A tale of two founders, and the choice that defines our future

The False Promise of Success

Sarah closed her laptop with a satisfied click. After three years of grinding, her fintech startup had just been acquired for $120 million. At 29, she was suddenly worth more money than she could spend in several lifetimes. The congratulatory messages poured in, the tech press hailed her as the next big thing, and VCs lined up to court her for their firms.

"What's next?" her advisor asked during their celebratory dinner. "You could tackle climate change, or work on extending human lifespan..."

Sarah smiled, already sketching out her next pitch deck. "I'm thinking AI agents for financial advisors. Huge market, proven demand, and every VC wants to fund AI right now."

The same week, just a few miles away in Palo Alto, Marcus found himself in a starkly different mindset. The startup he worked at just had an IPO and his equity is now worth millions, but instead of planning how to maximize his windfall, he was staring at battery chemistry equations, talking animatedly about silicon anodes and the possibility of revolutionizing energy storage entirely.

"We could build a vertical AI agent," his co-founder suggested. "For supply chain optimization or something. Easy money, proven market, VCs are throwing cash at anything with AI in the name."

Marcus paused mid-equation. "Or we could solve the battery problem that's holding back the entire clean energy transition."

These two conversations - playing out in offices across Silicon Valley every day - represent the fundamental choice facing our most capable builders. Two founders. Two paths. One choice that would echo through history.

The Talent Trap

Sarah's story is all too familiar in Silicon Valley today. Within six months of her exit, she had launched her next startup: an AI agent for financial advisors that automated client onboarding and portfolio management. The market research was solid, the TAM was massive, and every VC pitch deck template had a section for "AI workflow automation." She raised $30 million in Series A funding before she'd even trained her first model.

The irony was delicious: having disrupted traditional finance, Sarah was now building yet another AI wrapper around existing financial workflows. She was competing for the same enterprise customers as dozens of other "AI-powered" fintech startups, each promising slightly better automation or marginally faster processing. She was making money—lots of it—but she was no longer making anything that mattered.

This is the trap that has ensnared Silicon Valley's brightest minds. We've created a system where success breeds more success, but not more significance. Where the reward for solving one important problem is the comfortable path of solving incrementally smaller ones.

Why Capability Creates Moral Obligation

Here's the uncomfortable truth that keeps exceptional builders awake at night: with great capability comes great responsibility.

When you've proven you can build, scale, and hire, you've essentially earned a superpower. You have access to capital that 99% of entrepreneurs can only dream of. You have a network that can open doors, attract talent, and validate ideas with a single email. You have the operational knowledge to navigate complex technical challenges that would sink lesser players.

And with that superpower comes a choice that is fundamentally moral in nature.

Every day that Sarah spends optimizing AI workflows for financial advisors, she moves the needle on operational efficiency……maybe. Every day that Marcus spends perfecting battery chemistry, he moves humanity closer to solving the energy storage problem that could accelerate the clean energy transition by decades.

The opportunity cost isn't just financial—it's civilizational.

The Retreat to Comfort

Joseph Campbell wrote about the Hero's Journey: the call to adventure, the refusal of the call, the crossing of the threshold into the unknown. In Silicon Valley, we've created a culture where heroes complete their first quest — whether that's building a successful company, achieving a senior role at a prestigious firm, or graduating top of their Ivy League class, and then... refuse the call to adventure again.

Instead, they retreat to the "ordinary world" of incremental innovation—building the 15th AI agent for sales or the 23rd AI customer support bot—positions that feel important but lack the transformative power of actually building the future.

The real heroes are the ones who hear the call to a second, harder adventure and answer it anyway.

Consider the billionaire space cowboys: Musk, Bezos, and Branson. After achieving extraordinary success in their first acts, they could have retired to philanthropy galas and investment committees. Instead, they chose quests that seemed impossible: making life multi-planetary, revolutionizing space commerce, and democratizing space travel.

These weren't incremental improvements to existing markets. These were bets on entirely new realities.

The Power Law of Responsibility

When only you and a handful of others have the resources and skills to tackle humanity's biggest challenges, choosing to optimize your portfolio or build another incremental SaaS isn't just a business decision—it's an ethical one.

The world has enough task management tools. It doesn't have enough solutions for aging, climate change, or artificial general intelligence. It doesn't have enough founders willing to spend a decade in the wilderness pursuing problems that matter.

The Quests Worth Pursuing

So what does a good quest look like in 2025? It's probably something that makes most VCs nervous and most entrepreneurs run away:

• Extending human lifespan: Not another wellness apps, but fundamental research into cellular aging

• Climate solutions: Not another carbon offset marketplace, but direct air capture at scale or geoengineering

• Robotics: Not another warehouse automation tool, but general intelligence robots that work alongside humans

• Sustainable energy breakthroughs: Not another solar panel company, but revolutionary battery chemistry or fusion energy

• Industrial transformation: Not another supply chain app, but automated construction or molecular manufacturing

These quests share common characteristics: they require massive upfront investment, have uncertain timelines, face regulatory hurdles, and promise to fundamentally change how humans live. They're exactly the kind of challenges that only exceptional builders—whether proven founders or extraordinarily talented operators—can realistically tackle.

Why History Will Judge Us

Back to our tale of two founders. Sarah is doing well—her AI agent platform went public last year, she's featured on enterprise software conference panels, and her net worth continues to compound. She's living a perfectly fine life, automating workflows for financial advisors.

Marcus spent twelve years being told he was chasing an impossible dream. Industry experts publicly dismissed silicon anodes as "a dead end" - silicon swells 400% when it stores lithium, causing batteries to crack and fail after just a few charge cycles. Academic papers declared the swelling problem "fundamentally unsolvable at commercial scale."

Then, in early 2024, it happened. Not gradually, but all at once - like a decade of accumulated insights suddenly clicking into place. His team had solved the unsolvable: silicon anodes that didn't crack, batteries that charged in minutes instead of hours, energy density that made electric cars finally competitive with gasoline — a quest that could free humanity from fossil fuel dependence.

The phone started ringing. Mercedes-Benz. Panasonic. BMW. Contracts worth hundreds of millions. The technology that battery scientists had dismissed as impossible was suddenly one of the most valuable breakthroughs in energy storage in a generation.

Marcus isn't fictional. His real name is Gene Berdichevsky, Tesla employee #7 and founder of Sila Nanotechnologies. After helping build Tesla's early battery systems and watching the company begin its rise, he could have stayed to ride the wave of Tesla's eventual massive success. Instead, in 2011, he left to co-found a company dedicated to solving what many considered an impossible challenge: making silicon-based batteries work at scale. His breakthrough silicon anode technology now powers Mercedes-Benz electric vehicles and Panasonic's next-generation batteries, representing a transformational leap that could accelerate the clean energy transition by decades.

History will remember Berdichevsky and his team. Sarah's AI workflow optimization will be forgotten before the decade ends.

The Call You Can't Ignore

If you're reading this as an exceptional builder, you're facing Campbell's classic moment: the call to adventure. You can retreat to the comfortable world of incremental innovation and proven markets, or you can cross the threshold into the unknown territory of hard problems that matter.

The world doesn't need another fintech startup. It doesn't need another productivity app or social media platform.

It needs heroes willing to embark on quests worthy of their capabilities.

The question isn't whether you're capable of solving hard problems—your track record proves you are. The question is whether you're brave enough to try.

Twelve years from now, which founder will you be remembered as—the one who automated workflows, or the one who freed humanity from its greatest constraint?

The choice is yours. But remember: in a world facing existential challenges, refusing the call to adventure isn't just a personal decision—it's a moral one. The future is waiting for heroes willing to build it.