I Thought I Was Too Late My Whole Life

The first time I felt too late, I was 26.

I had just figured out that I hated investment research. And my heart said: entertainment. Acting. Singing. I’d been vocally trained for years and never used a minute of it.

So at 26, I joined Miss Malaysia.

And then I immediately did the math.

S.H.E — the Taiwanese girl band — started at sixteen. Entertainment careers start at eighteen, twenty-one. I was a decade behind before I walked in the door.

Too late. First diagnosis. Age 26.

Then I started SushiVid at 30.

You know what exists? Forbes 30 Under 30. I started AT 30. I missed it by definition.

Then there’s 40 Under 40. Didn’t make that one either.

I’m always exactly one step too late.

And it wasn’t just me being dramatic — the market agreed. By the time I’d built my marketplace, marketplaces had matured. The VCs had gotten smarter. The easy exits were over. The founders one generation before me exited in four years. Nobody I know from my generation did.

We got entrepreneurship on hard mode.

For a long season, that was my whole story. I could be ahead of almost everyone in the room — top 15% of AI users, by my guess — and still feel late.

Then it landed. Every “too late” I’d ever felt came from a scoreboard someone else built. A girl band’s debut age. A magazine’s age cut-off. The exit timelines of the founders before me.

“Too late” isn’t a fact about the world. It’s the lens I was issued.

The funny thing is, I was fighting other people’s scoreboards in other places. My car, for one. I drove the one my mother bought me in 2008, long after I could have changed it. Partly to save money. Mostly as a statement: I refuse to live by other people’s material rules.

But a statement is still a reaction. Their rules were still deciding what I drove — just in reverse.

I recently changed it. Not to catch up to anyone, and not to prove anything either way. It was simply time.

That’s what putting the lens down looks like. Quieter than I expected.

And these are the good surprises of 41.

I’m bolder to say I’m scared. Bolder to say I don’t want to. Bolder to say no.

Someone asked me recently: if this channel hit 100,000 subscribers, what would it mean?

It would mean that I can.

But here’s the truer answer. If nobody watched, I’d still make these. Because it’s my journey.

Even if it only ever matters to me. That’s fine.

That’s enough audience for me.

I was wrong about being late. Late was never a fact. It was a lens I was handed, and I’ve put it down.

Turns out I’m right on time.

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This is part of The Founder Edit — a season called The Things I Was Wrong About. One honest essay at a time. Start here.