Published in the San Diego Union-Tribune, February 9, 2026
by Neil Senturia
A story about thinking differently.
I read frequently about actors who have become famous and almost universally, they had that as their goal when they started. There was no hesitation, no confusion, no being happy with community theater.
They knew that they were going to be on Broadway and in the movies. Even more, they tell the story that they have imagined it, they have posters on their childhood bedroom walls, they have thought about walking the red carpet, holding the Grammy, hoisting the Tony, the Academy Award.
They could imagine it. They saw it before it was real.
The same is true for every professional athlete in every sport. The Stanley Cup, the Lombardi Trophy, the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy. They allowed themselves to believe that they could do it.
Now, of course reality is always lurking waiting to break your heart. Very few make it. There are a thousand stories, and what fascinates me is that the ones who do reach the pinnacle had a vision of the possible (even though unlikely), and they chased it relentlessly with passion and dedication.
They could imagine it.
Now for a dose of my own reality. My little AI company goes to talk to a venture capitalist whisperer, someone who knows the dark truths of the Valley, someone who will give us an unvarnished view of that world, and what it requires to be invited into it, even if only to be tossed out the door an hour later.
Just to get a return phone call or a chance to pitch, you need to learn the secret handshake. My whisperer says, “Neil, you need to understand that the VC looks at every investment with the expectation that it will return the Fund.” That is code for when they make a bet, they want to believe that each single investment will produce an outcome a big enough return to return the entire fund. No small ball. Go big or go home. That is how the game is played. “Neil, they are not thinking of a 10X, they are thinking of a unicorn.”
Sure, but I quickly point out that unicorns aren’t real, and more to the point, our little company could never be a unicorn (a company worth a billion dollars). He says, “Why not. If you don’t think you can be a unicorn, they are going to toss you after the second slide.”
The whisperer says, “You need to think bigger. You need to imagine the unimaginable, and more to the point, when you tell the story, you need to actually believe it.”
Then we politely say thank you and hang up. I look at my partner, and I confess that I cannot even conceive of that. I’m a nice kid from the Midwest, did a bunch of deals, real estate, technology, mostly successful, but no private jet. To think about the word “billion” is not in my ken.
My partner, smart with a hard-scrabble background, who scratched his way up the ladder, looks at me and confesses that he had never even considered that possibility. He has worked at a billion-dollar public company. He has helped build big companies, but the idea of building one for himself, from scratch, not in his wildest dreams.
OK, let’s play the game. Why not us?
Because it is hard to do, and there are a hundred impediments to the effort with the likelihood of that outcome actually happening being only slightly above zero. How would you act if that were the goal. What decisions would you make. Maybe every founder needs to consider that the limitation is your imagination.
Let’s be careful here and embrace some reality, because there are few words that can potentially cloud the outcome — arrogance, delusion, stupidity, ego, narcissism, presumption, conceit, actual lack of talent — you get the idea. So the dilemma is fascinating. We have to tell the VC that we can be a unicorn in a way that they don’t see through the fact that we are probably out of our minds and don’t really believe it, but pal, if that’s the song you want to hear, well just tell me where to plug in my amp.
If you tell yourself the lie long enough, maybe it becomes a reality you never imagined.
Rule No. 816: “Pure imagination,” Willy Wonka