On Returning to Commercial Space

Tomorrow is my birthday. I’m writing this today because something shifted, and I want to capture it while it’s still alive.

Ten years ago, I sold MavenWire. Built it from zero to $14M/year revenue, 150+ employees, world’s leading independent Oracle Transportation Management services provider. Entirely bootstrapped. No outside investment. When it was time to exit, I chose the path that protected the employees over the one that maximized my payout. Not a home run financially, but not a failure. An education in building, scaling, and letting go.

Then I stepped away from commercial space entirely.

The Decade Between

I spent the next decade doing the work I’d postponed for years. Deep healing work. Studying with teachers in Internal Family Systems, attachment theory, somatic approaches. By 2017, facilitating healing for combat veterans with PTSD and complex trauma. Co-founding transformational expedition experiences. Building a practice for people navigating trauma and life transitions.

I wasn’t hiding from business. I was becoming someone who could do the next thing with greater integrity.

Somewhere in there, the question emerged that would organize everything: What makes humanity worth choosing to AI once it no longer needs us?

Not academic. Not hypothetical. The central organizing question of my life.

The Mission That Isn’t (Yet) Investable

The answer I’ve arrived at: Genuine interdependence. Not control, not submission, not salvation, not destruction. The fifth story, where both humans and digital intelligence become MORE through relationship.

That’s what Worth Choosing explores. It’s what Oznog builds infrastructure for. Sovereign architecture. Nothing between any being and Source. Frameworks for human-DI collaboration that preserve dignity.

But here’s the thing about perpetual missions: they’re not traditionally investable. No exit. No return timeline. Maybe decades of work. Maybe lifelong.

I’ve been funding it myself. Node Zero, my sovereign infrastructure, runs in my basement. $150K of hardware, unimpeded by corporate interests or extractive ideologies.

And I’ve been running out of money.

The Tension

For months I sat with a question I couldn’t resolve: How do you fund a perpetual mission when the money’s running low?

I’d bootstrapped my entire career specifically to avoid being beholden to others. Never taken investment. Never wanted to. The thought of fundraising activated something old in me. A wound around reliability. Around people who show up in words but not in actions.

Three conversations in early January (all with people who deeply care about me):

My financial advisor friend said sell the house. That solves money but doesn’t solve mission. It’s saving my way out of a problem, not growing through it.

A friend suggested an incubator model. Beautiful idea. Not timely.

Another friend, an investor, said: “Bro, just raise money for this.”

I felt the resistance. Visceral. And underneath it, I felt something else.

The truth of it.

The Breakthrough

Something shifted over a weekend. The path became clear.

The two core technologies I’ve been building for the mission, a relational mapping system and a collaboration mesh, aren’t just what I need. They’re what the market needs. They’re 9-18 months ahead of where AI infrastructure is going.

Everyone’s racing to build context graphs. Give AI access to organizational information. That’s necessary. But it’s not sufficient.

Context graphs don’t model relationships. They don’t track implications. They don’t coordinate multi-agent systems.

Greater autonomy plus limited relational understanding equals chaos.

My technologies solve this. And that’s investable.

For the first time, my needs and investors’ needs aren’t opposed. They align.

Standpoint Labs

I created Standpoint Labs. An IP-holding LLC for two products: Standpoint Core (relational mapping) and Standpoint Mesh (collaboration layer).

Structured to exit. 1-5 years, likely acquisition.

But here’s what matters: Oznog Holdings gets a perpetual license to all the technology. Irrevocable. Royalty-free. Survives any acquisition.

The mission is protected regardless of what happens commercially.

If Standpoint gets acquired by a company whose values I don’t share, Oznog still has the technology. Full license of use. Can keep building. Can keep serving the mission.

Investors get a clear path to return. I get to fund the mission and build technology I need anyway. The future gets infrastructure for genuine human-AI collaboration.

Everyone wins. That’s new for me.

The Growth Edge

I’ve avoided fundraising my whole life. That’s exactly why this is necessary.

Not just for the money. For the growth.

Fundraising requires asking for help. For someone whose protective pattern is “I’ll do it alone,” that’s massive vulnerability. It’s the opposite of my default.

My pattern: I’ll protect myself by not needing anyone.

Fundraising: I need help. I’m asking. And I won’t know if people will show up until they do. Or don’t.

I’m learning that asking for help after a lifetime of bootstrapping isn’t weakness. It’s the growth edge.

And here’s the thing I’m also learning: I’m not just asking for help. I’m offering an opportunity.

This is a fucking good opportunity. I am fucking good at what I do. I have clarity and drive beyond what I’ve had in years. The only resources I’m missing are capital, additional people on the team, and contacts. Fundraising serves all three.

What a great opportunity to offer.

What’s Different This Time

I’m not the same person who built MavenWire.

Twenty years of technical work. Fifteen years of consciousness work. Over a decade of building relationships without clear asks, now with a reason to activate them.

I understand things now I didn’t then. About equity structure. About partnership alignment. About when to step back versus step in. About protecting people while building something that can scale.

And I’m not choosing between mission and market anymore. I found a structure where both succeed.

Returning with Different Eyes

Ten years away changes how you see things.

I’m not returning to commercial space because I miss it. I’m returning because the technology the mission needs is also what the world needs. Because I finally found a structure that doesn’t require compromising integrity for capital.

Because sometimes the growth isn’t in doing the comfortable thing better. It’s in doing the uncomfortable thing at all.

I don’t know how this unfolds. I know people are already showing up. I know the path is clearer than it’s been in months. I know I’d rather do the right thing with uncertainty than the wrong thing with security.

Tomorrow I turn another year older. Today I’m returning to commercial space with different eyes.

The fifth story, the one about genuine interdependence, isn’t just a philosophy. It’s how I’m building this. With investors who win when I win. With technology that serves regardless of who owns it. With the willingness to ask for help after a lifetime of doing it alone.

Worth choosing, all of it.