The Other Side is a deeply personal novel that traces one founder’s path through the archetypal pattern of transformation—but told with the non-linear truth of how we actually experience change.
About This Story
This is not a typical startup memoir. It’s a story about transformation itself—the quiet death of who you were and the painful birth of who you’re becoming. Through David’s journey from corporate employee to founder, we explore the timeless structure Joseph Campbell called the hero’s journey, but lived in the concrete reality of dwindling bank accounts, failed prototypes, and 3 AM doubts.
The Journey
The novel opens at the darkest moment—David at 3 AM, nearly broke, hovering over a job application—then spirals backward through memories to show how he arrived there. We follow him from a high school library in 2011, hearing Steve Jobs’s Stanford speech for the first time, through years of corporate refusal, to the layoff that forces his hand, through the crushing darkness of the “belly of the whale,” and finally to transformation and return.
Themes
- The Death of Identity: What it feels like when roles fall away and you become no one before becoming someone new
- Education as Prison vs. Liberation: Escaping the Darwinian system to help others find freedom
- Mentorship Across Time: How the dead guide the living through story, how the baton passes across generations
- The Loneliness of Transformation: The deepest parts of change can’t be shared, only experienced
- Success Redefined: Not wealth or validation, but making others’ lives better
Why This Story
In our world that worships easy success and viral growth, this story offers something different: the truth about transformation. The belly of the whale is real. The darkness is crushing. The old self dies hard.
But you emerge. Transformed. With a boon to offer the world.
This is David’s story. This is everyone’s story. The same pattern in different lives.
“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” - Joseph Campbell
