Forgive me for saying this, but I think you may be drinking too much of the kool-aid.

If some of your projects are monetizable, couldn't you move forward without VC help?

Perhaps related, why do you need to be worth billions of dollars? I feel your visions for what you want your future self to be are highly unrealistic and you're probably setting yourself up for a lot of disappointment and unhappiness.

Sorry for the bluntness, but I think one could be happy on a lot less.

I was being a bit joking and hyperbolic about the billion dollars, though obviously that wasn’t communicated clearly. I don’t really need a billion dollars.

I don’t think anything I have right now is very monetizable; most of the fun stuff I work on now ends up being formal methods stuff, which is cool but hard to make any money with.

I guess what I was saying is that I think I am ultimately think I am too cowardly to just go for it and make my own company. I don’t think I am capable of purposely avoiding income for N months for a project to pick up.