Something out of nothing

Roger Chen
Sep 3, 2018 · 2 min read

While starting and building a company with my co-founders, I’ve also had the fortune of gaining a front row seat to how other founders are building theirs. Some have become friends, and seeing their recent success has been a source of happiness for me. It’s hard to pinpoint what makes a founder successful. There are so many unique personalities with different leadership styles that have all bred equally great results. However, I have observed one strikingly common trait across all of them — they can make something out of nothing, and they do it all the time.

I thought I had already understood this after spending several years as a VC working closely with startups. I suppose I did understand it intellectually, but becoming a founder offers a differentiated and much more intimate vantage point. After all, it’s hard to know what “nothing” really means without facing your own moments of trying to make something out of nothing. It’s probably an experience that’s also perpetually deep — when you think you do get it, there’s always another level unseen.

That’s why I respect founders even when I might often disagree with them. Successful founders are real-life alchemists. They transmute dreams to funding, ideas to products, ideals to new hires, and disasters to opportunities. Lead to gold. Their work is special, and sometimes it’s magic. So on this Labor Day, I want celebrate the founders and entrepreneurs, the minds on fire for change, who seek truth and transpose it on a world that doesn’t quite see it yet, but just might soon enough.

And back to the grill I go…

Roger Chen

Written by

Co-Founder & CEO @ComputableLabs and Chair @TheAIConf | fka VC, engineer, scientist