Why I Built a Research Studio Instead of a Startup
A manifesto on method, memory, and meaningful work
We are surrounded by noise.
Every field — from tech to academia — is saturated with signals demanding urgency: Build fast. Scale fast. Publish more. Ship sooner.
In such an environment, thinking itself becomes a liability and slowness is suspect.
And yet, nothing of lasting value is ever built in haste.
I did not want to build faster.
I wanted to build better.
So I chose a different path.
Not a startup.
Not a side hustle.
Not a brand.
I built a research studio.
Not out of rebellion, but out of necessity. Because I needed a space where work could be methodical, thoughtful, and slow enough to be true.
Where I Stand
I work as a data engineer, immersed in the discipline of designing resilient systems — pipelines, flows, architectures. This is work rooted in precision. It teaches you to think structurally, to build things that last, to recognize failure before it cascades.
Alongside this, I am a PhD candidate in Greek archaeology, reconstructing ancient networks through inscriptions, sites, and absences. That work is, at its core, an act of disciplined imagination — assembling patterns from fragments, context from partiality, meaning from echo.
To most, these two worlds appear divergent.
But I have come to understand them as expressions of the same impulse:
To find the structure beneath the noise.
To make the invisible systems visible and to understand how meaning travels — across data, across time.
And so I found myself returning to a deeper question:
What does it mean to do great work?
On Great Work
The phrase itself has grown unfashionable.
We talk instead of impact, output, productivity, and disruption.
But “great work” — the kind of work that endures across decades, that shifts how others think, that reorganizes a discipline’s internal grammar — still matters.
In my experience, such work shares three qualities:
- Methodological rigor
Not merely process, but a thoughtful architecture of inquiry — a way of moving from question to insight with integrity and clarity. - Conceptual depth
A resistance to simplification. A willingness to dwell in ambiguity, to return to the problem again and again until something truly new emerges. - Material consequence
Great work leaves a mark. It changes the tools we use, the questions we ask, the ways we see. It’s not just published — it’s built.
This applies equally to a journal article and a codebase.
To a theory of networks and to a system for querying them.
It is not the domain that defines greatness, but the disposition.
Intellectual Lineage
My approach is deeply shaped by a set of thinkers who refused to rush.
They worked slowly, methodically, often obscurely — but they shifted the foundations of knowledge.
- Aby Warburg, whose Mnemosyne Atlas attempted to map the recurrence of images across cultures and centuries — an intellectual cartography of memory itself.
- Fernand Braudel, who challenged historical time by introducing longue durée rhythms — slowing down the clock of scholarship until new patterns emerged.
- Georg Simmel, whose writings on form, conflict, and social geometry still anticipate the language of modern network theory.
- Ivan Illich, who dismantled our assumptions about tools and institutions, asking us to consider not just what we build, but who we become in building it.
- And more recently, systems theorists, network scientists, and digital humanists who continue to ask:
What is the form of knowledge in the age of data?
These influences are not citations. They are companions in method.
They remind us that real work does not shout. It accumulates.
Why a Studio?
I could have built a startup. The market rewards novelty — or the illusion of it.
But I didn’t want to optimize for speed or fundraising decks.
I wanted a space to build epistemological tools.
To test ideas methodologically.
To write, code, design, and question — with no mandate but excellence.
The studio is my laboratory and my library.
It is where I refine my own research framework — slow, systematic, experimental.
It is where engineering and scholarship are not in conflict, but in concert.
It is not an aesthetic choice.
It is a methodological one.
On Knowledge as Craft
Research is often mischaracterized as either passive contemplation or data collection.
I believe it is closer to craft.
It involves discipline, material, and method.
Like the ancient sculptor, we work by removal and refinement.
Like the architect, we must know how our structures behave under pressure.
In this view, knowledge is not merely what we know, but how we came to know it.
The rigor is in the route, not just the result.
The studio is where I keep my tools sharp.
And Yet: This Is Not Solitude
This is not a retreat into thought.
I care deeply about advancing knowledge in the fields I work in — be it archaeological networks or modern engineering infrastructures. I am not interested in contemplation for its own sake. My questions lead to architectures. My thinking leads to tools. My wonder is disciplined.
The studio is not a retreat. It is a launchpad.
Not everything I build will be visible. Some work must remain underground until it is strong enough to surface.
But I am here. Working slowly. Methodically. Rigorously.
And when the work is ready, it will speak.