There are two reasons that I'm doing this.
1) I need to change the world.
I grew up on the Southside of Chicago in a proud immigrant community. I was surrounded by hard-workers hustling to get by, but we lacked what is normal to many. When you grow up in it, it doesn't bother you. For me, it changed when I attended a prestigious high school in downtown Chicago.
There, for the first time, I felt the differential between my community and my classmates' communities. My family never helped me with my math homework. My classmates had tutors. I took the bus to school or waited for my dad to get off work. They drove in their cars. They had never heard a gunshot from their apartment. I had.
It was minor things at first, but people dug in.
These experiences filled me with a fire to, above all, narrow the differential between our communities. And when my high school science teacher told me, "Engineers solve problems," I decided to be an engineer, because I needed to solve some problems.
Once in college, I didn't know what I would do. But I knew that I wanted to solve world-defining problems, and I had to get better. So, as a freshman, I decided on two rules:
My focus narrowed when I learned about startups, and the world-defining impact they could have. They are the world's largest lever of impact. It narrowed even further when someone got on a whiteboard and defined "disruptive innovation." It felt as if they had written my fate on the whiteboard.
In parallel, I learned about MRI from my coursework. I imagined a world where MRI was accessible. Where you can scan yourself, yearly, for a couple hundred bucks. It filled every bucket that I wanted. A massive challenge, that if accomplished, would change the world.
So before there was a company or grad school, I started studying MRI physics and working, in small perceptually meaningless ways, towards disruption. Now, I am fortunate to not work on this goal alone.
And Adialante will achieve this goal. One way or another.
2) I want to see how far I can take this.
In earnest, I am not only doing this for my community. I am doing this for myself.
After my first semester of college, I remember feeling like a failure. It had not gone the way I expected. I had done poorly. Yet, when I got home for winter break, expecting my family to be disappointed in me, they were ecstatic.
They were ecstatic because in their eyes I had succeeded. I was in college when they hadn't even graduated from middle school themselves. Confused, I did as I do now and sat down to write.
In my writing, I came to a key realization. My family's happiness is not a function of my success. Whether I go through college and graduate as a mediocre student, or whether I push myself to achieve greatness — it did not matter to my family. They would feel the same level of joy.
That choice was up to me. I had to decide how far I would go. And I would do it, not because of someone else, but because I decided to do it.
I've thrown myself at countless challenges since that winter. Along the way, I've heard typical objections from those around me.
I am obsessed with climbing mountains and seeing how far I can take it. At this point, I've gotten so used to it that when someone presents a crazy challenge, I do not feel a second of doubt. I just simply start thinking about how to achieve it. Because life has taught me something time and time again.
Many "impossible" achievements are only perceptually impossible. For most goals, diligent and consistent effort will expand the odds of achieving incredibly unlikely things — until they are achieved. And in the process, you'll be surprised at how far you can go.
I don't know when I'll stop, if ever. My latest challenge comes from the $100B seed group Adialante is in. Sitting in a room at Standard Capital, surrounded by other YC companies striving to be $100B+, I'm left thinking, tinkering, and working towards that goal.
Because I know the truth: it might be highly unlikely, but it is certainly achievable.