Hey All — long time no see.

Since we last spoke, I’ve transitioned out of my role at Doodles, moved to Columbus, Ohio, and started a new company. A lot of change, to say the least. With that change, this newsletter needed a little dusting off and a refresh.

Instead of covering big-picture ideas across tech and entertainment, I’m narrowing the focus to my journey as an entrepreneur.

Welcome to the first edition of my Founder’s Journal.

Each week, I’ll share the real lessons from building something new in 2025 — the wins, the missteps, and the surprises they never put in the highlight reels.

This week marked Days 1 through 7. I expected product breakthroughs and creative flow. What I got instead was:

• Building a belief system before a brand

• Paying the “bureaucracy tax” no one warns you about

• Getting crystal clear on my unfair advantage

It’s already been more eye-opening than I expected. Here’s what I learned.

Lesson One: Build Like You Are Creating a Religion

No book has shifted my perspective more than Sapiens by Yuval Harari. One of its central ideas is that humans thrive because of their ability to create enduring myths. Governments, currencies, sports teams, and religions. All are shared fictions we coordinate around.

Company building is no different. The best create myths through consistent action until more and more people believe in their inevitability.

A week ago our myth did not exist. Now it exists in the eyes of our team, our investors, and a handful of trusted partners. Every document we write, meeting we hold, and conversation we have makes it stronger.

The myth is internal first. It is the story your team believes in and contributes to. When it moves from internal to external, it becomes a brand. That transition should be intentional, and it should happen when you are ready to defend it.

Our myth lives at the intersection of AI and entertainment. More on that soon.

Lesson Two: The Bureaucracy Tax on Innovation

There is a tax you pay before you ever make a dollar in revenue. It is not financial. It is paid in time, focus, and momentum.

For me this week, that tax looked like hours on hold with agencies, chasing paperwork across outdated systems, and keeping my phone on loud in case the right department called back to verify a form. The work is repetitive and often unclear, but it is unavoidable.

When you are racing to get something into the world, this tax feels even heavier. The only real choice is to pay it as fast as possible, clear the backlog, and protect your time for the work that moves the mission forward.

That said, I am shocked there is not a "Stripe for company formation". An agency that takes your entity documents, passport, and a retainer, then handles everything. Deferred billing, done in a week, no founder phone calls required. That is a company worth building, and if someone is already doing it well, I want to invest.

Lesson Three: Own Your Unfair Advantage

One of my co-founders described my role as "back office and front office."

Back office: business operations, finance, HR.

Front office: fundraising, investor relations, partnerships.

My job is to get the capital and systems in place for our team to build, and then make sure what they build reaches the right people. That means distribution, network leverage, finding frameworks that cut months into weeks, and cultivating an expert counsel I can tap instantly for any problem.

A great product needs two things: a great idea and flawless distribution. My role is to get us to the idea faster, make it better, and ensure it reaches the people who matter.

This is where being in both tech and entertainment pays dividends. The best opportunities exist at the intersection of industries, not within them. We are building something that could only exist now, in 2025, with AI tooling that was science fiction two years ago.

That's week one. Three lessons that will shape how we think about everything going forward.

If any of this resonates, I'd love to hear from you. Always interested in connecting with other builders working at the edges.

Best,

Austin