My 22-Year-Old Self Wanted Times Square. He Got It.
By Akhil Suresh NairFounder & CEO, Xena Intelligence · 1,383 words
In September, two things happened five days apart, and I didn't notice the connection until this week.
On September 17, I posted a photo of myself standing in Times Square under the Nasdaq screen, with Xena's logo on it in pink letters, next to Morgan Stanley Inclusive & Sustainable Ventures. On September 22, I posted an apology letter to my 22-year-old self, listing all the things he expected startup life to be.
One of the items on his list was "Flashing my name and photo on Times Square."
I wrote that line as a joke, five days after it had already happened. I'd like to say this was a clever literary device. It was not. I just hadn't connected the two posts, which tells you how much attention a founder has left over at the end of a normal week.
So this entry does what I should have done in September. I went back to the letter and scored the whole list.
What he ordered
For context, here is roughly what 22-year-old Akhil had in mind. Pitch competitions and stage lights. A cool-looking Techstars hoodie. Closing deals before lunch and changing the world by dinner, like a business movie protagonist. Private jets. Looking out at the New York skyline in a suave trench coat and expensive glasses. Raising millions. Hobnobbing with billionaires. And, of course, his name and photo in Times Square.
He was very specific about the outfit and very vague about the business model. In fairness, that is also how a lot of pitch decks are written.
The 22-year-old's list, scored
- Times Square YesHappenedNasdaq screen, September 2026, with Morgan Stanley Inclusive & Sustainable Ventures.
- Techstars hoodie YesHappenedTechstars NYC, 2022. I spent the program waiting to be told it was a mistake.
- Pitch competitions YesHappenedOver $1.65 million won. Entered every one expecting to lose.
- Stage lightsSort ofThey came with paralyzing stage fright, which was not in the brochure.
- Raising millionsSort ofAbout $2 million in pre-seed funding. Plural, technically.
- Private jetsPendingNothing to report.
- BillionairesPendingAlso nothing to report.
- Trench coat and skylinePendingNo photo evidence exists, and I'd like to keep it that way.
The list comes from my "apology letter to my younger self" on LinkedIn, Sep 22, 2026. The scores are mine.
Three clean wins, two partial credits, three items still on back order. For a list written by a 22-year-old, that is a better hit rate than most of my early sales forecasts.
The hoodie
Take the Techstars hoodie. He imagined it as a costume. What it actually came with was a very specific feeling.
When I applied to Techstars, I told myself I was doing it for the feedback. That is founder code for "I don't think I'll get in." I was a solo founder with no network in New York, building an AI company for CPG brands. I got in, for the NYC program in 2022, and then spent the whole program waiting for someone to tap me on the shoulder and say there had been a mistake.
Nobody tapped. I kept checking anyway.
That year Xena went from 2 people to 20, and I was surrounded by people considerably smarter and more skilled than I was. I said that in public at the time, and I still think it was the most useful thing that happened to me that year. The hoodie was a distant second.
Stage lights, with a side of stage fright
The pitch competitions also happened. I've won more than $1.65 million in them. The 22-year-old pictured himself striding onto a stage with great confidence. The version who showed up has paralyzing stage fright, and on a few stages my hands were shaking so hard I could barely hold the clicker.
I also entered every single one of those competitions thinking "let's see what happens." I described that once as ambition wearing a fake mustache so rejection won't recognize it. The mustache has done a lot of work over the years. It deserves equity.
So the stage lights were real. They just came with a stomach ache, mostly heartburn, that nobody mentions in the highlight reel.
The things he forgot to order
The more interesting part of the letter is what he left off the list, because that turned out to be most of the job.
He did not order invoicing. He did not order accounting, accounts receivable, accounts payable, or financial modeling, which I still can't bring myself to write about calmly. He did not know that building a product that has never existed before is the fun part, and that whether it survives depends on sales and distribution, which is a completely different skill.
My dad is a scientist. He spent years on a product he believed in, and it never made it to market. As a kid I thought that was a story about science. I now think it was a story about what happens when great work has no one to carry it forward. He grew up with that story. He still put "private jets" on the list ahead of "distribution."
What he pictured vs. what a week is mostly made of
IllustrativeNot measured. Nobody tracks a founder's week this neatly, least of all the founder. These are rough shares to show the shape of it.
What he got instead was what I described in the letter as running uphill with a very heavy backpack that seems to get heavier. You do get stronger, and you learn the technique to carry it. But nobody hands you a lighter backpack as a reward. They hand you a few more things to put in it, and most of them are spreadsheets.
How a billboard actually happens
Here is the part of the Times Square moment the 22-year-old would have found most disappointing. It didn't feel like a movie scene.
A few years before that photo, I was riding the Delhi Metro to my day job, earbuds in, staring out the window and pretending I had a plan. If you had told me then that I'd one day stand in New York looking up at my company's name, I would have asked what you were on, and then asked if I could have some.
What got me from that train to that sidewalk wasn't one big decision. It was a long string of small, slightly ridiculous ones that somehow compounded.
From the Metro to the billboard
- KochiWhere it startedThe kid who later wrote the list.
- DelhiThe day jobCommuting on the Metro, pretending to have a plan.
- BostonBabson CollegeAn MBA on a full scholarship, and a suitcase.
- Louisville2022Moved my company and my life here for a check I couldn't believe was real.
- New YorkSep 2026Times Square, on the Nasdaq screen. Tourists walked past wondering who that guy was.
Not drawn to scale. Kentucky to New York is shorter than it felt.
Moving to Kentucky. Building when nobody was watching. Cold emailing strangers from Louisville when Xena's logo looked like it had been designed in Microsoft Paint. Asking people to believe in an idea before there was much to show them.
None of those steps would have made it into a movie. They were mostly emails. Some of them were bad emails.
What he couldn't have put on the list
The best things that have happened since I was 22 weren't on his list, mostly because he didn't know enough to want them.
He didn't order a team. In October, I wrote that eighteen people built the work I got to present at Venture Atlanta. Every one of them carried some piece of this company through a season when carrying it made very little sense on paper.
He didn't order a hundred customers, or a client list I'd have framed on my wall five years ago. He didn't order being commissioned as a Kentucky Colonel, or a seat on the board of the Louisville Orchestra. As far as I can tell, he did not know Kentucky had an orchestra. He definitely did not know Kentucky had colonels.
Not on the original list
From my LinkedIn posts of June 9, 2025 (Kentucky Colonel), Oct 19, 2026 (the team) and Oct 23, 2026 (family), and the facts on this site.
And he really didn't order a family. Sana did not sign up to marry a Nasdaq billboard, and she stayed anyway. Our daughter has made me better at prioritizing than any framework ever did. My parents are thousands of miles away and still somehow in every decision I make.
If I could add one line to his list, it would be the people. He spent a whole sentence on the trench coat and the glasses, and not one word on them.
The scorecard, honestly
So, did the 22-year-old get what he ordered? About half of it, delivered late, in a slightly different size, with a lot of paperwork attached.
I am still figuring all this out, but my younger self deserves to know what he's getting into. I think he will pick this path every single time.
I still think that's true. He would pick it again, even after reading about the invoicing. Partly because he was stubborn. Partly because I don't think he'd believe the invoicing part.
I do owe him one more apology. In the letter, I told him the hairline was on him. Looking back at the last few years, I'm no longer sure that's fair. Some of it was Xena. Some of it was financial modeling.
The hard parts are not over. They've just changed shape. I'm still building, still slightly confused, and still calling my mom every day.
If you've ever written your own list like this, I'd like to know what was on it and what actually showed up. I write about the unpolished middle of building Xena in my Founder's Diary newsletter (opens in a new tab) on LinkedIn, and the behind-the-scenes version lives on Instagram at @akhilsuresh (opens in a new tab). If you'd rather talk, my calendar is at meeting.akhilsureshnair.com (opens in a new tab). You can also see what we're building at XENA Intelligence (opens in a new tab). No trench coat required.
With love,
Akhil
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