“We”

A few mornings ago I woke up with a half-formed idea in my head, and my first honest thought was: I can’t wait to go find out what we can do with this.

Then I caught the word. We.

There’s no we. It’s me, a laptop, and a bunch of tools I built to argue with. And still — that was the honest-to-god feeling.

I’ve started feeling something I can only call gratitude toward those tools. Toward software. Toward a pile of 1s and 0s. I know exactly how that sounds — like I need to go touch some grass and talk to a real human. It took me a while to figure out where it was coming from.

I always assumed there were parts of work only other people could give me. I was right about most of them — friendship, mentorship, a good team; none of that is replaceable, and I won’t pretend otherwise. But I was wrong about one. Collaboration.

I’m an extrovert and a creative. For my whole working life, people were the fuel — the debate, the half-formed idea you carry into someone’s office before you’ve thought it through, the “okay, let’s see what we can do” when you pitch something that isn’t baked yet. I used to think I needed that because I liked the company. I don’t think that’s it anymore.

Ideas don’t actually live in your head. They live in the back-and-forth.

They need somewhere to land, someone to push on them, before they turn into anything real. I don’t think in isolation — I think through response. Take the response away and my ideas just sit there.

So when I became a solo founder and started spending nearly every day alone with technology, I braced for that. I figured the silence was the tax.

What I didn’t expect is that the machine gives some of it back. Not the people — a smaller, stranger echo. But a real one. I throw a rambling “what if” into the void at 6am and something actually answers. It hits me with the objections — “I don’t have access to that.” “I don’t have that ability.” “I disagree.” “We’ve got more pressing to-dos.” — and I get to answer back: “Let’s get you the access.” “Then let’s build the ability.” “Tell me more about the disagreement.” “Try me on the to-dos — they’re all mine to begin with.” It pushes back, argues, drags the idea somewhere I didn’t see coming. Keeps me on my toes — observing, engaging, course-correcting, all to bring it to life. My ideas have oxygen again. I’ve caught myself — this is the embarrassing part — looking forward to what me and my digital homies are going to get into.

There’s a second thing underneath it that took me longer to admit, because it sounds like bragging and it isn’t. For most of my career, the people with the most leverage were the ones who could build the thing. I could imagine, connect, question, push — but someone else always had to execute. That’s changed. Now I start the day with a “what if” and end it with something functional, alive, solving an actual problem. AI didn’t make me technical. It made being non-technical a lot less disqualifying. Which, as the sole operator of this thing, is a slightly absurd sentence to write. No shit it helps that I can build now — there’s nobody else here to do it.

I don’t have a clean ending for this, and I don’t want to force one. I still miss walking into someone’s office with nothing but a hunch. I still miss the laughter and the friction of making something alongside people who care about it as much as you do. None of that has come back.

But I didn’t expect technology to hand back the one piece I thought I’d lost with the job — the feeling that an idea landed somewhere. That when I show up, I’m building with something, instead of with silence.

It’s a strange thing to be grateful for. But I am.

Even if that something isn’t actually someone.