David Friedberg on the naive optimism that drove him as a young entrepreneur. He wasn't chasing companies or money, but solving big problems and changing the world. Reality tempered that optimism, but the core desire to make impact never left.
You're saying you're a college kid and you had expectations of yourself that grand. Do you remember kind of what you were thinking back then?
I mean, I just feel like when you're young, you have kind of unbounded ambition. I mean, you don't know the realities of, you know, when you build stuff and you face challenges and you face hiccups and everything from team to technology to markets. You're naive in the sense that, like, the whole world can and should be different. And, you know, that blind optimism is where a lot of energy comes from that I think drives great entrepreneurial success stories. My orientation was never about starting a bunch of companies or making a bunch of money. It was much more about kind of impact and solving big problems and having great breakthroughs and seeing those breakthroughs really change the world.
