OFF-SCRIPT IN PARIS - MARCH 28TH

Today, I wrote about The Fairy Tale of Entrepreneurship, this Myth of the Entrepreneurial Dream that has been haunting many of us trying to finally make it big. The lessons we learned were never for our own benefits. The hamster wheel was never there to reward us of our hard work.

The Fairy Tale of Entrepreneurship

Friday, March 28th, 2025

Dear Journal,

The first time I encountered the word "startup" was during a Sunday news segment featuring young, white French entrepreneurs in a towering Manhattan skyscraper. That imagery burned itself into my imagination, a glossy snapshot of success that would haunt me for years. They were making business with China and it seemed to be the pinnacle of business success anyone would aspire to.

By the time I was graduating university, another wave of startup propaganda had swept through, intoxicating my peers. Suddenly, everyone around me was a "CEO" or "Executive"—all because of a half-baked augmented reality app concept. I watched from the margins, perpetually lost, feeling fundamentally disconnected from this world of supposed endless opportunity.

In entrepreneurship classes during my final semester, I felt like an outsider. My classmates seemed to breathe the language of venture capital and innovation, while I struggled to decode their confidence. The unspoken truth hung in the air: some were cushioned by generational wealth and connections, while others—like me—were told that "mindset" was the golden ticket. I knew then, as I know now, that the playing field was never level. Something important was kept unspoken.

This narrative of entrepreneurial triumph is deeply American—a marketing machine that rebrands colonization as a tale of human resilience. But beneath the inspirational veneer lies a brutal history of oppression, slavery, and systemic erasure. They'll always parade that exceptional immigrant success story, the anomaly that supposedly proves the system works. But anomalies are just that—exceptions that reveal the underlying injustice. You suddenly become valuable because you are an entrepreneur and not longer just an immigrant, Ou value are based on our ability to create more capital, and not because we are inherently worthy by birth.

My own journey was a relentless cycle of disillusionment. I left the corporate world only to be sold another lie about becoming my own boss. I refused to become another cog selling online courses or manufacturing a performative entrepreneurial persona. The "democratization" of entrepreneurship felt like a cruel joke—inviting everyone to the table but serving only crumbs. We have to suffer for it, we have to prove ourselves to be worthy.

Our social fabric has been unraveling, thread by thread. Democracy has devolved into a hollow performance, where politicians serve corporate interests instead of public welfare. The seductive whispers of individual gain have eroded collective solidarity, transforming corruption from an aberration to an accepted norm. Money has seeped through the cracks of our social safety net, dissolving the boundaries of communal care.

Though capitalism was predicted to crumble, its architects have instead perfected a system of perpetual extraction. The global elite continue to engineer a landscape of deliberate scarcity—manufacturing just enough hope to keep the masses complacent, while systematically concentrating wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands. We are not merely witnesses, but unwilling participants in an economic machinery designed to keep us perpetually on the brink: miserable, hungry, and thoroughly exploited.

Capitalism whispers seductive lies: work hard enough, and you too can be a billionaire. But this is a modern fairy tale designed to keep us docile, to maintain the machinery of exploitation. While aspiring entrepreneurs burn themselves out chasing validation, the true power brokers feast. They're selective investors who see themselves reflected in each other, who systematically shut out innovative voices from people of color, women, and marginalized communities.

The rules are arbitrary, the game rigged. The bar for minority entrepreneurs is not just high—it's stratospheric: they must over-perform exponentially, generating revenues that defy logic, simply to be granted the basic dignity of being heard. Let alone consideration. And yet, if you feel perpetually out of place, understand this: you are not the problem. The system is. Everyday, we are proven how sick and twisted our system is, don’t brush it off.

My story is a rebellion against a broken narrative—a defiant stand against the machinery that tries to reduce human worth to productivity and profit. I refuse to perpetuate the lie that success is a solitary journey or that conformity is the path to fulfillment. No more will I whisper the toxic mantra of hustle culture or corporate salvation.

To those drowning in expectations: I see you. Your worth is not measured by job titles, investor valuations, or the size of your LinkedIn network. Your value lives in the quiet moments that truly keep you alive—the passions that spark your spirit, the dreams that dance at the edges of convention.

This is my promise: I will not tell you to sacrifice yourself on the altar of capitalism. Instead, I challenge you to listen to the most radical voice you possess—your own intuition. What sets your soul on fire? What makes you breathe deeper? Those are the questions that matter.

Our collective liberation begins when we refuse to be cogs in a system designed to consume us. Trust the whispers of your heart over the loud demands of a world that profits from your self-doubt. Break the cycle. Resist. Create your own definition of success—one that doesn't require you to diminish yourself to fit someone else's mold.

Go against the grain. Trust your instincts. Your truest rebellion is choosing yourself.

Fatima