Renan
Teixeira.

Born into poverty in Brazil. For most of my life I was as much a product of the system as anyone — doing what was expected, following the path laid out for me. Something always felt off, but I couldn't name what it was. That unease had no words until I was well into my thirties. Before I found them, living the life the system scripted for me had gotten me to nearly 700 pounds.

Became a political party president and city director in my twenties. Saw the machine from the inside. What I found made it impossible to stay — not corruption as an exception, but as the design. Resigned. Took away something more useful than any title: I now understood, firsthand, that the system isn't broken. It works exactly as intended.

Without a degree, I became the person attorneys called when a case was genuinely hard. Simply because I could think about law at a level most people — credential or not — can't reach. Everything I know came from practice and from other people who actually think for themselves. Not from a classroom. Classrooms, it turns out, are very good at teaching you to follow rules. Less good at teaching you to question them.

Immigrated at 30. Got burned by people I trusted. Started over — which by then was a familiar position. Enrolled in community college. Perfect GPA. Got accepted to Columbia University.

Attended one semester. Walked away. $88,000 a year for a credential, not an education — status games dressed as scholarship, debt dressed as opportunity. Saw it for what it was. Left.

Drove for Uber and Lyft. Delivered for GrubHub and DoorDash. Worked in restaurants. Eventually started driving trucks. None of these are creative jobs — but they gave me something a traditional job never would: freedom. No boss building a kingdom on your compliance. No performance review measuring how well you stayed in your lane. Just time — hours of it, alone — to think, to read, to sit with questions I didn't have answers to yet. That freedom is largely why I became who I am today. Along the way, I also learned to code on a phone between shifts.

For five years I have been obsessed with one question: why is there so much dysfunction, suffering, and chaos in the world — and what actually fixes it? I think I found the root. Multiple software companies are in development. The bigger project is still forming: a community of people who are done accepting the default.