Make Room For Andy 4.4

Somebody gave me this idea recently: take your age, put a decimal point between the digits, and that's your software version. Your birthday isn't just another year — it's a release.

Today I turn 44, so I'm rolling out Andy 4.4.

And if I'm being honest about the release notes, the biggest update isn't a new feature. It's a new firewall.

I started writing this on a Sunday morning. Eloise is in her rocker, having just worked through her first bottle of the day in record time. She's making the little sounds she makes when she's content. She's almost seven months old. She doesn't know what the world is yet. She doesn't know what it does to daughters. But I do.

I've sadly been following the Epstein files like every other parent in America, and I keep feeling something I've never felt before in my life. Not sadness. Not shock. Rage. The kind that doesn't burn hot and fast, the kind that settles into your bones and rewires how you see everything. Someone else's daughter. Dozens of someone else's daughters. And the systems that were supposed to protect them didn't just fail; they looked the other way.

I held Eloise a little tighter that night. And something in me changed that isn't changing back.

In the movies, the protagonist moves through the world mostly unbothered until the antagonist realizes one thing: how to reach his family.

I'm not James Bond or Jason Bourne. But I am in my story. I am the protagonist. And for the first 43 years of my life, I moved through the world like someone who had very little to lose. That's not a sob story — it's the opposite. It was a privilege. Optionality was my operating system. If there was a hunch that something might work out, I'd hop on a plane to Tokyo for it. If a door cracked open somewhere interesting, I'd walk through it. The cost of being wrong was low. The cost of missing out felt high.

At every company I've ever built, I was the founder who didn't have kids. That was my role. Need someone on a plane to close the deal? Send Andy. Need someone in speak at the Sydney Opera House this Thursday? Andy doesn't have a bedtime to miss. Andy doesn't have a recital to attend.

I averaged 147 days on the road for over twelve years. Some years topping 200. That's not a typo. Almost half my life, for over a decade, was spent in airports, hotels, and other people's conference rooms.

And I was good at it. I loved it. It was who I was.

The Andy 3.0 releases had nothing to defend.

Andy 4.4 has everything to defend.

This year, Maddie and I built a life I didn't know if I would ever find. Not just the new company, though the company is part of it, and I'm proud of what we're building, but it's not the thing. The thing is the three of us. The mornings. The bottles. The way Eloise looks at me when I get home from the office is like I'm the most important person in the world, because besides her Mom, right now, I am. The way Maddie holds everything together with a grace that makes me want to be better at everything I do.

And that changes the math on everything.

Because here's what no one tells you about having something to lose: every minute away from it has to earn its place.

Not "might earn its place." Not "could theoretically, one day, turn into something that earns its place." Has to. Directly. With a clear through line to something that matters.

The old Andy, 3.0 through even 4.2, he'd take meetings because they were interesting. He'd say yes to advisory roles because the people were smart and deserved a shot. He'd fly across the country because the energy was good. He operated on vibes and optionality and the beautiful, reckless faith that if you just kept moving, good things would happen.

And good things did happen. I'm not ungrateful.

But 4.4 doesn't operate on vibes.

4.4 operates on through lines. If there's not a clear plan to bring home the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, you are very unlikely to see me get on that plane. And that's meant stepping back from organizations I believe in, spending less time with people I genuinely love, and turning down conversations and causes that any previous version of Andy would have jumped into with both feet. Not because they don't matter. Because the house matters more.

I lost my mom this past October.

There's no lesson to extract from that that doesn't feel cheap. She lived a beautiful life. It far too soon, but was her time. I miss her. I'll always miss her.

But if loss teaches you anything, it's that you can't protect against everything and that makes it even more important to stop volunteering for unnecessary risk. Not financial risk. Not career risk. I'll take those all day. I mean the risk of spending your finite, irreplaceable time on things that don't connect to anything real.

My mom didn't get more time. Eloise will grow up without knowing her grandmother. That fact sits in my chest every single day, and it makes me vicious about how I spend the hours I have.

So what is Andy 4.4?

4.4 is not conservative. Let me be clear about that. I'm not retreating. I'm not playing it safe. I'm raising a seed round. I'm hiring an incredible team. I'm building a company that I believe will change how 100 million American families buy groceries.

The aggression hasn't decreased.

The filter got sharper.

4.4 is the version that figured out you can play offense and protect the house at the same time. That you don't have to choose between ambition and presence. But you do have to choose between everything and the things that actually matter.

4.4 is the version that stopped playing for upside alone and started protecting downside. Because when you have something worth protecting, the game isn't just about winning anymore. It's about not losing what you already have while you fight for what's next.

4.4 is the version that looked at his daughter on a Sunday morning and understood, for the first time, what all those movie protagonists were actually fighting for.

It was never about saving the world.

It was about making sure the world couldn't touch their home.

Happy birthday to me. Let's see what 4.4 can do.