My Multihyphenate Bucket List
There is a growing shift happening in how we think about work, identity, and ambition. For decades, the world encouraged us to define ourselves through a single title. You were supposed to choose a lane, get good at that one thing, and stay there for the rest of your career. That model is breaking down. People are finally giving themselves permission to be more than one thing at the same time.
You see this everywhere in culture. Musicians become entrepreneurs. Community organizers become poets and political leaders. Coders become educators and content creators. Creatives build their own platforms. The modern career is no longer a straight line. It is a constellation. A cluster of interests and abilities that overlap, feed each other, and evolve.
For me, this shift has opened up a deep sense of recognition. I never wanted to live inside one box. I enjoy the feeling of being several things at once. Founder. Developer. Writer. Educator. Community builder. Creator. None of those identities cancel the others out. They work together. They make me sharper and more alive. They give me more ways to contribute and more ways to tell my story.
It is from this lens that I have started paying attention to people whose lives naturally defy traditional boundaries. The ones who embody the multihyphenate mindset long before that word became trendy. People who blend their talents in ways that feel honest and expansive. People who create their own containers instead of squeezing themselves into someone else's.
As I began thinking about Messy Founder and the kinds of stories I want to explore, I started building a bucket list of the multihyphenates I would love to interview one day. These are people whose journeys challenge the idea that you need to be one thing, follow one path, or choose one identity. They each reinvented the rules in their own way. They each built lives that cannot be summarised in a single sentence.
Here are the first three names on that list.
Zohran Mamdani
Zohran represents a type of public figure that is increasingly rare. He is a politician who feels like a human being. A former hip-hop musician. An organizer. A community voice. Someone who made art, promotes activism, yet is a single identity that does not feel forced or branded. His work shows that politics can be done with imagination. It can be done through culture. It can be done by people who care deeply about the stories of the communities they represent.
I find his approach refreshing because it shows that public leadership does not have to be narrow. You can be analytical and artistic. You can fight for policy while also speaking through metaphor. You can occupy multiple rooms without losing your grounding.
Tyler, the Creator
Few people embody the multihyphenate spirit as powerfully as Tyler. He built an entire creative world brick by brick. Music, design, fashion, storytelling, branding, product, filmmaking. Each part of his identity fuels the others. You can see the coherence even inside the chaos. It is all coming from the same brain, the same curiosity, the same creative instinct.
What inspires me most is that Tyler never waits for permission. He does not wait for the industry to validate him. He does not worry about fitting his talent into a category that makes other people comfortable. He builds whatever he wants to build and the world adjusts. That is the energy I want in the Messy Founder universe. That is the energy that reminds people that creativity is not a single lane. It is a landscape.
Jack Conte
Jack is the cofounder and CEO of Patreon but his story starts much earlier. He is a musician, filmmaker, experimenter, and maker. His entrepreneurial journey began with the frustration of being an artist in a world where platforms benefited more from creativity than the creators themselves. Patreon did not come from spreadsheets or market research. It came from the lived experience of being a multihyphenate creator who needed a better system.
What I love about Jack’s journey is that it shows how powerful it can be when you build products from the intersection of your identities. He was not just a founder. He was a creative trying to solve a problem he understood personally. The company grew from that truth. It grew from a blend of art, tech, frustration, empathy, and imagination. That is the type of founder story that deserves to be studied.
Why These People Matter to Me
This list is not about fame. It is about philosophy. Each person reflects a way of being that I think represents the future of work. The future of creativity. The future of entrepreneurship. The future of identity.
We are entering an era where the most interesting people will be the ones who combine worlds. The ones who can jump between mediums. The ones who refuse to shrink themselves. The ones who are comfortable being complex. The ones who build from many angles at once.
These three names are only the beginning. As I continue to shape the Messy Founder community and carve out my own creative path, I want to learn from the people who do not limit themselves to one narrative. People who remind us that we are allowed to be more than one thing. People who show that the intersections of our identities can become the source of our greatest work.
Eventually, I hope to sit down with these individuals and ask the questions that rarely get asked. How do you hold multiple identities without losing yourself? How do you combine your talents into something coherent? How do you move through the world without reducing yourself to a single job title? How do you stay grounded when your ambitions stretch in many directions?
For now, this list is a reminder of the kind of journey I want to be on. A journey that feels wide. A journey that leaves room for many versions of myself. A journey that honours the messy, layered, multidimensional nature of modern creativity.
And if I ever get the chance to interview even one of them, that conversation will be a masterclass not just in craft, but in how to live.