Founder Doubt: Is Building Websites Really Worth a Life?

Lately I’ve been asking myself a question that many founders probably recognize but rarely say out loud:

Is this problem really important enough?

I’ve spent years working on digital platforms, DXPs, open infrastructure, and now AI layers on top of that. And sometimes I look at it and wonder:

Does the world really need another platform for websites?

 After all, many organizations are perfectly happy using tools like WordPress, Wix or Squarespace.

 For millions of companies that’s enough. They can launch a site in a few hours and move on with their lives.

 So why build anything more complex?

 And deeper than that: why dedicate a significant part of a life to this problem?

The founder’s quiet doubt

 I suspect many founders eventually hit this point.

 At the beginning there is excitement. You see a gap in the market, a technical challenge, an opportunity to build something better.

 Then years pass.

 You build teams. Products. Customers. Ecosystems.

 And at some point a quieter question appears:

 Does this actually matter?

 Not in a business sense (revenue, growth, market share) but in a more fundamental sense.

Is this meaningful work?

The “website” misunderstanding

Part of the confusion comes from how the industry talks about itself.

If what we are building are simply websites, then the doubt is justified.

The world does not need more complex website platforms.

Small organizations are well served by tools like WordPress, Wix or Squarespace. And that’s a good thing. Simplicity is progress.

But the systems large organizations run today are not really websites anymore.

They are digital infrastructure.

Think about:

- government citizen portals  

- hospital patient platforms  

- aviation data ecosystems  

- financial service platforms  

- membership infrastructures  

- public information systems  

These are not “sites”. They are mission-critical digital systems that serve millions of people.

And those systems raise very different questions.

Who controls the data?

How do we integrate dozens of systems safely?

How do we introduce AI without losing transparency?

How do organizations avoid becoming dependent on one vendor?

The question of freedom

This is where my thinking has evolved over the years.

The real problem is not building better websites.

The real problem is freedom and control in digital infrastructure.

Many modern platforms operate on a model of dependency.

Software runs only on a vendor’s cloud.  

Data becomes difficult to extract.  

Switching providers becomes expensive or impossible.

Customers stay because they cannot leave.

I’ve increasingly come to believe that the opposite principle should guide digital infrastructure:

And this is where Drupal comes in because open source guarantees this freedom and customers should stay because they are free to leave which can be applied to the whole DXP stack.

If a vendor disappears tomorrow, the platform should still run.

The code should still be accessible.  

The data should still belong to the organization.  

The infrastructure should still be portable.

That idea (freedom to leave) is the foundation of open systems.

Technology and meaning

But even if the problem is real, the deeper question remains:

Is working on digital infrastructure meaningful enough to dedicate a life to it?

For me this question is not purely intellectual. It comes from spending time in meditation and studying the teachings of the Buddha.

When you sit quietly for long enough, you begin to see how much of the world is driven by endless striving: more growth, more scale, more ambition.

From that perspective, building software can suddenly feel very small.

And maybe that’s healthy.

Because it forces you to ask a more honest question:

What kind of technology actually helps the world?

A different way to look at it

Perhaps the goal should not be to build bigger platforms or dominate markets.

Perhaps the goal is simpler:

Build systems that increase freedom rather than dependency.

Technology that:

- keeps organizations in control of their data  

- remains transparent rather than opaque  

- allows people to move and adapt  

- reduces long-term dependency  

In that sense, the work becomes less about software and more about digital autonomy. 

And that feels like a more meaningful direction.

The founder’s dilemma

Still, I suspect the doubt will never completely disappear.

Founders often live in two worlds:

One part of life is building companies, products and ecosystems.

Another part is searching for something deeper (wisdom, meaning, freedom). Sometimes they don’t.

Because it prevents us from believing that our industry is more important than it really is.

And it reminds us that technology should ultimately serve something larger than itself.

A simple principle

If there is one principle I would like to see more often in software, it is this:

The systems we build should outlive the companies that build them.

When that happens, technology becomes infrastructure rather than control.

And perhaps that is one small way in which building digital systems can still be meaningful.

Even if they happen to run on the web.