Soft

When I first wrote our company values, I left some things out.

I wrote:

1. Never wait.
2. This work is sacred.
3. Build like it’s yours.
4. Stay human.

I wrote what sounded sharp. High-agency. Urgent. I wrote the ones I thought would win us credibility, attract A+ talent, and tell investors we were serious.

But "human" was still a cold word. A placeholder. The kind of humanity you can reference in a pitch without making anyone uncomfortable. I didn’t write all the value that actually mattered to me. The one I was afraid to put on the page.

I didn’t write compassion. grace. kindness. care.

They felt too soft. Too common. Too close to parts of me I’ve spent years trying not to need.

But really, they just reminded me of my mom. I remember her insistence on 乖 (guai), a concept that doesn’t have a perfect translation in English. It’s the kind of deep filial piety that carries love through actions, unspoken and enduring.

I lost my mother tongue too. Slowly, clumsily, after moving to the U.S. at eleven. I stopped speaking Chinese at home. I stopped dreaming in it. I stopped feeling safe in the language that once held me.

I lost my motherland in pieces. In the jokes I didn’t get. In the classrooms I couldn’t speak up in. In the shame of not knowing how to explain myself.

And when you lose that much that early, you start to believe that softness is unsafe. That waiting will get you left behind. That tenderness is for people who don’t have to translate who they are just to survive.

So I stopped waiting. I stopped softening. I built. I won. I performed safety by being sharper than anyone in the room.

But some part of me still misses the words I forgot. Still aches for the land I couldn’t stay in. Still wants to belong somewhere without explaining why.

I thought: if I moved fast enough, built hard enough, outperformed early enough, maybe I wouldn’t have to feel what I’d buried.

But that avoidance has a cost. You build fast, but hollow. You attract talent, but not loyalty. You lead, but you don’t land.

I’ve realized that the founder archetype we glorify: fast, confident, emotionless isn’t strength. It’s fear in armor.

Real strength is slower. Less performative. Not indifferent, but attuned.

Real strength can sit in a room and feel something before deciding. It doesn’t need to be the smartest person. It needs to be the clearest one.

I used to think leading with softness would mean losing. Now I think the opposite.

You can build fast with aggression. You build enduring things with tenderness.

You build things people want to stay inside of. You build a culture that doesn’t collapse when you're not in the room. You build something your team trusts, because they trust you.

If that makes me “soft,” if that makes me a “pussy,” then fine.

That word used to scare me. Because I thought softness meant weakness. Now I know it means I stayed human, even when it would've been easier to harden.

I'm not interested in building the kind of company that wins by killing what's tender. I want to build something we can stand inside of.

If you're building too, especially if you've lost your language, your softness, your origin story in the name of speed, I hope this gives you permission to remember: You don't have to abandon your humanity to be taken seriously.

Call me a pussy. But don’t ever say I’m not here to fucking win.