Getting into Antler US Residency F25 was one of the best emails I've ever received. Under 3% acceptance rate. Potential $500K in funding. A room full of people who actually get it.
Then I found out I couldn't attend. Texas truancy law.
If you're under 18 in Texas and you miss too many school days, it's not just a note from the principal. It's a legal issue. Fines. Court. The kind of stuff that follows you around. My school wasn't going to work with me on it, and I wasn't going to ask my parents to deal with the legal fallout.
So I didn't go. That was genuinely hard. I'd worked for months to get in, and the thing stopping me wasn't my ability or my idea or my team. It was a law designed to keep kids in classrooms, applied to a kid trying to build a company.
I'm not bitter about it. The acceptance itself was signal enough. It told me the problems I'm working on are real. That the market I see isn't imagined. That the approach is one worth betting on. I just have to wait a little longer to collect on that bet.
Zero to one is a daily practice. Sometimes you just have to do it from your bedroom in Houston instead of a residency in SF.