Finding Creativity
In my previous post, "A Digital Asset Philosophy", I've doubled down on Veridian's marketing strategy. We're revamping and expanding all of our digital assets. Without a creative vision, the work won't have the same quality. Thus, as we create more, I'm forced to be more creative and come back to the basics of what that innovator's spirit means to me.
Bennett Lee
Why Not Use AI?
With ChatGPT out, I'm tempted to write with AI, saving myself countless hours. After playing with those tools, I chose not to. ChatGPT doesn't have the same quality. It is impressive, but it's not going to create art in the same way that a talented human can.
A human-based process toward design is unique yet AI's arrival makes it feel anachronistic. I'm 33 years old now. The decade of experience has been helpful, but also hurtful from a creative standpoint. I felt like my peak creative moments were when I was in college over a decade ago and wanted to bring those experiences into my work today.
Time at UPenn
I fell in love with entrepreneurship when the iPhone released my freshman year at the University of Pennyslvania. Steve Jobs was at his peak then. I remember holding an LG envy that opened like a clamshell with a clicky, physical keyboard. I couldn't imagine leaving it for anything else, but the iPhone was just too damn good. I eventually made the switch to all Apple products permanently.
Steve Jobs brought my attention to the humanities and how they affected technology. I was really shocked by that idea: I always thought it was about a research breakthrough. Steve didn't idolize the technology; he brought it back to people. I studied in class how Apple treated their products with craftsmanship and how much they dedicated the company culture to the creative process and how to build things. It's a different mindset from science and research.
Mechatronics
My senior year, I decided to submatriculate into the graduate program for Robotics. I would start my graduate courses my senior year and then stay one more year to finish the rest of my degree requirements. I actually enrolled into the graduate Mechanical Engineering program with a specialization in Robotics, but a mistake in processing enrolled me into the pure Robotics Master's Degree program, which was one of the top programs in the country. It ended up working out, so I just stuck with it.
I decided to take MEAM510: Mechatronics, the class everyone feared to take, but one where you came out with a legitimate skillset. That class was imcomparable to any class I've ever taken. That one course took ~40 hrs a week for even the most competent human being. I was up at 4am in the morning with my 4th Red Bull and a WaWa sub monkey punching code most nights. Building and integrating across mechanical, electrical, and software systems took an insane amount of work.
I don't have the original footage, but the class still has the same projects today
I remember having to build an autonomous robot using OpenCV, Python, and some microcontrollers. I knew nothing about all three... My mechatronics professor, Dr. Fiene, gave a 45 min lecture, left some notes, and left us with a one week deadline to go figure it out. After being booted out of the nest and told to fly, I accomplished the project, with 2-4 hrs of sleep every night to get there. I repeated the same process for every other project for the rest of the semester.
I knew it was possible, but the results only came from doing it, failing, and then investing 10x more effort than I originally intended. Each project was rewarding and traumatizing at the same time. I had done so many of these types of projects that after graduating, I felt like I could literally do anything.
Sometimes, I have to ask myself if what I'm doing is "good enough", but I think about those moments where I know I went that extra mile and created something I could be proud of. Building something new has a different energy. You feel the thrill of the chase, the low points of running into brick walls, and the satisfying closure when it's finally complete. You also have to scrap everything sometimes for the sake of progress.
Back to the Present: Soulless Startups
After going through memory lane, I realized how different startup culture was today and why I frankly hate it. Despite the mantras of new and innovative, I feel the soul of many startups, particularly deep tech ones as a whole, just feel like the same corporate culture that didn't work for large companies. Some even just feel like shitty penny stocks or worse, scams.
On the outside, I see a new company trying to "change the world". On the inside, I see the same corporate culture that built shit products like the Dell PC I ditched for a MacBook Pro. Startups lacks that same spirit of creativity, hacking, and passionately building something. I don't feel the same pride in the craft of every thing it takes to build product, let alone a whole company.
Instead, it feels reduced to flexing on people, brand leaching, and marketing scarcity narratives for organizations unaccountable to ever producing profits. It's strange to watch so many people talk about "thinking different" while all doing the same. Startups have been diluted to being cliches, "innovation" has become a cringey corporate buzzword. I prefer the term, "creative", it captures the idea better and the word hasn't been sucked dry.
Steve Jobs Had it Right
Steve Jobs had it right
At the same time, there are truly exceptional companies out there (Apple, Tesla, SpaceX, and Apple) and the best ones have the same creative spirit and common-sense approach to crafting quality work.
Quality doesn't come from an empty brand or how much funding a startup raised. Quality came from passion, obsession, and caffeine-fueled late nights creating a masterpiece. Without that at the core of a person and an organization, everything else just feels empty. There aren't any standards, tests or any set rules to follow. Sometimes, you just know when something is "insanely great".
I started white boarding on Canva my creative inspirations going past even the startups that inspired me. Until I did this exercise, I didn't realize how much more inspiration I had from artists, streetwear, and film than other tech startups. Counter culture takes new forms, but never goes away. There's so much great opportunity to break the status quo right now. I'm excited more than ever.
I'll be doing my best to breathe that life into all of my work going forward: my personal work as well as the great company I'm building. Along the way, I'll be documenting and discussing this process.