Entrepreneur of Impact 2026 - Day 2, Round 3: What Drives Us To Impact and Standings
- dougkatz8
- 7 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Sometimes Impact Starts When You Realize Time Isn't Guaranteed
This picture came up in my feed recently.
It's from about ten years ago. I was in a hospital bed, about to undergo open-heart surgery. I have a bicuspid aortic valve and needed to have an aneurysm repaired. It's a procedure that happens more often than people think, and from a clinical standpoint it's routine.
But when you're the one on the table, there's nothing routine about it.
There's a moment where you understand, very clearly, that things could go a different way. That you might not get up from that table. And even if the odds are in your favor, it changes how you think about what comes next.
I got through it. Three months later, I went back to work.
And almost immediately, something felt off.
Not because of the job itself, but because of what it represented. I had just come through something that forces you to take a hard look at time — and I found myself back in an environment where I wasn't creating anything meaningful. I wasn't helping anyone in a way that mattered. I was sustaining something that already existed, collecting a paycheck, going through the motions.
That disconnect didn't sit well.
So I left.
No plan. No next step lined up. Just the realization that if time is as limited as it felt in that hospital room, I wasn't going to spend it that way.
What followed wasn't clean or linear. I tried a few different things. Some worked, most didn't. There was a period of wandering — figuring out what actually made sense and what didn't. It wasn't a sudden moment of clarity; it was more like slowly eliminating what wasn't it.
Eventually, that process led me to NULU.
At first, it wasn't about building a company or creating a product for other people. It was about solving a problem I was dealing with personally. But what grew out of that was something bigger — and more importantly, something that aligned with that earlier realization about time.
If you're going to spend it, spend it on something that has impact.
Not in a vague or abstract sense, but in a way where you can point to it and say: this made something better for someone else. This helped someone do something they couldn't do before, or do it more easily, or with less friction.
That's what drives what we're building now.
It's not just about the product. It's about what the product allows people to do — independence, participation, and making sure people don't quietly step away from things that matter to them because the tools they have don't work the way they should.
That mindset traces directly back to that moment in the hospital.
Not in a dramatic way, but in a practical one. When you realize time isn't guaranteed, you start paying attention to how you're using it. And once you see that clearly, it's hard to go back to not seeing it.
On the competition side, we're currently sitting in 2nd place. The top 10 out of 15 move forward, so we're in a strong position — but that only holds with your support.
If you've been voting, thank you. If you haven't, it takes a few seconds and it does make a difference.
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