Growing up, I read obsessively.
Magic Tree House.
Harry Potter.
The 39 Clues.
Percy Jackson.
If there was a fictional world to escape into, I was already there. In fact, I read almost exclusively fiction - stories about imagined people, imagined places, imagined stakes that somehow felt more real than everyday life.
Webster defines fiction as:
- Literature that describes imaginary events and people.
- Something that is invented or untrue.
And yet, fiction has a funny way of revealing truths we don’t yet have language for.
It’s often said that creativity diminishes as we age. I’ve started to wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that we stop consuming fiction. Somewhere along the way, we trade dragons and quests for spreadsheets and resumes. We replace wonder with practicality. We stop practicing imagination.
Recently, I read my first fiction/fantasy book in years. And it hit me immediately: every great story is the same framework, just written with a different script.
The Hero’s Journey.
Joseph Campbell outlined it decades ago, but once you see it, you can’t unsee it:
- Ordinary World - The hero's normal life.
- Call to Adventure - A disruption, a challenge, a pull toward something more.
- Refusal of the Call - Doubt. Hesitation. Fear.
- Meeting the Mentor - Guidance appears.
- Crossing the Threshold - Entering the unknown.
- Tests, Allies, Enemies - The real work begins.
- Approach - Preparing for the biggest challenge yet.
- Ordeal - The central crisis. The moment of truth.
- Reward - Knowledge, growth, or survival.
- The Road Back - The journey continues, changed.
- Resurrection - One final test.
- Return with the Elixir - Bringing something valuable back to the world.
And that’s when it clicked.
Being a founder is a hero’s journey.
The Call
Deep down, I’ve always felt like I was meant for something other than the beaten path.
In college, I thought that path looked like consulting. Big 3. Big 4. Prestigious. Safe. Well-defined. A clear ladder to climb. It made sense on paper.
But the call came anyway.
Startups pulled me in - quietly at first, then all at once. A world where coloring outside the lines isn’t just allowed, it’s expected. Where ambiguity is the default state. Where everyone around you seems to possess some strange, almost magical talent that would never survive inside a Fortune 500 org chart.
Builders. Designers. Operators. Engineers who bend reality with code. Founders who turn nothing into something through sheer belief and stubbornness.
Once I stepped into the world of 0 → 1, there was no going back.
The Threshold
The hardest part of the hero’s journey isn’t the battle. It’s crossing the threshold.
It’s the moment when you realize that going back would be easier - but forward is inevitable.
Startups don’t come with a map. There’s no syllabus. No guaranteed outcome. You trade certainty for autonomy. Stability for possibility. You willingly walk into a story where failure is not only possible, but statistically likely.
And yet, that’s where the real growth happens.
Where I Am Now
Candidly, I don’t know which stage of the hero’s journey I’m in right now.
Some days it feels like Tests, Allies, Enemies - learning who to trust, what to ignore, and where my own limits are. Other days feel closer to the Approach, where the stakes are rising and the problems are getting sharper. Occasionally, it feels like the Ordeal is already here.
What I do know is this: once you answer the call, the journey doesn’t let you quit cleanly.
You can pause. You can doubt. You can get knocked down. But you don’t go back to the ordinary world unchanged.
Why Fiction Still Matters
Maybe fiction isn’t “untrue” at all.
Maybe it’s rehearsal.
A way to practice courage. To normalize uncertainty. To remind ourselves that the people we admire most didn't start as heroes - they started as ordinary people who said yes to something uncomfortable.
Founders aren’t dragonslayers or wizards. But the pattern is the same. We leave the familiar. We stumble through the unknown. We gather allies. We fail publicly. We learn painfully. And if we’re lucky, we return with something valuable - knowledge, tools, or a company that makes the world a little better.
I don’t know how this story ends yet.
But I do know I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be in it.