Dropping out to start a company has become a mimetic trap. It’s become the default advice in AI, and like any default, you should be suspicious of it.
I feel the pressure, too. I am constantly told I should be a founder. With leaders like Sam Altman saying this is the best time in history to do it, you feel intellectually inadequate if you don’t.
On paper, the logic holds. Technology is moving faster than ever. The market isn’t saturated. And it is hard to argue that four years of tuition for an increasingly inefficient curriculum beats teaching yourself with today’s tools.
But the question isn’t about market timing. It’s whether you actually want the lifestyle that comes with it. When you commit to a startup, you’re committing to a way of life for the next 3–5 years. In many ways, I’m already living it, and I love it. But I’m still not sure I should start a company. Why?
Because the idea of being “contrarian” has become its own form of consensus.
Once I entered the world of startups and venture capital, I became obsessed with the idea of being “contrarian and right.” Peter Thiel was a big influence. And once you read Thiel, you inevitably run into René Girard and mimetic theory. I began to notice that in some circles, “being contrarian” and “not caring what other people think” became a new kind of political correctness. I even started calling myself a contrarian.
Being an independent thinker still matters. It’s the only way to do great work or build a life that’s truly your own. You have to know whether you believe something because it’s true, or because everyone around you believes it.
But in the current AI gold rush, the consensus is that you should be a contrarian. The most mimetic thing you can do is announce that you’re not driven by mimesis. You see it at events: founders performing contrarianism. They dress and talk in deliberately eccentric ways, hoping to seem a little manic, because they think that’s the archetype VCs look for in great founders.
Wanting to be seen as a contrarian is the opposite of being one. It’s a signal that you care deeply what other people think. It’s a costume. It is darkly comic: after the media labeled Elon Musk as neurodivergent, founders started mimicking the persona, too.
We’re social animals. You can’t simply extinguish the desire for recognition. It’s as fundamental as the drive for food or sex. I went through a phase of trying to prove I was a contrarian. It got me some attention, but it also pushed me into a kind of self-imposed isolation. I felt a need to disagree with people almost by default. The result wasn’t a feeling of accomplishment. It was a deep loneliness.
What I learned is that desire is like any other force. You can’t suppress it with pure rationality, but you also can’t let it run your life. Both are recipes for misery. You have to learn to steer it.
I used to think that my old life—the one that followed consensus—was simply wrong. Then I rebelled, swinging to the opposite extreme. Now, after seeing the trap of performed nonconformity, I’m trying to find a balance.
Perhaps the truly contrarian move, right now, is to ignore the pressure to drop out and build a startup. Perhaps it’s to quietly choose the life that fits you, not the costume of the moment.