A Founder Institute graduate describes how the program forced him to abandon his ego-driven engineer mindset and confront how hard startup building actually is. Week by week mentorship gradually reshaped him into a more humble, disciplined founder who understood the honor of chasing a dream.
I grew so much in the program because when I entered Founder Institute, I was like the classic Silicon Valley thinks he's a hotshot engineer, right? I was so naive. And a lot of people know how engineers can be like really lazy, right? That we think we're so creative that we just create one cool thing and that should carry us for a week. You know, that might work as an employee somewhere, But I felt like when I entered Founder Institute, I immediately like had the wind taken out of me because I realized like, oh crap, you know, this is going to be so hard. The thing that I appreciated though was Founder Institute was willing to accept me as I was in that moment and help me build myself into who I needed to become. Week by week. It was like you get this basic honor and respect for just having a dream and be— being willing to step up to the plate. That was huge. There's an incredible honor in that. And so piece by piece, we built the new Torrey, and I'm really proud to be here.
