Stop Trying to Build a Unicorn. Start Cockroachmaxxing.

🍕 I’m JA Westenberg. I write essays about technology, philosophy, productivity, and what it means to be human. If you like ideas that take their time, you’re in the right place.While you’re here, a few things I’ve built: Kerouac, a writing app | Post Through It, a solo microblogging tool | Distributism.ai, my MCP platform | Laterware, all the AI news you need | Studio Self, a thought leadership agency for founders x VCs.You can buy my book Permissionless here.We have the goals of going indie all wrong.We keep glorifying the massive exit, the overnight success, and the hyper-growth as the only acceptable outcomes. If you don’t hit those milestones, if you don’t “make it” by the defined standard of Pop Entrepreneurship (the word according to yCombinator and Tech Twitter), you don’t count as a founder.If you don’t have a book in Barnes & Noble and a Netflix-licensed show, you don’t count as a writer.In fact, you barely count as a failure unless you manage to squeeze out a viral LinkedIn…