I Started My Company To Prove Someone Wrong
Why did I start SushiVid?
Honestly? Because everything looked easy.
My first startup job — employee number four — was easy. Great life. My second was employee nineteen at a rocketship: brutal. I lost hair. I quit in six months. But I walked out of there with one thought about the founders: if they can do it, so can I.
I went to study coding, and I remember saying — this is not rocket science.
Then, while I was helping another startup raise money, an investor looked at me and said: why don’t you start your own company? I’ll fund it.
I didn’t even have an idea. I thought he was kidding. He kept asking.
So I quit my good life in Singapore, and we built the problem from scratch.
Easy to get a job. Easy to learn to code. Easy to get money. I would have been stupid not to do it — that’s genuinely what I thought.
The idea, when it came, came from my own failure. I used to be an aspiring actor, and I was the geek of the acting scene. Rate cards. Presentation slides. Name cards. I pitched myself for every role like it was a board meeting. I was hungry — and I still failed, because I had no connections and no avenue to show people who I was.
So that’s what I built. SushiVid was for the hungry ones. The YouTubers with no stage.
And then I learned something that changed everything: most creators don’t want to pitch. They want the job handed to them. I had built a platform for people like me, and there were fewer of me than I thought.
But if I’m being fully honest, the timing had another reason.
Right before SushiVid, I came out of a relationship that left me believing I was worth very little. Someone I loved had a way of making all my A’s, all the studying, all the hard work feel like they counted for nothing.
Something in me eventually snapped — quietly. I decided I was done waiting to be chosen. I wanted to build something that spoke for me.
So SushiVid was born from two people. An investor who believed in me before I even had an idea. And someone who didn’t believe in me at all.
Ten years later, here’s what I know about spite. Spite is rocket fuel. It will absolutely get you off the ground. But it can’t steer.
The anger ran out years ago, somewhere around year five.
Finding the better reason to keep flying — that part is still work in progress.
This is part of The Founder Edit — a season called The Things I Was Wrong About. One honest essay at a time. Start here.