I was at a dinner party last year and someone asked me what I do. I said, "Telecom." The guy — venture-backed, Patagonia vest, talked about "disruption" the way some people talk about religion — physically turned his body away from me mid-sentence to introduce himself to someone more interesting.
I wasn't even offended. I've been watching people lose interest in real-time for fifteen years. The moment you say "telecom" in Los Angeles, you become invisible. You could be running a billion-dollar operation and it wouldn't matter. The word kills every conversation it touches.
And I get it. Telecom is not sexy. It's not AI. It's not crypto or Web3 or whatever the next thing VCs are throwing money at this month. Nobody puts "telecom" on a mood board. Nobody's getting a TED Talk for laying fiber. There's no Telecom Twitter full of influencers debating the best way to provision a circuit. It's infrastructure — the most boring, essential, thankless category of work that exists.
I love it. I have always loved it. And I'm going to explain why, even though I know half the people reading this already want to click away.
Nobody Thinks About Infrastructure Until It Breaks.
This is the central truth of the entire industry. Nobody wakes up grateful for telecommunications. Nobody's out here saying, "You know what made my day? The fact that my phone call connected." The only time anyone thinks about telecom is when something goes wrong — when the call drops, when the internet's down, when the signal's weak, when you're paying too much for something that doesn't work the way it should.
That's the job. Making something invisible. Building something that only gets noticed when it fails. Pouring years of work into infrastructure that works best when nobody knows it's there.
If that sounds thankless, it is. I've made peace with it.
But here's the thing about invisible work: everything runs on it. Every video call you take. Every DM you send. Every streaming service, every GPS route, every transaction, every 911 call. All of it moves through infrastructure that someone built, someone maintains, and almost nobody appreciates.
That someone is me. People like me. And we're fine with the anonymity — but don't mistake quiet for unimportant.
Everything runs on invisible work. Every call, every DM, every 911 dial. Don't mistake quiet for unimportant.
The Part Where People Get Confused.
When I say I run a telecom company, people assume one of two things: either I'm a phone salesman, or I'm a tech bro who slapped "telecom" on something that's actually software. Neither is true.
Varayo is infrastructure. We deal with the actual physical and operational backbone that makes connectivity happen. It's not glamorous. There are no launch parties. There's no app. Nobody's demoing our work at a conference with a smoke machine and a DJ.
What there is: problems. Complicated ones. Regulatory ones. Logistical ones. The kind of problems where the answer isn't "move fast and break things" — it's "move carefully and don't break anything because people's businesses and lives depend on this working."
I didn't get into this industry because it was cool. I got into it because it was real. In a world full of people building things that don't actually do anything — another social app, another marketplace, another "platform" for connecting brands with creators — I wanted to build something that mattered. Something physical. Something that would still be there in ten years.
Infrastructure doesn't pivot. It doesn't rebrand. It doesn't shut down because the Series B fell through. It just works. Or it doesn't. And when it doesn't, someone has to fix it.
years in telecom. In that time, I've watched hundreds of "revolutionary" startups come and go. The infrastructure is still here.
The Plumber Metaphor I Use Too Much.
I've watched the tech industry celebrate every shiny object imaginable while treating infrastructure like a utility you don't think about unless the bill goes up. Founders raise hundreds of millions for apps that last eighteen months. People get famous for building things that don't work. The entire industry worships speed and disruption while ignoring the plumbing that makes all of it possible.
And every single one of those startups? Every app, every platform, every "revolutionary" product? They all needed connectivity. They all needed the thing I build. They just never wanted to talk about it.
There's a metaphor I use sometimes — probably too much — about plumbers. Nobody invites the plumber to the dinner party. But when the pipes burst, he's the first call you make. Telecom is the plumbing of the digital world. We're never on the guest list, but nothing works without us.
I'm not bitter about it. I'm really not. But I'm also not going to pretend it doesn't sting a little when someone builds a feature on top of infrastructure my industry provides and gets a magazine profile for it, while the people who made the connection possible are in a warehouse troubleshooting a circuit at 2 AM.
Nobody invites the plumber to the dinner party. But when the pipes burst, he's the first call you make.
Why I Stay.
I stay because the work is honest. There's no ambiguity in telecom. Either the signal reaches the customer or it doesn't. Either the circuit is lit or it's dark. There's no faking it. You can't A/B test your way out of a network that doesn't work. You can't growth-hack a fiber cut.
In an economy built on hype, there's something grounding about an industry that only deals in reality. I find that comforting. I find it clarifying. I know exactly what I'm building, who it serves, and whether it works. Most founders can't say that.
I also stay because someone has to. The infrastructure gap in this country is real and it's growing. There are communities with terrible connectivity. There are businesses paying too much for too little. There are entire regions where the digital economy barely functions because nobody invested in the backbone.
That's not a tech problem. That's a telecom problem. And it's one I actually know how to work on.
The Dinner Party Update.
I still go to dinner parties. I still tell people I'm in telecom. The reaction hasn't changed much — it's still the fastest way to end a conversation in Los Angeles.
But every now and then, someone hears me out. They ask the right question. They realize that the invisible thing they never think about is actually the thing that makes everything else possible. And for a minute, the work feels seen.
Then they ask me if I can fix their Wi-Fi. Every single time.
I can't. That's not what I do. But I understand the impulse. When you finally meet someone who works in the thing you take for granted, you want to cash in. Fair enough. I'd probably do the same thing.
The boring industry will be fine without the credit. It always has been. And I'll be right here — building the thing nobody thinks about, making the invisible stay invisible, and dodging Wi-Fi questions at dinner parties for the rest of my life.
Somebody has to do it. Might as well be me.