This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sid Pardeshi, 32, the co-founder and CTO of a generative AI software platform. He is from India and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The following has been edited for length and clarity. I thought I'd stay at Nvidia forever. The pay, learning opportunities, and benefits made it a delight to work there. I had no reason to leave. But Nvidia's CEO, Jensen Huang , inspired me, and I realized I wanted to be a founder, too. In 2022, I made the