Show HN: Startup sci-fi novel that took me 5 years to write

It started after reading Stephen King's "On Writing" where he likened the art of writing as the unearthing of an archeological site after you stumbled upon a unique bone of a story. His advice was to choose a domain you are deeply intimate with. For me, I've been a struggling startup founder for 15 years—enough material to inspire a novel. A 1,000-word writing exercise turned into a complete 125k-word manuscript over the course of a year. In year 1, I learned the sheer joy of unencumbered creative flow and authentic expression. A similar flow I used to get from coding (and more recently vibe coding). What made it effortless was a mindset that I was writing for the sake of it, not with the intention of publishing. After a year of keeping it close to my chest, I decided to show it to a few close friends. They liked some of it, destroyed some of it. Some ultimately encouraged me to publish it. In year 2, I learned about the chasm between writing for myself and writing for an audience. Nerdy stuff I thought were clever completely flew over my readers' heads. So I studied a dozen textbooks on literature, prose, poetry, voice, grammar, and completely rewrote the manuscript twice over, this time with the audience in mind. There is a lot more finesse to writing than I originally appreciated. In year 3, I felt ready to pitch literary agents. The reason wasn't to make a career out of writing, but to learn from professionals. After 100 personalized pitches and 0 offers of representation, I learned that pitching agents was much harder than pitching VCs. Especially for a niche novel like mine; fellow startup founders was too small of a TAM. In year 4, I engaged with a professional author/editor (Rob Hart, author of The Warehouse), who gave me essays worth of incredible developmental feedback. Lots of nuanced feedback I couldn't get from textbooks. Per his advice, I started back at chapter 1 and refactored the whole manuscript. I distilled it down to the best 88k words. The tinke