- Loom cofounder Vinay Hiremath is struggling to determine his next chapter after scrapping plans to work with Elon Musk at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and instead booking a one-way ticket to Hawaii to study physics.
“I know. This is a completely zeroth-world position to be in,” wrote newly rich Loom cofounder Vinay Hiremath in a blog post. The college dropout turned chief technology officer of the video messaging platform that sold to Atlassian for $975 million wrote about his struggles with insecurity, self-doubt, and emotional emptiness following his success.
“I am rich and I have no idea what to do with my life,” Hiremath titled a post on Thursday.
According to Hiremath’s writing, the CTO didn’t want to stay at the company that acquired Loom but found it difficult to walk away from a potential $60 million pay package. He retreated to “the redwoods” to work through his disorientation after helping to scale and build a company. Hiremath decided to leave the work behind “to do something. Anything. To be alive again.”
I am rich and have no idea what to do with my life.
— Vinay Hiremath (@vhmth) January 2, 2025
Where I talk about leaving Loom, giving up $60m, larping as Elon, breaking up with my girlfriend, insecurities, a brief stint at DOGE, and how I'm now in Hawaii self-studying physics.Https://t.co/cMgAsXq3St
In the two-week aftermath of leaving the career path Hiremath had trodden for a decade, he did “what any healthy person does,” and met with dozens of investors and robotics experts. It was an ill fit and left him uninspired, he wrote. “It started to dawn on me that what I actually wanted was to look like Elon, and that is incredibly cringe,” he wrote. “It hurts to even type this out.”
Hiremath, who wrote that he never needed to work again and posted online that he shared much of his wealth with his parents, traveled with a girlfriend for about six months. Unfortunately, it led to the painful end of the relationship, which he described as two years of “unconditional love.”
Hiremath said he needed to “fully face” himself, after realizing that Loom had given him a fully baked sense of identity. However, then when the company dealt with layoffs, it struck a “massive blow” to his ego and he lost his way, Hiremath wrote. After the work and relationship breakup, Hiremath tried to summit the Himalayas—with no experience and no training. He became hypoxic at one point—a condition of insufficient oxygen in the body—and had to repel downward “while tripping out of my mind.” He triumphed in the end, and friends suggested he reach out to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy at DOGE.
Hiremath said he joined the endeavor “two minutes” after the final interviewer spoke with him the day before Thanksgiving. He immediately immersed himself in work for the next four weeks, tackling projects he said he can’t disclose and taking hundreds of calls to recruit a team for DOGE. But it wasn’t for him, he wrote.
“[A]fter 4 intense and intoxicating weeks, I called off my plans to move to [Washington,] D.C. And embark on a journey to save our government with some of the smartest people I’ve ever met,” he wrote. “And I booked a 1-way ticket to Hawaii.”
Now, Hiremath is onto the next thing: learning physics, with his gaze fixed on starting a company that “manufactures real world things.” However, even if it doesn’t reach the soaring heights that Loom did, “so be it,” said Hiremath.
“It’s been too long since I’ve been completely raw and real with myself, so I’m applying a healthy dose of humility to everything I say and do. It’s the only thing that feels authentic.”
He also apologized to his girlfriend, whom he did not name in the post.
“If my ex is reading this. Thank you for everything. I am sorry I couldn’t be what you needed me to be,” he said.
Hiremath did not immediately respond to a request for comment.