Christmas Day, for me, is a time of deep gratitude. God so loved me that He sent His only Son to die so that I might have eternal life. Now that I have children of my own, my heart aches at the very thought of making the sacrifice God made. Yet He knew that, in the fullness of time, the sacrifice was worth it to bring us into His family.

Over the past year, I’ve spent a great deal of time reflecting on my career decisions. Can I confidently say that the sacrifices I’ve made were worth it in the long run?

I’ve spent the majority of my career in startups and was fortunate to help start several companies with the support of world-class venture capitalists. Building a business from scratch is hard. Along the way, the best investors did everything they could to support my ambitions and challenge me to think bigger. At the time, I felt satisfied with the pitch decks and company memos I produced. Looking back now, I’m beginning to realize just how small my thinking really was.

God and Money

Much of my current perspective has been shaped by the book God and Money by John Cortines and Greogry Baumer. So much that I didn't even try to come up with a different title. The book lays out seven core principles.

Everything we own belongs to God
Our wealth and possessions should be used for God's purposes
Wealth is like a dynamite, with great potential for good and harm
Worldly wealth is fleeting; heavenly treasure is eternal

I’ve listed only four of the seven principles, not because the others are less important, but because these four have challenged me the most.

Everything Belongs to Him

Being entrusted with millions of dollars in your twenties seems glamorous. Seeing your company featured in a TechCrunch funding announcement can feel like powerful external validation that you've come up with something brilliant. For a moment, I felt like I had made something of myself.

But months after the initial buzz, the business wasn't working as expected. Afraid to fail our investors, customers, and ourselves, my response was to double down and work harder until the business turned around. The more hours I put in, the clearer the surface-level problems became. Yet I remained blind to the deeper issue: my assumption that if I tried hard enough, I could control the outcome. My ego quietly convinced me that our success so far was the result of my own competence with little due to God.

Looking back, these were my Jonah years.

Jonah wasn't lazy or indifferent when he refused to go to Nineveh. He was self-absorbed, operating from a narrow understanding of justice. It wasn't until he was swallowed by a big fish that he repented and cried out for rescue. In this moment, God, so rich in mercy, saved Jonah and showed him that mercy was God's to give, not Jonah's to control.

I don’t recall a single, dramatic “swallowed by the whale” moment when I finally turned to God for help. But after two years of toil, repeated dead ends, and the onset of a pandemic, I eventually surrendered the belief that I had everything figured out. In His mercy, God intervened, and in a way only He could, provided a path forward through an acquisition. I can't help but wonder, had I trusted God as much as my co-founders from the beginning if the outcome would have been different.

Serving God Over Mammon

I want to be careful not to imply anything resembling the prosperity gospel—the idea that gaining God’s favor results in greater wealth. On the subject of money, Jesus is very clear: we cannot serve both God and Mammon.

I didn’t start my first company because I felt a deep calling to solve a meaningful problem. I started it because React was a new JavaScript library rapidly gaining adoption, and we saw an opportunity to make money. Fresh off the high of worldly validation, I was far from God, effectively worshiping Mammon and chasing short-term gains. God knew my heart. He knew that more money at that stage would have only amplified my greed and ego. It wouldn’t surprise me if His love for me showed up not in the form of fast and easy money, but in withholding it and keeping me on a humbler path.

In time, God’s purpose became clearer. The journey of building that first company wasn’t about financial success, but about learning that work and purpose ultimately belong to Him. To serve Him well, I must align not just my efforts, but my heart and my resources with His will.

Building From An Eternal Mindset

In the book God and Money, Will Pope’s story fundamentally changed my perspective on work and money. Will was a successful businessman from Oaklahoma in the oil and gas industry on a missions trip in Costa Rica where he was struggling to find his purpose. During the trip, God speaks to him clearly:

In that moment, I realized all that experience and learning had been God's providence over my life. I realized in that instant that my mission field is not being a missionary—it is using all the skills God has given me to go back into business. An incredible peace came over me. I realized God had put me in business for a reason. He had created a clear purpose for my life. God has given me great skill and resources, and I have to use them for Him. After this realization, Will returns to his job as the CEO of his company, and gives away signifcant portions of his net profit as a way to honor God.

I find great joy in knowing that God has given me my abilities and the freedom to bring hard work, integrity, and ethics to the workplace, whether at my own company or someone else’s. Living this way is honoring to God, and it frees me from the shackles of short-term thinking and the perverse incentives that often accompany it. In that freedom, I’m able to think much bigger about what is possible.

If I were to start another company, these are the things I would do differently:

Set aside 30% of my equity for God through a tax-efficient structure
Build a company designed for durability and long-term stewardship
Pay employees generously and fairly so they, too, can give generously