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Reclaiming the Part of Me That Wants to Build Big

17 June 2026 · Ben Visser · 4 min read

At a glance - TL;DR

Picking up the solstice review of his December intents, Ben reopens the one he wrote most absolutely: that Askara would grow on subsidies and partnerships and take no venture money. A closer look at how a good investor actually thinks dissolves the parasite caricature, but the refusal underneath it turns out to be partly personal, a disowned and ambitious part of himself he had hidden behind a principle. He reframes the work as reclamation, not renouncing the drive to build big and not chasing it either, but learning to carry it consciously, and he holds the whole reconsideration to the test of whether it is genuine integration or simply a comfortable excuse.

Key takeaways

  • A blanket rule can be a place to hide an unintegrated part of yourself: 'no VC' was partly principle and partly a refusal to relate to money and power, with a disowned ambition buried behind it.
  • You do not grow past the competitive, build-it-bigger drive by banning it; you grow through it by reclaiming it and carrying it consciously, so it serves what the company is for instead of running you as unconscious programming.
  • Reconsidering a principle is itself a candidate silver lining: the honest work is consciously walking the question of whether the change is wisdom or an excuse, and that walking is both the integration and the guard against swinging from refusing capital to chasing it.

Hey there,

In this time before the solstice I'm clearing the desk and look back at the intents I set for myself in December, the way I've learned to do before a turning point. I said I wanted to keep this week for seeing rather than steering. What I keep returning to, though, isn't the conversation on the horizon I wouldn't name. It's one of those December intents, and how absolutely I wrote it. We would grow on subsidies and partnerships. No VC. I want to actually think that one through again with what the last six months have taught me, rather than leave it as a decision I made once and then stopped questioning.

Why I Drew the Line So Hard

The real reason underneath "no VC" was never about dilution or control, though that's how I'd have explained it. It was about the kind of company I want Askara to be. Most companies are built to maximise profit and growth, and venture capital is the engine of that. It feeds the appetite for more, and underneath the appetite is a way of seeing the world that runs on competition and separation. I've taken a lot from Charles Eisenstein here, the idea that we could build around relationship and being instead. The relationships inside the team, with the world around us, with our own inner lives, and the sense that growing as people matters more than growing the numbers. In the old story all of that gets sacrificed for material growth. I didn't want to wire Askara into the engine of the old story, so I wrote "no VC," and it felt like principle.

The Investor I'd Already Decided About

The first thing that line was carrying was a caricature. The investor as parasite, the one who takes as much as he can as early as he can and leaves the founder hollowed out inside his own company. Over these last months I had reason to look at that properly, to understand how a good investor actually thinks rather than how I'd assumed. And it doesn't hold up. A VC worth having needs the founder still motivated through several rounds of raising, because that's the only way the company gets anywhere worth going. Which means grabbing as many shares as possible at the start works against them. They have to leave you enough that you still want to build. There's an alignment in that the parasite story had no room for. So the thing I'd been guarding against was, at least partly, a story I'd told myself.

The Refusal Underneath

But losing the caricature didn't lose the no. Something held underneath it, and when I looked at what, it wasn't all principle. Part of it was simply a refusal. There's a part of me that keeps money and power at a distance and calls the distance a value, because that is a good deal cheaper than learning to relate to them. A flat no costs nothing and sounds like integrity. Some of "no VC" was protecting the company. Some of it was protecting me from having to hold something I would rather refuse than understand.

And the something, when I'm honest, is a part of myself. There's an ambitious part of me that wants to build something big, that wants Askara to be large and to matter at the scale these problems actually live at, and somewhere along the way I'd quietly decided that part wasn't really who I am. It was easier to disown it and make money the villain than to admit I'd exiled a piece of myself, and hidden it somewhere a principle would keep it out of sight.

Through, Not Past

This is the thing I've been slow to really take in, even though I write about it often enough. You don't grow out of a part of yourself by banning it. The drive to compete, to acquire, to build the thing bigger, is not a lower place you leave behind on the way to something more relational. It isn't one or the other, where you grow from the first into the second and drop the first. You grow through it. And growing through it means reclaiming it, taking that ambitious, build-it-big part of me back out of the shadow and learning to carry it consciously, rather than leaving it exiled and pretending the wanting isn't mine. You learn to use it on purpose instead of letting it run you from underneath as unconscious programming. A blanket ban doesn't put that drive in its place. It keeps it in the dark, where it can't be trusted, and where it ends up steering more than I'd care to admit. Held consciously, capital and growth are instruments. They serve what the company is for. The trouble only starts when you let them decide what it's for.

Which is exactly where I have to be careful with myself, the same way I was careful last time about the shadow in the water. A leader who always finds the silver lining is a leader nobody can hold to anything, and this is a silver lining. I've grown, the ban was only my shadow, so loosening it must be wise. That's a very comfortable story, and I don't get to call it wisdom just because it suits me. There's a version of this where softening the no is genuine integration, and a version where it's the old appetite for the exciting thing wearing more grown-up clothes, the pull I know by now to be one of my more reliable weaknesses. The work isn't landing on the nicer answer. It's walking the question consciously, asking honestly which this is, wise or an excuse, and staying in that not-knowing rather than resolving it the way I'd prefer. The walking is the integration. Becoming conscious enough to ask is the whole point. It's what keeps the drive from running me, and it's the only real guard against trading one unconscious pattern for its mirror image. The test of whether I'm holding the appetite rather than being held by it is simple enough. Can I feel the pull toward the exciting thing and choose, deliberately, not to move on it.

So I'm not changing the stance here. I'm taking a sentence I wrote once and then stopped reading, and reading it properly again, holding both the part that was wise and the part that was just me looking away. The conversation on the horizon stays unnamed, and I still won't reach for it. Seeing isn't steering. But it turns inward as easily as out, and this week what it caught was my own hand. I'm holding the mirror up to myself before the retrospectives ask the team to do the same. That still feels like the only honest order to do it in. You walk into the light before you ask anyone else to.

With care, Ben