Once a Builder, Always a Builder
- Mayrose Munar
- Feb 22
- 4 min read
Updated: Mar 1
London Bridge is falling down,
Falling down,
Falling down.
London Bridge is falling down,
My fair lady.
The London Bridge has been in constant disrepair throughout history, falling, being redesigned, reinforced, and rebuilt. According to history, it was reconstructed multiple times between 1666 and 1972, surviving fire, war, commercial expansion, and the evolution of the modern world. It adapted to larger ships, heavier traffic, new materials, and new expectations. It was sold, relocated, outshone, yet still remembered. The constant iteration, the purpose, the people crossing over it, all taken into account over time to become what it needed to be. That rhythm, fall, rebuild, fall again, is entrepreneurship.
It has been nine years since I left the corporate world.
When I look back at my years in Silicon Valley, it feels like the building and rebuilding of that bridge. Each phase brought a modern design, adding here, removing there. Fortifying. Fine-tuning. Letting go of what didn’t work. As the world changed, so did I. Each shift became essential to the goals and intentions I was meant to pursue.
In 2017, the many years I spent working in the trenches came to a hard stop. The momentum, the teams, the ecosystem I had helped build, gone. For someone who thrives on contributing to the village, it was terrifying. Startup life is symbiotic. Individuals and teams move as one, forging pieces that come together for something larger than themselves. But growth changes things. Funding changes things. Structure changes things. We used to say, “More money, more problems.” When decision-making scales and capital enter, creativity meets governance. A natural acceptance follows, or friction does. Builders and structures do not always move at the same rhythm.
After the fall came silence. A friend handed me a copy of When Things Fall Apart and said simply, “Read this.”
But my builder story started long before that silence.
I entered the startup world knowing I didn’t have the credentials or the pedigree. But I was hungry, willing to learn and work hard. Back then, “cash is king.” We worked for stock options and salaries that barely covered rent. We were nobodies trying to become somebodies. Someone opened a door and said, “You’re going to be rich someday.” With nothing to lose, we walked through it.
Two years later, an IPO. Two years after that, the dot-com crash.
The fallout separated us into the lucky, the unlucky, and the entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurs lost everything and started again, rebuilding smarter and stronger. The crash almost broke us. Ramen dinners. Counting losses. Letting wounds scar over. Then Google’s 2004 public offering reignited the fire. The downtrodden entrepreneur rose again, smarter, wiser, thicker-skinned.
Pema Chödrön writes, “Life is like that. We don’t know anything. We call it something bad; we call it good. But really, we just don’t know.” The iron was hot, strike. And we did. Until life and work collided again.
At Uber, I entered another high-growth ecosystem. What a ride, literally. I am proud of the teams I built, the leaders I mentored, and the people I supported. But I rediscovered something: even when you’ve succeeded, you still know nothing. Entrepreneurship does not eliminate uncertainty. It amplifies it.
Fear is not the exception in high-growth environments; it is the constant companion. The work is not eliminating fear. The work is seeing it clearly. High stress. High stakes. High failure rates. We feel frustration, anger, and doubt. When unmanaged, those emotions immobilize us. I have watched ideas stall because someone whispered, “That won’t work.” I have watched momentum collapse under external pressure until seams tore open and vulnerabilities surfaced.
Hardship is where the real work happens. Fear can pressurize the mind like a shaken champagne bottle, one flip of the cork from eruption. Without release, pressure festers internally. Quick reactions. Small gains. Misalignment. Decisions that drift from original intention. We do what we can just to get by.
But builders do not stay there.
Rather than merely survive, we recalibrate. For me, that recalibration required movement and rest. Power yoga. Long hikes. Sleep. Ocean swims. Space. Pressure releases. Perspective returns. Focus sharpens. Decisions land more easily. Back in the game.
There was a moment when I pushed too hard. Exhaustion narrowed my vision. I forgot what I was building. I forgot why. I forgot who I was, the entrepreneur, the builder. Letting go felt like quitting. It was not. It was rebuilding.
Zero to Leaders emerged from that threshold moment, not as an escape from entrepreneurship, but as its refinement. Not to bail out. To evolve.
Over the decades, I had amassed lessons from founders, executives, coaches, mentors, and communities. I had lived the cycle, rise, fall, rebuild. I had felt the silence between structures, as they collapsed and new ones formed.
In Hawaiian, we say IMUA, move forward. It is not a reckless motion. It is strength in motion. Clarity in motion. Reality over truth.
Chödrön reminds us to keep exploring. Don’t bail out. Failure informs. Iteration refines. Nothing is what we thought.
That state of nothingness, terrifying at first, became fertile ground. It led here.
Zero to Leaders exists for entrepreneurs at every stage, those starting, returning, scaling, or navigating identity, culture, and doubt. It is for builders at the threshold, between what was and what will be.
Because once you are a builder, you are always a builder. And when things fall apart, you rebuild smarter and stronger.
