need to lay the foundation for that today.

I’m going to keep fighting till i can. as little as i can do.