'I sold my company and became a millionaire, and I worked at DOGE before it was officially launched, but I quit and I have no motivation to do anything anymore'

Vinay Hermas , developer of the screen recording app ' Loom ,' published a blog post on his website titled 'I'm Rich, But I Don't Know What to Do with My Life.' In the post, he talks about his extraordinary experiences, such as 'I sold my company and got a lot of money,' 'I climbed a 6,000-meter mountain without any training,' and 'I worked for only four weeks as an employee of the Ministry of Government Efficiency (DOGE) before it was established.'

I am rich and have no idea what to do with my life
https://vinay.sh/i-am-rich-and-have-no-idea-what-to-do-with-my-life/

The PC screen recording app 'loom' developed by Hermas has functions such as 'adding information by handwriting on the screen,' 'inserting webcam footage on the screen in a wipe-like style,' and 'instantly sharing recorded data' in addition to the screen recording function, and has grown into a hit app with 30 million users. In October 2023, Hermas sold loom to Atlassian for $975 million (about 150 billion yen).

Today @loom is joining @Atlassian . We have entered a definitive agreement for Atlassian to acquire Loom for $975m. And we are insanely hyped.

— Vinay Hiremath (@vhmth) October 12, 2023

Although Mr. Hermas had the option of staying on as an executive of the Loom division and receiving a compensation package of $60 million (about 9.5 billion yen), he decided to leave Loom because he disliked the culture of large companies, such as 'a lot of political maneuvering,' 'the speed at which things move,' and 'there are many non-regular colleagues.' And he decided to start a new job related to robotics.

Mr. Hermas had studied robotics and was interested in 'giving limbs to computers.' In order to pique his interest and convince himself that 'robotics is my calling,' he came up with many catchy motives, such as 'the world is facing a serious labor shortage,' 'it is essential to maintain competitiveness against China,' and 'the market for repetitive labor is trillions of dollars.' However, Mr. Hermas was only really interested in 'humanoid robots,' and he realized that he wanted to be 'like Elon Musk.' In a blog post, Mr. Hermas wrote, 'It's incredibly embarrassing (that I wanted to be Elon Musk). Just typing this sentence is painful.'

Hermus gave up on his dream of entering robotics and traveled around the country with his girlfriend for six months. However, their arguments gradually increased and they decided to break up. Shortly after, Hermus planned a mountaineering trip to climb two 6,000-meter peaks in the Himalayas and actually set off on the trip. Hermus accompanied a Sherpa , who acts as a mountaineering guide, but due to a complete lack of training, he suffered from altitude sickness. Despite suffering from difficulty in breathing, Hermus completed the itinerary as planned and realized that 'tackling difficult things' was important to him.

A few months ago, some hard personal life changes came up. So I decided to go to the Himalayas and summit Lobuche Peak (6119m/20k ft) and Ama Dablam (6812m/22k ft) with no mountaineering experience. It seemed like one way to clear my mind. 🏔️ pic.twitter.com/EbX3TvpX0U

— Vinay Hiremath (@vhmth) November 14, 2024

When he returned from a mountain climbing trip and was telling his friends about his memories of the trip, one of his friends joked, 'I wish I could work with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswami at DOGE and help America get out of the recession.' Mr. Hermus took this joke seriously, applied for DOGE's recruitment, passed the recruitment test and became a DOGE employee. According to Mr. Hermus, the DOGE recruitment test was a series of eight telephone interviews, and after being hired, he was immediately added to the Signal group.

As a DOGE employee, Hermas worked on 'various projects that I could never talk about' and spent his days learning 'how completely dysfunctional the U.S. government is.' Hermas was enthusiastic about his work and was considering moving to Washington, but after about four weeks, he realized that 'DOGE's mission is extremely important, but it's not the most important thing that I need to work on with urgency,' and he left DOGE.

After that, Mr. Hermus stayed in Hawaii and began to study physics on his own in the jungle. Although he has set the goal of 'starting a company that manufactures real-world objects' to convince himself, he actually aims to 'accept that learning physics is fun'. Even if the result of studying physics does not result in a great product like loom, he seems to be ready to accept it.