Why I Can't Put This Down

I do apartment maintenance for a living. Plumbing. Electrical. Carpentry. Painting.

I am not a tech founder. I do not have an MBA. I do not have the kind of background that makes anyone say — obviously, of course he built this.

Fourteen years ago, at 35, something shifted. I realized I did not know anything I thought I knew about life or the world. So I started over. I started reading. I started paying attention to where things were going.

I had an idea for a smart home system that felt too big for someone like me. I told myself I needed something smaller. Something I could actually build.

And somehow GratisFare came to me.

Which is not smaller. It is one of the largest ideas I have ever encountered. And it fascinated me from the moment it arrived, and it has not stopped.

I have tried to put it down. I have told myself I am not smart enough. That I do not know the right people. That someone like me cannot possibly learn everything this requires. I have walked away from this idea more than once.

It comes back every time.

Every new piece of technology I see points back to the same place. Every headline about surge pricing. Every city that does not work for the people who live in it. Every night someone does the math on whether they can afford the ride home and decides to leave early instead.

It literally brings me to tears sometimes. Not from frustration. From the weight of knowing what this could be, and from fourteen years of carrying it.

I used to think I was the one who could not let go.

I was wrong. It is not me that will not let it go. It will not let me go.

I do not know what that means about me. I know what it means about the idea.

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