Cognitive Overload

On 9/27/25, something f*cked up happened.  

I had a stroke deep in my cerebellum - the part of the brain that controls balance, nausea, and dizziness.  For two weeks, every moment felt like the worst hangover of my life - spinning and vomiting - and losing the ability to walk.  

I’m writing today’s post from medical leave and am starting to show some initial signs of recovery.  I don’t want reader sympathy - writing is therapeutic and a sort of catharsis of emotions. I hope to pass along 1-2 positive nuggets from this experience to the GTMBA community.

With the Snap of a Finger

Two days before the stroke, I was thriving in the magic of SF’s talent-dense AI operator community at the VibeScaling x Emergence Capital GTM event Chris co-hosted with George Kunthara.  The next day, I was on-site with a customer where we executed flawlessly on a series of Windsurf enablement workshops.    

Then shit got real - you never think something like this will happen to you. 

As an obsessive Type-A operator, an experience like this shakes you to your core.  We cancelled our honeymoon (scheduled to fly today).   The overnight stays in the trauma unit opened my eyes to some of the darkest moments in life.  Morning crossfit feels like a thing of the past I focus on bedrest. I’ve removed Slack and email from my phone as they have become so habitual that it is impossible to avoid checking.

What I Found: Gratitude

I’ve experienced a wide range of emotions, but one feeling has surprised me the most: gratitude.   An overly emotional 18 yr old version of me would be proud.  

Why am I feeling this way?  I have the best support network I could imagine.  

• Employer support. Taking time off when you work in sales is scary - you have a quota to hit and time literally is money.  The Cognition leadership team leaned into humanity and made accommodations so that I can focus on recovery, without the stress of quota.  The Monday after the stroke, my manager and VP stepped up without batting an eye to cover my customer visits in Seattle that week - reaching out to my wife first to ease her stress before even talking to me about work.  I feel fully supported by my coworkers - my manager, VP, CRO, SDR, Deployed Engineers, fellow AEs and teammates to keep my prospects and customers healthy while I’m on leave.

• Customer support. In sales, we’re trained to be providers - solve customer problems, deliver value, and serve others.  But the best relationships are two-sided.  One of my customers sent me generous UberEats gift cards with a note “we're all thinking of you over here, and hope you're getting lots of rest.”  Others text me regularly to check in on my recovery and send hugs.  It’s moments like these that remind me why I got into sales and how much I value building lifelong relationships with customers.  

• Medical support.  I joined a virtual stroke survivor support group this week.  Nine people.  Different ages, backgrounds, locations, socio-economic brackets.  It was a wake-up call.  I heard horror stories about getting access to the right doctors or having the right insurance to cover medical bills.  It reminded me not to take for granted that I live in SF and work in tech.  Access is everything.  

• Family & community support.  Nothing is more important than your nuclear community - your wife, family, in-laws, and best friends. In times like this, what you have invested into your community over the years comes back to support you in ways you cannot imagine.

A Major Lesson - How I Think About Job Opportunities

I’ve written a few times about picking the right GTM opportunity - TAM, growth rate, ship velocity, marketing DNA, talent density…etc.  

But I missed the most important filter: are these great humans?  Not only should you surround yourself with people you admire for their success and skill, but you should also optimize for people who will do the right thing when things fall apart. 

In future job interviews, I will ask the following question of my potential employer: “Tell me about a time a top performer on your team had a crisis.  What did you do to support that individual during that period?”

Our CRO Graham Moreno and CEO Jeff Wang proved that they are these types of people when Windsurf went through a tumultuous period this summer - they worked around the clock to make sure the team was taken care of.  

What’s Next

The road to recovery will be at least 6 weeks and potentially a year.  Weeks 1 & 2 were solely focused on stabilizing.  As I start to stabilize, there are a few things that I am leaning into.  Meditation is a practice I picked up in 2018.  I was consistent about mediating and journaling for ~7 years, but let both slip when I joined Windsurf.  To re-invigorate this practice, I found drop-in classes as KMC SF as an avenue I am exploring. 

I intend to recover as fast as I can and you better believe I’m going to go back to grinding, closing some mega deals, and investing in those around me.  Because that’s what I do, and that’s what the GTMBA community does.

Once the dizziness starts to dissipate, I’d love your help with recommendations for ideas to upskill on during this recovery period. A few things I’d like to explore over the following weeks include mastering the creation of SORA videos and building agents. What do you recommend?

Much love,

Julian

Note: Opinions and commentary in this article are solely mine and do not represent the views of Windsurf or Cognition in any way.