smithsonian

  ane sehat bro The Aftermath of the Competition I sat in the backstage, leaning against the cold wall, my legs stretched out in front of me. The noise from the audience still echoed in my ears, but it felt distant now, like a fading dream. My mind was blank, my body numb. The result of the startup competition was out, and it wasn’t what I had hoped for. My idea —  ONE Cloud Storage , a decentralized internet app — had captivated the audience. I had more votes than anyone else, even Ryoya Saionji, the golden boy of the tech world. He was a former judge of this event, a childhood friend of Hyouka Natsume, and now my competitor. But the judges’ scoring had turned the tide. Two of them, initially impressed by my innovation, suddenly began picking apart my pitch. “You don’t even have a product yet,” one of them said, his voice dripping with condescension. “How can we trust something that’s just an idea?” I wanted to argue, to explain that the whole point of this competition was to secu...