Stoicism kept me steady. Existentialism made me build. This is how I found meaning in a startup.
Jul 17, 2025
TL;DR;
Moving from Stoic belief in rational order to existentialism’s embrace of meaning through action. While Stoicism offers clarity and control, existentialism offers authorship. Founding Querio became a personal response to the absurd—a way to create meaning without guarantees. Building, not believing, is the answer.
Stoicism and Existensialism
I call myself a Stoic, but not in the dictionary sense of “someone who never shows emotion.” I mean the version I met through the Stoic Philosophers: the habit of examining my own judgments, trimming the fat of worry, and acting on what I can actually influence. Their teachings have been an important part of my life for years. What never rang true was the metaphysics behind them—the claim that a rational, benevolent Logos threads everything together, quietly optimizing the universe for the good of all.
A few weeks ago I dug deeper into that doctrine. The Logos, in Stoic writing, isn’t just a poetic flourish; it’s supposed to be the organizing mind of reality itself. Accept the plan, the argument goes, and you’ll find peace. I simply don’t believe it. I’m not a philosopher, but I know I don’t believe in that kind of logos. I conclude that no cosmic roadmap exists and if it does, it is not benevolent to humans and particularly me.
That thought nudged me toward existentialism. Where Stoicism sees order, existentialism starts with what Albert Camus calls the absurd: the mismatch between our craving for meaning and a universe that stays mute. The response isn’t despair; it’s authorship. Jean-Paul Sartre famously says,
“Man is condemned to be free; once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”
Camus tightens the screw with his image of Sisyphus:
“The struggle itself is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
No providence, no warranty—only choices and the obligation to own them.
That framework felt less comforting than Stoic providence, but far more honest and aligned with what I believe.
A Startup as a Reply to the Silence
Founding a company is the most concrete way I know to turn that blank, indifferent canvas into a story with my fingerprints on it. No one assigned me the problem of “data without context”; I picked it, named it, and rallied people around fixing it. The moment we incorporated Querio, meaning stopped being an abstraction and became a cap-table line item, a Slack channel, a test suite.
Every phase of the company reinforces the existential bargain. The battle with yourself to leap into the unknown and create your own meaning. Early customers who are the first readers deciding if the story resonates. Fund-raising is Sartrean freedom with a term sheet attached. Outages are reminders that responsibility is real, the code crashed because we wrote it. The absurd gap between business plans and what actually happens is the same gap Camus celebrates—the place where effort earns its meaning precisely because the outcome is never guaranteed.
Why It Matters to Me
Querio isn’t the answer to the cosmic “why,” but it’s an answer I can live with. Each hour of work is a small act of demonstration that I have the power to create my own meaning. The product might succeed wildly or fail tomorrow; either way, the meaning lies in the act of building, not in some guaranteed ending.
Stoicism still steadies my hands when the servers hiccup, yet existentialism points those hands at the keyboard in the first place. Together they form a workable credo: stay calm, focus on what you can control and create, for yourself. If you’re looking at the same silent universe and wondering what to do next, consider starting something—anything—large or small. The point isn’t to outrun the absurd; it’s to give it a name badge, invite it to the stand-up, and keep pushing the rock.
If you’ve found your own way to carve purpose out of the noise, I’d love to hear about it.
