I am more hands-on than you might have seen around. Trust me on that.
Your definition of "skin" does not need to be mine. I want to have impact, for those who are not being taken care of. I am tired of investor led companies making the rich richer. I do not belong in that world.
There are impactful people in there and I have gradually started going back to these communities now. I wonder how we can create an system where small/medium businesses are directly aware of the empowerment through software and they want to financially contribute to the development. There are millions of small/medium businesses around the world, they are the backbone of most economies and are more directly involved in the social structure than unicorns. Start the conversations and you will find a way to bring the change you want to see.
We have too much emphasis from multi-million $ invested (and mostly non-sustainable) businesses. The success ratio for ridiculously invested startups can be tiny, and yet the investor will make money on the unicorns that pass the great filter. The others will not be heard of, will suffer. We celebrate the exceptions and ignore what an alternative could be if sustainable/profitable smaller businesses were the norm. A healthier society where we would normalize 8 hours of sleep every day, or spending time with neighbors, for our entire adult lives to start with.
> The average multi-million $ enterprise company creates CRUD apps and sell them like they are saving humanity. It is just sales all the way down.
Perhaps, I suggest working on something else other than CRUD apps? That sounds horrible. Startups can vary from Space industry to biotech, from defense to green tech.
> I am happy, happier than I even have been. I focus on what matters to me - empowering people, open source software, and building a sustainable business. I am never doing the crazy startup life again. Period.
Not all startup lives are like this. I guess we have a different definition of startup life. Startups are empowering people, building open source software and building sustainable businesses. Overall, there is a huge spectrum of startups you can work on - from shitty CRUD apps to Boston Dynamics.