• Pavel Durov

    I switched to Telegram as my main messenger in 2014 when Facebook acquired WhatsApp. Sitting in a car with my best friends, we frantically downloaded every messaging app we could find, desperate to escape Facebook’s prying eyes. Telegram stood out with a superior app and its unwavering commitment to privacy and freedom of speech.

    For the past decade, I’ve closely followed Pavel Durov, Telegram’s founder. He is a rare breed in tech – a principled maverick who values freedom and privacy above profits and power. Born in the Soviet Union, Durov witnessed firsthand the soul-crushing conformity and censorship of centralized power. This forged his unshakable belief in individual liberty, which he carried as he built VKontakte into the Russian Facebook.

    When the Kremlin demanded Durov to censor political opposition on VK, he chose exile over submitting to surveillance.

    Durov understands that privacy is not a PR talking point, but an inviolable human right and the foundation of all other freedoms.

    Exiled from Russia, Durov started Telegram, built on uncompromising privacy. With his brother – a genius mathematician – he developed an innovative encrypted social messaging platform that even sophisticated state surveillance could not crack.

    Telegram’s robust proprietary encryption has proven secure and resistant to backdoors – unlike WhatsApp and Signal, which operate in countries where Telegram is banned, likely because they secretly plant government-ordered backdoors. Durov insists on controlling Telegram’s encryption to prevent this.

    Pavel Durov doesn’t just talk the talk—he has consistently walked the walk, even when it meant standing up to authoritarian governments and corporate behemoths. Apple and Google constantly threaten to kick Telegram out of their app stores, unless it censors content they dislike. The FBI has tried to bribe Telegram employees to plant backdoors. But Durov never wavers. He understands that compromising on core values is a slippery slope to tyranny.

    What impresses me the most about Durov is his long-term vision. He’s not just building an app – he is fighting for a world where technology empowers rather than enslaves. A world where individuals can communicate and organize freely. A world where truth emerges through unfettered debate, not centralized diktat.

    During the pandemic, Telegram was crucial for accessing uncensored information. It was one of the only platforms that didn’t censor skepticism of lockdowns, masks, and vaccines. For this, Durov should be hailed as a hero of free speech. But instead, he was arrested in France today.

    The cruel irony is inescapable — the man who built the freest space for communication in the 21st century has had his own freedom taken away in the land of “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.” France, a country Durov admired for its history, culture and values, now treats him as a criminal. Meanwhile, he remains unmolested in the UAE where he resides, and in Russia, Iran, and China, whose authoritarianism he fled.

    This is a disturbing sign for privacy and freedom in the EU. First it was Julian Assange, now Pavel Durov. The West is increasingly hostile to those who challenge the power of governments and Big Tech to control our data and decide what we can say.

    As such, I vehemently demand the immediate release of Pavel Durov. If the West wishes to maintain any moral authority on the world stage, it must become a true safe haven for privacy and freedom. The persecution of visionaries like Durov is a giant leap in the wrong direction.

    I call upon the EU to live up to its ideals. The EU should be a bastion of individual rights and data privacy. It should create an environment where innovators like Durov can build the technologies of the future that empower citizens, not control them. But this requires political courage to stand up to entrenched interests and misguided fears. If the EU fails to protect Durov, it fails us all.

    The world needs Pavel Durov and more leaders like him in the fight for a free and open internet. His vision of a secure and private communication platform, uncompromised by authoritarian control or corporate greed, is essential for democracy to flourish in the digital public square.

    As governments grow ever more invasive and tech giants ever more complicit, the future of privacy, free speech, and digital rights hangs in the balance. I stand with Pavel Durov, and so should you.

  • The Sovereign AI Startup

    In the summer of 1995, Netscape went public, igniting the dot-com boom and ushering in the Internet age. That moment marked a fundamental shift in how businesses were built and run. Today, we are on the cusp of an equally transformative moment: the dawn of the AI era.

    Imagine a world where a startup founder wakes up, grabs a coffee, and sits down not with a co-founder or a team of bleary-eyed developers, but with an AI. This AI isn’t just a tool or an assistant; it’s a full-fledged partner in the entrepreneurial journey. It helps generate and validate business ideas, build and manage teams, develop products, and make strategic decisions in real time. All while keeping the company small, agile, and fiercely focused on its mission.

    In this essay, inspired by this Tweet from Paul Graham, we’ll explore how exponential AI – artificial intelligence that is rapidly increasing in power and capability – will fundamentally transform the way startups operate. We’ll challenge the long-held belief that successful companies must inevitably become large. Instead, we’ll examine how AI might enable a new breed of startup: the Sovereign AI Startup.

    These Sovereign AI Startups will stay small by design, leveraging AI to achieve outsized impact with minimal headcount. They’ll operate with unprecedented efficiency and agility, free from the bureaucratic bloat that typically comes with growth. Most importantly, they’ll empower founders to focus on what truly matters: the vision, the strategy, and the relentless pursuit of creating something new and valuable in the world.

    But to understand why this shift is so revolutionary, we first need to grapple with a counterintuitive truth: companies tend to get worse as they get bigger. I call this The Size Theory of Company Decay. By examining why this happens, we’ll see how AI offers a potential cure for this seemingly inevitable decline.

    We’ll then explore how AI will reshape every aspect of the entrepreneurial process, from ideation to execution, from team-building to go-to-market strategies. We’ll look at a real-world example of a company that has achieved remarkable results with a small core team, and imagine how AI could supercharge these approaches.

    Along the way, we’ll consider the broader implications of this shift. How will it change the nature of work and creativity? Will it democratize entrepreneurship, allowing underdogs from anywhere in the world to compete on a global stage? And what new legal and regulatory frameworks will we need to support these AI-native companies?

    But first, let’s take a step back and understand a common misconception: that successful startups must get big, why we believe that, and how AI will change it.

    The Size Theory of Company Decay

    The idea that successful startups must grow into large companies is deeply ingrained in our entrepreneurial culture. We’ve been conditioned to equate success with scale – more employees, more offices, more layers of management. This belief stems from a pre-digital, pre-AI era when growth often did require a proportional increase in human resources. But it’s a model that’s showing its age.

    Consider the traditional growth trajectory: a startup begins with a small, scrappy team. As it gains traction, it hires more people to handle increased demand, expand into new markets, or develop new products. Before long, what started as a lean, agile startup becomes a sprawling organization with hundreds or thousands of employees. Along the way, it often loses the very qualities that made it successful in the first place – speed, flexibility, and a laser focus on solving customer problems. This is what I call company decay.

    At the heart of company decay lies a paradox: the very things that drive a startup’s initial success become the seeds of its eventual decline. It’s as if success itself carries within it the DNA of failure. But why?

    Think of a startup as a finely tuned machine, where every part knows its function and works in perfect harmony with the others. Now imagine that machine growing larger and more complex with each passing day. What happens?

    First, communication breaks down. In a small startup, information flows freely. Everyone knows what everyone else is doing. But as the company grows, the number of potential communication channels explodes exponentially. Suddenly, you need meetings to plan other meetings. Information gets stuck in departmental silos. The machine starts to sputter.

    Then there’s the cultural shift. In the early days, everyone is a true believer, united by a shared mission to change the world. But as you add more people, that sense of purpose gets diluted. New hires are there for a job, not a crusade. The machine loses its soul.

    This cultural erosion bleeds into the company’s vision. Peter Thiel calls it the loss of “definite optimism.” The bold question of “How can we change the world?” gets buried under layers of management and short-term thinking. It morphs into “How can we protect what we have?” The machine forgets why it was built in the first place.

    As if these internal changes weren’t enough, external pressures mount. Public companies face relentless pressure to meet quarterly targets. Long-term investments in innovation are sacrificed on the altar of short-term gains. The fear of a stock price drop drives decisions that are poison to the company’s long-term health.

    But perhaps the most insidious change is in decision-making. In a small startup, decisions are made quickly by people close to the problem. In a large company, decision-making becomes a bureaucratic nightmare. No one wants to make a tough call for fear of repercussions. Responsibility becomes so diffuse that no one feels truly accountable. The machine grinds to a halt.

    All of these factors – and many more – compound each other, creating a vicious cycle of inefficiency and stagnation. It’s as if there’s an invisible force pulling successful companies towards mediocrity, much like how gravity inevitably pulls objects back to earth.

    How bad can it be?

    Firing 12 Floors

    Carl Icahn once told a hilarious story of him acquiring a company called ACF Industries in the early 1980s. Upon taking control, he visited their New York office, which occupied 12 floors of prime real estate. As he tried to understand what each floor did, he lost himself in a miracle of bureaucracy and unclear job functions. Despite spending days going from floor to floor, Icahn couldn’t figure out what these people actually did for the company.

    Frustrated, Icahn decided to visit the company’s manufacturing operation in St. Louis. There, he met with Joe, the head of operations, who gave him a clear picture of how the business actually worked. When Icahn asked Joe how many of the New York office staff he needed to support his operation, Joe responded: “minus 30”.

    Unsure what to do, Icahn paid a couple of consultants $250,000 to find out what these people in New York actually do. Three weeks later, the consultants came back with hundreds of pages and the blunt answer: “we don’t know what they do either.”

    Icahn ended up firing everyone in the New York office – all 12 floors. The company continued to operate without a hitch. Icahn said that he never received a single complaint or inquiry – it was as if those 12 floors of people never existed.

    This story sounds so ridiculous (I highly recommend watching the 8.5 minute video) that it raises a valid question for discussion: Even without AI – how many employees in large companies are actually productive and necessary for the core operations of the business?

    As companies grow, particularly during periods of hyper-growth fueled by large capital infusions, they often accumulate layers of middle management, support staff, and specialized roles that may not directly contribute to the bottom line. The pressure to allocate capital quickly can lead to hasty hiring decisions and the creation of positions that look good on paper but add little real value. It’s easy to justify each hire individually, but harder to step back and question whether the overall organizational structure is truly optimal. 

    I assume that leaders often know that their organizations have become bloated, but they delay taking action due to the psychological toll of firing employees. Firing is extremely difficult, both for those making the decision and for those losing their jobs. This emotional barrier can lead companies to maintain inefficient structures far longer than is economically justified, fooling themselves into believing that all roles are necessary.

    Carl Icahn’s story of firing 12 floors of employees without any noticeable impact on the company’s operations illustrates how inefficient large organizations can become. But it is not limited to industrial corporations.

    At its peak, WeWork had over 12,500 employees, Uber over 32,000 employees – we have to wonder: how many of these people are truly essential to the core business?

    It’s easy to fall into the trap of equating headcount with productivity or success. The job of a founder and executive is not to build empires of employees, but to lead and solve problems efficiently. Sometimes, that means taking a hard look at your organization and asking yourself: do I really need all these 12 floors?

    Elon Musk, like Carl Icahn, not only asked this question as he acquired Twitter (now X) – he acted. When Elon Musk acquired the company in 2022, it had over 7,500 employees. In a move that shocked many, he promptly laid off about 80% of the workforce, leaving the company with roughly 1,500 employees.

    In an interview with WSJ, Elon Musk said that Twitter had “a lot of people doing things that didn’t seem to have a lot of value,” and that “Twitter was in a situation where you’d have a meeting of 10 people and one person with an accelerator and nine with a set of brakes, so you didn’t go very far.”

    He didn’t think that this was unique to Twitter and continued that other big tech companies could cut jobs without impacting productivity.

    Conventional wisdom suggested that such a drastic reduction would cripple the platform’s ability to function, let alone innovate. Yet – just as ACF Industries – X has not only continued to operate but has arguably accelerated its pace of innovation. This suggests that a significant portion of Twitter’s previous workforce may have been redundant or focused on non-essential tasks.

    The Example of Telegram

    The bloat we see in companies like Twitter, Uber, and WeWork isn’t just a problem for established tech giants. More importantly is it a cautionary tale for every startup founder. These companies, once lean and agile, fell into the trap of equating headcount growth with progress. But what if the next generation of startups can avoid this fate entirely?

    Imagine a startup that can scale to serve millions of users without the historical explosion in headcount. This isn’t science fiction. Telegram is already a prime example of how a small core team of 60 team members – of which 30 are engineers – can serve more than 900 monthly users.

    In an interview with Tucker Carlson, Pavel Durov, Telegram’s founder, described in greater detail how he built Telegram by combining a clear vision with ruthless efficiency.

    Pavel Durov has crafted an organizational structure so lean it borders on ascetic. He’s the sole director, equity holder, and product manager, working directly with every engineer and designer. There’s no HR department; instead, Durov recruits through coding contests, identifying top talent through performance rather than resumes. This isn’t just cost-cutting; it’s a fundamental rethinking of how a tech company can operate. Telegram has never run an ad, yet it’s challenging giants like WhatsApp and WeChat.

    Durov hasn’t just built a messaging app; he’s created a blueprint for how startups can scale to enormous impact with minimal headcount. In doing so, he’s not just saving on salaries; he’s eliminating the communication overhead and bureaucratic friction that leads to the decay most companies experience as they grow.

    I believe Telegram isn’t an anomaly – it is a glimpse into the future of what companies can achieve when they reject conventional wisdom about organizational structure and embrace radical efficiency. And by bringing AI into the equation, I believe this is the near future of entrepreneurship.

    Telegram is a great example that companies don’t have to get big after all. Yet, how small is big enough?

    Teams Smaller Than Dunbar’s Number

    Robin Dunbar, a British anthropologist, suggests that the conscious decision to stay small has real advantages. In his first paper, “Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates,” Dunbar proposed that humans can comfortably maintain only about 150 stable relationships. This limit, known as Dunbar’s Number, is becoming fascinatingly relevant to startups, especially as AI begins to enable startups to operate extremely efficiently with fewer than 150 employees.

    Scientifically, Dunbar’s number makes sense. The neocortex, the part of the brain responsible for conscious thought and language, can only process so much social information. Beyond 150 relationships, we struggle to keep track of the complex web of who knows whom and how they relate. In a startup, where relationships and culture are paramount, exceeding this number can lead to breakdowns in communication and cohesion – leading to company decay.

    Psychologically, smaller teams are more conducive to trust and intimacy. With fewer people, it’s easier to understand each person’s strengths, weaknesses, and quirks. This understanding creates psychological safety – the confidence that you can take risks and be vulnerable without fear of embarrassment or retribution. Psychological safety is critical for the kind of innovative, out-of-the-box thinking that startups need to thrive.

    Philosophically, too, there’s an elegance to the idea of a small, tight-knit team taking on Goliath challenges. It’s the story of David and Goliath, the rebel against the empire. Small teams can be more agile, more adaptable, more resilient. They can make decisions quickly without getting bogged down in bureaucracy. You can pivot on a dime when circumstances change.

    Startups that stay below Dunbar’s number indefinitely – can avoid company decay. But how can a small team hope to compete with the resources and scale of a large corporation?

    The Era of Sovereign AI Startups

    The book The Sovereign Individual predicted that the information revolution would empower individuals over institutions. Now, 27 years after it was first published, I believe this trend is accelerating, especially in entrepreneurship. Just as the personal computer and the internet gave rise to The Sovereign Individual, exponential AI will give rise to what we might call The Sovereign AI Startup.

    Today, a single founder armed with nothing more than a laptop can conceive, validate and launch a new business in a matter of days. Add a Starlink Internet connection and they can do it from anywhere in the world. AI will accelerate and simplify this process even further:

    1. With generative AI, you can quickly prototype new products or services and iterate based on real-time customer feedback.
    2. With predictive AI, you can identify untapped market niches and optimize their offerings for maximum impact.
    3. And with autonomous AI agents, you can automate everything from customer support to supply chain management, allowing them to scale their operations with minimal overhead.

    In this AI-first world, a team of five might wield the capabilities of what once required 500. Imagine a customer support ‘department’ that’s a hyper-intelligent AI, learning and improving with each interaction, available 24/7 without a single human on the payroll. Envision data analysis so sophisticated and instantaneous that it feels like precognition, surfacing insights before you even know to look for them. Consider project management AI that doesn’t just track deadlines, but anticipates bottlenecks, suggests optimal resource allocation, and even mediates team conflicts with the wisdom of a seasoned executive.

    AI will become the antidote to corporate decay, taking over many of the routine tasks that often justify additional hiring in growing companies. With AI as a force multiplier, a small team can accomplish big things.  From data analysis and report generation to customer support and project management, AI will perform a significant portion of the work that currently requires human employees. This will allow companies to increase their output and impact without increasing their headcount proportionately. They can target their efforts with laser precision, focusing on the areas where human ingenuity is most needed. You can respond to customer needs and market changes with the speed and personalization that only a small, nimble team can deliver.

    Sovereign AI Startups, unencumbered by legacy systems and bureaucratic inertia, will be able to outmaneuver established players, disrupt industries, and create entirely new markets. They will be able to tap into a global pool of talent and resources and collaborate with other sovereign entities in fluid, ad-hoc networks that transcend geographic and institutional boundaries.

    The Convergence of Exponential Technologies

    It is not just AI as a technology that will change the way startups operate. The convergence of AI with other exponential technologies will revolutionize hardware development, enabling smart teams to achieve what once required armies of engineers and massive factories.

    For example, advanced robotics in fully automated factories will allow sovereign AI startups to access world-class manufacturing on demand, to prototype, iterate, and even manufacture complex devices with minimal human involvement.

    3D printing – for example – is evolving at breakneck speed, is already producing not just plastic prototypes but fully functional electronic components – which in the future will integrate seamlessly with AI-designed circuitry.

    In the future, a Sovereign AI Startup will be able to conceptualize a groundbreaking medical device, have AI optimize its design for both function and manufacturability, simulate its performance across millions of virtual scenarios, and then set autonomous robots to work building and testing physical prototypes. Machine learning algorithms will analyze test results in real-time, suggesting improvements that can be immediately implemented in the next iteration. The entire process – from idea to market-ready hardware product – could happen in weeks rather than years.

    This will lower the barriers to entry for hardware startups, allowing a proliferation of niche products tailored to specific needs that big companies might overlook. We’ll see an explosion of creativity as inventors are freed from the constraints of traditional manufacturing.

    I believe a world in which small teams can rapidly bring complex hardware to market will accelerate the pace of technological progress exponentially. The next world-changing invention might not come from a tech giant or a well-funded lab, but perhaps from a handful of determined individuals in a Sovereign AI Startup.

    The AI-Native Organizational Design

    As AI continues to advance, we can expect to see a rise in Sovereign AI Startups – companies built from the ground up with AI as a core part of their DNA – each hyper-focused on solving a specific problem or serving a niche market. These startups will be characterized by small, agile teams that – like Telegram – stay below Dunbar’s number and leverage AI to achieve outsized impact.

    The shift will bring with it a new paradigm of organizational design. One in which companies leverage AI not just as a tool, but as a key stakeholder and a core system that is intricately woven into every facet of a startup’s existence.

    The founder and visionary will be at the heart of the Sovereign AI Startup, providing the idea, overall direction, and purpose. The founder will work with a human core team, consisting of a small group of highly skilled individuals who focus on strategic, creative, and uniquely human tasks.

    An AI Core System will not just be a set of tools – as we know it today – but a central part of the organization, handling a wide range of operational, analytical, and decision-support functions.

    An important element of The Sovereign AI Startup will be its external network, a fluid ecosystem of on-demand talent, partners, and contributors that the company can tap into as needed.

    A structure like this allows for maximum flexibility and efficiency, enabling the company to stay lean while accessing a broad range of capabilities. It will allow the founder to keep the team size below Dunbar’s number with a human core team, while leveraging AI and a distributed external network to achieve scale. 

    This organizational design challenges the traditional notions of what constitutes a company, blurring the lines between internal and external, human and machine. As a result, AI entrepreneurs can move faster, decide smarter, and tackle challenges of unprecedented scope and complexity – independent of their physical location.

    Post-AI Organizational Collaboration

    With AI becoming an integral and core part of any organization, we will not only have to rethink how startups are organized internally, but also how organizations collaborate with each other.

    Benoit Vandevivere, who commented on Paul Graham’s post, argued that our current models of business organization are relics of a pre-digital, pre-AI era. This makes sense as we are arguably still operating with organizational structures and legal frameworks that were designed for a world of physical offices, face-to-face meetings, and human-only decision making.

    Benoit mentioned the idea of “artificial neural networks interconnecting natural neural networks” – the idea sounds complicated yet is a powerful idea for a future where the boundaries between companies become more fluid, with AI systems facilitating seamless collaboration and information flow across organizational lines.

    In the future, a startup might not just be a discrete entity, but a node in a larger network of interconnected businesses, each specializing in what they do best and relying on AI to coordinate their efforts. The “company” as we know it might evolve into something more akin to a dynamic, AI-mediated coalition of talent and resources, assembling and reassembling as needed to tackle specific challenges or opportunities.

    AI-Native Jurisdictions

    As we reimagine the nature of companies in the AI era, we must also consider the legal and regulatory frameworks that will enable these new organizational structures to thrive. Traditional jurisdictions, with their legacy laws and regulations, may struggle to accommodate the fluid, borderless nature of AI-native startups. This is where innovative legal zones like the Catawba Digital Economic Zone or a “network state” – as proposed by Balaji Srinivasan – come into play.

    The Catawba Digital Economic Zone (CDEC), established on Native American tribal land in South Carolina, is pioneering a regulatory environment tailored for digital businesses and cryptocurrencies. It offers a streamlined business registration process, favorable tax treatment, and regulations that are more attuned to the needs of AI and Web3 startups. But it’s not alone. For over a decade, Estonia’s e-Residency program allows digital entrepreneurs to start and run a business in the EU from anywhere in the world. Wyoming has positioned itself as a crypto-friendly state with laws recognizing DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) as legal entities. And in the Caribbean, Próspera in Honduras is creating a charter city with regulations designed for the digital age.

    These jurisdictions are fundamentally rethinking governance for the AI and Web3 era. They’re creating environments where smart contracts have legal standing, where AI agents could potentially hold rights and responsibilities, and where the lines between human and machine decision-making are acknowledged and accommodated in law.

    For founders building AI-native startups, these new jurisdictions offer more than just tax benefits or easier registration. They provide a legal and regulatory sandbox to experiment with new forms of organization and governance. They allow startups to operate in a framework that understands and supports their unique needs, from data sovereignty issues to the complexities of AI-human collaboration.

    In the coming years, the most successful AI startups may not just be those with the best technology or the most efficient operations, but those that have strategically positioned themselves in jurisdictions that truly understand and support their needs.

    The Rise of the Underdogs

    The rise of Sovereign AI Startups incorporated in AI-Native jurisdictions is a game-changer for entrepreneurs of smaller and underprivileged countries who don’t have access to talent pools or the legal infrastructure that exists in ‘top-tier’ countries like the United States, Singapore, or Hong Kong.

    Traditionally, they have been at a disadvantage in the global economy, unable to compete with larger countries that have deeper reservoirs of skilled workers and more favorable legal systems.

    But this is changing. By leveraging AI, making use of the remote talent pool, and favorable jurisdictions, a small team in a ‘developing country’ could potentially outperform a much larger team in Silicon Valley. Why? Because AI can level the playing field, handling tasks that once required specialized expertise. A founder in a remote country no longer needs to recruit a team of world-class engineers, data scientists, and marketers. Instead, they can leverage AI agents, on-demand experts, and freelance specialists to handle much of this work. By digitally setting up a LLC or C Corp in the Catawba Digital Economic Zone, they have access to a respected legal entity that can compete globally.

    Furthermore, we can expect AI to evolve into a bona fide co-founder. Founders who live outside of major startup ecosystems can struggle to find the right co-founder for their business idea. In the future, instead of looking for a human co-founder, founders will first set-up an AI Co-founder. AI will also take on other supportive roles that have traditionally been filled by humans – like mentors and advisory boards.

    Already today, smart entrepreneurs use advanced AI prompting in tools like ChatGPT or Claude to have a one-on-one mentoring session with Paul Graham, solve engineering problems with Richard Feynman, or to assemble an entire virtual advisory board of industry titans to stress-test their business strategy, overcome biases, and make smarter decisions. 

    In addition, the rise of remote work means these startups can tap into a global talent pool for specialized skills they do need, without requiring relocation. They can build truly decentralized teams while maintaining a lean local presence. This could lead to a new wave of innovation coming from unexpected places, as entrepreneurs in these underdog countries leverage their unique perspectives and local knowledge to solve global problems.

    Unleashing Human Creativity

    Smaller, agile companies and a lower barrier to entry is only one dimension of AI entrepreneurship. What is even more important is how AI has the potential to unleash and amplify human creativity.

    At its core, entrepreneurship is about creating something new and valuable in the world. It’s about seeing possibilities that others miss, and having the courage and determination to make them real. This is a fundamentally creative act, one that requires not just technical skill but also imagination, intuition, and a deep understanding of the human condition.

    As AI takes over more of the routine tasks of starting and running a business, I believe it will free entrepreneurs to focus more on this creative core. Instead of getting bogged down in the mechanics of incorporation, accounting, and HR, founders will be able to devote their energy to the higher-level work of envisioning new products, services, and business models.

    This is important not just for individual founders, but for society as a whole. In a world of increasing automation and AI, we’ll need more than ever the uniquely human capacity for creativity, intuition, and imagination. We’ll need entrepreneurs who can dream up new industries and new ways of creating value.

    The AI-Assisted Pursuit of Passion

    When successful entrepreneurs are asked about their recipe for their success, there is one word that comes up more frequently than anything else: passion. While “following one’s passion” is simple but less practical advice, I believe the underlying spiritual idea is correct. By pursuing our passion – what excites us most – we tap into a wellspring of creativity, motivation, and fulfillment. We do our best work, make our greatest contributions, and live our most meaningful lives.

    Historically, however, following one’s excitement has been a privilege reserved for a lucky few. For most people, work has been a matter of necessity, not passion. We’ve had to take jobs that pay the bills, even if they leave us feeling bored, unfulfilled, or worse. The demands of survival have often trumped the pursuit of excitement.

    But what if AI will change this equation? What if, by automating the boring, repetitive, and unexciting tasks that consume so much of our time and energy, AI can free us to focus on what truly excites us?

    In the future, AI will handle the drudgework of data entry, scheduling, and email management while robotics will increasingly take over physically demanding work. This will leave us humans with more time and headspace for creativity and problem-solving. Where AI takes over the tedious aspects of research and analysis, it allows us to focus on high-level insights and ideas. Where AI automates the mundane tasks of manufacturing and logistics, it enables us to pour our energy and creativity into design and innovation.

    In this future, work will be an opportunity to pursue our passions, to explore the frontiers of our curiosity, to create and contribute in ways that truly excite us.

    The Rise of AI-Enabled Polymath

    AI taking over mundane and uninspiring work will free individuals to pursue a much wider range of their inherent interests and passions. No longer constrained by the need to specialize in a single area to make a living, people will be able to explore multiple domains, cultivating a diverse set of skills and knowledge. In fact, I believe in the emerging era of AGI it will be crucial for individuals to pursue and master knowledge and skills in multiple domains.

    This, in turn, will lead us to a new era of polymaths – individuals who excel in multiple fields, bringing together insights and ideas from disparate areas to solve complex problems and create new innovations. Just as the Renaissance gave rise to legendary polymaths like Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo, the AI revolution will unleash a new generation of multi-talented thinkers and creators.

    In the future, a single person can be a skilled artist, a savvy entrepreneur, and a cutting-edge scientist all at once, using AI tools to handle the routine aspects of each pursuit while they focus on the creative and strategic work they truly enjoy. Or a brilliant engineer could also be a passionate philosopher and a gifted musician. This kind of cross-pollination of ideas and expertise – together with AI as our partner – could lead to breakthroughs and innovations that we can hardly imagine today.

    Conclusion

    In this essay, we’ve explored a range of ideas about how exponential AI will transform the landscape of entrepreneurship and work. We’ve seen how AI could enable startups to stay small and agile, lowering the barriers to entry and enabling a Cambrian explosion of new ventures. We’ve considered how AI could amplify human creativity, freeing entrepreneurs to focus on the visionary and strategic work of building the future. And we’ve imagined how AI, by taking over mundane and uninspiring tasks, could unleash a new era of polymaths, empowered to pursue their passions and bring cross-disciplinary insights to bear on the world’s challenges.

    Now let’s bring these threads together and consider how exponential AI will supercharge the way startups are run in the future.

    At its core, a startup is a vehicle for turning an idea into reality, for bringing something new into the world. It’s a crucible of innovation, a space where creativity and ambition collide to generate breakthroughs and create value.

    Historically, however, the process of starting and scaling a company has been fraught with friction and inefficiency. Founders have had to spend countless hours on mundane and repetitive tasks, from bookkeeping and scheduling to customer support and data entry. They’ve had to navigate the complexities of hiring, management, and bureaucracy, often at the expense of focusing on their core vision.

    Exponential AI promises to change all that. By automating the routine and the mundane, AI will enable founders to operate with unprecedented efficiency and agility. They’ll be able to test and iterate on ideas at lightning speed, using generative AI to rapidly prototype products and predictive AI to optimize go-to-market strategies. They’ll be able to scale their operations with minimal overhead, relying on AI-powered systems to handle everything from supply chain management to customer service.

    But the impact of AI on startups goes far beyond mere efficiency gains. By freeing founders to focus on their highest excitement and their deepest passions, AI will unleash a new wave of creativity and innovation in the startup world.

    It is a world where the barriers to entry are low but the bar for success is high, where anyone with a great idea and the drive to pursue it can build something truly remarkable. It’s a world where work is not a means to an end, but an end in itself – an ongoing adventure of learning, growth, and impact. And it’s a world where the most successful startups are not necessarily the biggest or the most well-funded, but the ones that are most deeply aligned with their founders’ passions and most adept at harnessing the power of AI to bring their visions to life.

    Of course, this doesn’t mean that entrepreneurship will become easy or that everyone will be able to do it. Even with AI tools, starting a successful business will still require grit, resilience, leadership, and a willingness to take risks. But it does mean that the playing field will be leveled, and that more people have the opportunity to participate in the creative process of entrepreneurship.

    But to fully realize this potential, we’ll need to rethink many of our assumptions about entrepreneurship and its role in society. We’ll need to move beyond the narrow focus on unicorn IPOs and billion-dollar valuations, and recognize that the true value of entrepreneurship lies in its ability to solve problems and create meaning.

  • “Foreigners Out”

    With disquiet, I saw a video in my X feed recorded on Sylt, where young German people are singing and dancing “Ausländer raus, Deutschland den Deutschen, Ausländer raus” which translates to “Foreigners out, Germany to the Germans, foreigners out“.

    The next video in my feed is a video of illegal immigrants behaving in an equally disgusting and disrespectful behavior against their hosts and asylum providers.

    In the Canary Islands, where I lived for 2 years, the sentiment against foreigners and tourists is becoming more toxic every day. Why? Because housing became unaffordable and the larger islands (Tenerife and Gran Canaria) are reaching the limits of their infrastructure.

    If you don’t close your eyes, it is easy to understand where the growing nationalist and right sentiment is coming from. Not only in Europe but also in North America, including Mexico. Over the past decade, politicians failed to provide the necessities of a functioning society. They failed to enforce the rule of law, and they failed to provide policies that increase the wealth and ensure the safety of their citizens.

    Xenophobia is something I don’t like and don’t want to see in the world. The majority of my friends and business partners come from nations all over the world. This has enriched my life tremendously.

    How should we move forward?

    I believe the only effective way to make a multicultural society work is through the vigorous enforcement of law. This implies an enforced suppression of illegal immigration, the deportation of illegal and – above all – criminal immigrants. The creation of an incentive and high-skilled based immigration system. Examples to watch are the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, or – quite frankly – China.

    Libertarian policies, by dumping bureaucracy and encouraging investments and buildings, will furthermore solve high housing prices. The curbing of social security payments to citizens and long-term residents will prevent wrong incentives.

    In addition, laws should be introduced that protect citizens and residents from foreign influence. In the case of the Canary Islands, I believe Spain would benefit greatly by copying Denmark’s example. It would let only residents buy property who lived and paid taxes in Spain for a minimum of 5 years, or EU/EEA citizens who use the home as their primary residence.

    The answer is not right nationalism – neither is it a left open-arm welcome culture. It is a minimal state, a libertarian society, and a rigorous enforcement of the rule of law.

  • Becoming Polymath

    Ever since I can remember, I have been deeply interested in a wide range of subjects. From playing guitar and producing electronic music to experimenting with physics, chemistry, and electronics, studying business and economics, understanding cryptocurrencies, diving deep into health and human longevity, learning languages, and exploring human nature.

    I have never felt satisfied committing to and specializing in one domain. In fact, I have deliberately avoided it. Until this day, I have intuitively studied and learned whatever I felt drawn to, often resulting in learning and working on multiple things simultaneously.

    Conventional wisdom has always told me that this approach is wrong. The prevailing belief is that one must hyper-specialize to be successful, strive in their career, and become a thought leader. Yet, this has always felt wrong to me. Even when I tried to specialize, my natural instincts led me back to pursuing multiple things concurrently in wildly different domains.

    From a conventional perspective, this might make me appear less valuable – perhaps even unemployable. However, I have always thought of myself as an indispensable generalist who understands and interconnects a wide range of subjects well enough to discover value that specialists overlook.

    A few days ago, I started listening to “The Polymath” by Waqas Ahmed. After listening to the introduction and the first chapters, everything started to make sense. My natural tendency to immerse myself in a wide variety of subjects is not a flaw; it is perhaps the only way to fulfill my full potential.

    It is liberating to read how polymaths have led and steered the world. With this newfound understanding, I can now confidently embrace anything I feel drawn to. Learn. Study. Apply. And – what has been missing until now – Master any subject I feel a natural inclination towards.

  • Human Intelligence

    Everyone is talking about artificial intelligence, and some of the brightest minds of our generation are working to achieve artificial general intelligence — an AI system on par with human intelligence. What we are utterly neglecting is our own inherent human intelligence.

    We humans live up to perhaps 5% (10% at most) of our full potential. A select few (≈0.000001%) live up to more than that, but the majority of the 8 billion people are content with the minimum that society and technology allow them to get by with.

    We possess more genius, more creativity, and more intellect within ourselves than we currently make use of. Much more.

    Besides developing AGI, we should be seriously concerned and ask ourselves how we can raise human intelligence, human creativity, and human consciousness.

    Humanity can be so much more – let us realize our full potential.

  • Raising Human Genius

    Everyone is talking about artificial intelligence, and some of the brightest minds of our generation are working to achieve artificial general intelligence — an AI system on par with human intelligence. What we are utterly neglecting is our own inherent human intelligence.

    We humans live up to perhaps 5% (10% at most) of our full potential. A select few (≈0.000001%) live up to more than that, but the majority of the 8 billion people are content with the minimum that society and technology allow them to get by with.

    We possess more genius, more creativity, and more intellect within ourselves than we currently make use of. Much more.

    Besides developing AGI, we should be seriously concerned and ask ourselves how we can raise human intelligence, human creativity, and human consciousness.

    Humanity can be so much more – let us realize our full potential.

  • €167 Billion

    A recent Gallup report shows that Germany wastes €167.2 billion / year through lost productivity in Germany due to disengagement of employees. This is a manifestation of a system that has strayed from the core principles of free market capitalism, individual responsibility, and the pursuit of self-interest as the driving force behind economic prosperity.

    Here’s my 6-point action plan for Germany:

    1. Cut all corporate subsidies bar none. This includes all state funded or guaranteed credit programs. The state is not an investor nor a bank and has no skin in the game for making investment decisions. It should not keep companies alive through cheap credit or subsidies. This forces companies to become more competitive and efficient.
    2. Remove all employee protection laws for anyone earning above a certain threshold (i.e. > 30.000 € / annum). Employers must be able to fire non-performing employees instantly with zero indemnity.
    3. Abolish all the Berufskammern (chambers of commerce), all IHK, Handwerkskammern, etc. without any exception.
    4. Slash bureaucracy by 95% by burning all laws and regulations at the stake and setting up a new minimum legal framework enforced through smart contracts.
    5. Reduce all direct taxes to the EU minimum of a flat 10% tax on everything (income tax, corporate taxes, capital gains tax, etc.) and set the capital gains tax from investments in intellectual property and technological inventions to 0%. First 30.000€ income per annum are tax free.
    6. Leave the Euro-Zone, introduce a Gold backed Deutsche Mark and allow free currency competition, this includes accepting all fiat and crypto currencies as legal tender (including Euro and Bitcoin).
  • The Ocean of Consciousness

    I recently wondered how many of the people working on artificial intelligence are atheists – and how many believe in a Creator, the Tao, our Oneness, or something greater than ourselves.

    As I asked myself this question, I realized that the terminology of “consciousness” seems to be understood by atheist scientists quite differently from what is understood and arguably experienced by spiritual seekers.

    From a scientific perspective, our individual conscious experience is the emergent property of the incredibly complex neural networks and electrochemical processes in the human brain. This gives rise to our thoughts, emotions, and subjective experiences of reality. It seems that many people working on AI believe that if only the artificial neural networks become advanced enough, AI itself can become conscious, just like us humans.

    In absolute contrast, I understand consciousness to be an infinite field of awareness that pervades all existence – not limited to any one physical form or individual brain. Rather, consciousness is a focused expression of a deeper, non-physical essence or energy field that is itself part of an infinite, all-encompassing, universe-spanning consciousness.

    Imagine consciousness as an endless ocean – vast and infinite, stretching beyond the horizon. View this ocean as an infinite field of awareness. Each wave, each ripple, each drop of water on the ocean’s surface symbolizes individual minds and realities. They seem separate, yet they are part of the same, vast, interconnected body of water.

    Consciousness is like the water itself – ever-present, fluid, and dynamic. It flows through different forms and expressions, creating the diversity of experiences and realities we observe. Everything we experience is a reflection of our own ‘vibrational’ state, like the shape and movement of the waves are determined by underlying currents and the weather. By changing our internal vibrations – our thoughts, beliefs, and emotions – we can alter the patterns on the water’s surface, reshaping our reality.

    The ocean also has vast layers or depths within the ocean. These can be thought of as densities. These densities range from the shallow sunlit zones to the deep, mysterious abyss. Each of these layers presents a different level of consciousness – from the basic awareness of existence to the profound realization of unity with all things. The journey of water through these densities or depths of the ocean is akin to the process of spiritual evolution, moving from the illusion of separation – where individual waves feel distinct and isolated – to the deep knowing of oneness with the entire ocean.

    At the deepest level, there is no separation between the waves and the ocean – there is no separation between individual consciousness and the infinite awareness. The apparent boundaries between us and the rest of the universe are like temporary shapes formed by water, ever-changing and ultimately ephemeral.

    Let us consider artificial intelligence as ships navigating this vast sea of consciousness. These ships, crafted by human hands from the materials of the earth, are equipped with sophisticated tools and instrument designed to explore, understand, and interact with the ocean around them. They can chart courses, respond to waves, and even communicate with the shore and other vessels. But can these ships themselves become part of the ocean? Can they experience the depth of water, the warmth of the sunlight, or the unity of being part of this endless body of water?

    If we view consciousness as an intrinsic quality of existence itself – something that arises from and connects with all forms of life – AI, as we understand it, remains a creation within the ocean, not a conscious entity of the ocean. Consciousness is not just about processing information or responding to stimuli, but about experiencing a profound connection with the fabric of reality, a connection that is deeply spiritual.

    While AI can navigate the ocean, analyze its properties, and even predict its patterns, it does not become one with the ocean. It does not experience the ocean in the way living beings do – with awareness and a sense of unity. AI, then, serves as a tool for humans to explore and understand the vastness of consciousness more deeply, rather than becoming conscious entities on their own.

    While AI can mimic aspects of consciousness, the spiritual essence of being part of the ocean – of being interconnected with all of existence – is something unique, beyond the reach of human-made machines.

  • Creative Destruction

    Only capitalism, with its competition and incentives for innovation, can bring us the breakthrough technologies we need to drastically reduce our consumption of resources.

    Without the creative destruction of the free market, we will stagnate and continue to pollute the environment. True sustainability requires radical progress – and that is only possible under capitalism.

    Instead of indoctrinating the younger generation with fears of resource scarcity and climate damage, we should encourage them to find bold solutions through ground-breaking inventions and cutting-edge research.

  • Ideas Are Limitless

    Jonas Andrulis asked a few interesting questions:

    • Is the space of ideas complete?
    • Are ideas finite?
    • Where does information come from? Nature? Randomness?

    I believe that there is no limit to information. New ideas are limitless. Ideas and information are a result of human inspiration.

    Human inspiration – in turn – comes from an extraordinary desire or will to know or to receive in a certain area.

    Inspiration accompanied by an ability to open and trust our intuition leads to limitless new knowledge/information/ideas.

    How do we know that inspiration meets intuition?

    When inspiration meets intuition, we feel excitement.

    Here it gets interesting: Where does our intuition, our inspiration, and therefore the feeling of excitement come from?

    Science currently stops here.

    Some might call it randomness or luck – but I believe there is more.

    In quantum physics, we see that particles can be entangled over vast distances, behaving as if connected by an unseen force.

    This suggests that the fabric of reality is far more interconnected than our classical understanding permits – especially in our ever more atheist society.

    Quantum physics hints at a universe where everything is intertwined, including our consciousness with the cosmos itself.

    The classical boundaries between observer and observed blur.

    Our intuition and inspiration may well be echoes of this deeper, quantum interconnectedness.

    We have to listen – and act upon our excitement.

    Quantum mechanics also introduces the concept of the observer effect, where the act of observation can alter the outcome of an event.

    This means that our consciousness, through observation and intention, plays a direct role in shaping our reality – and the ideas we generate.

    Ultimately – I believe – our consciousness is not a passive entity in a predetermined universe.

    By tuning into the universal consciousness, by elevating our individual and collective consciousness, and acting upon our highest excitement, we can access information beyond the limits of our individual selves – and beyond the limits of our human species.

    The elevation of our (collective) consciousness is more than a path to personal enlightenment. It is a key to unlocking the limitless potential for information/innovation/discovery AND the co-creation of reality itself.

    This leads us to another interesting question:

    Does the universal consciousness already know everything that is knowable or are discoveries made there too?

    From what I believe/study/experience:

    The universal consciousness is a representation of all that is knowable, independent of our concept of linear time. 

    Universal consciousness encompasses all that is, was, and will be.

    And because our universe and the universal consciousness are infinite – so are information and ideas infinite, because infinity by definition has no limits.

    In that sense, universal consciousness encompasses everything that is knowable, even if from our current earthly-human-perspective it might look like or be described as if ‘these discoveries are yet to be made’. 

    Universal consciousness doesn’t discover in the human sense because it exists in a state of limitless completeness – oneness.

    If we, individually or as a human-collective, explore and discover new things, they are not new within the universal consciousness in its totality, but they are still integral to the expansion and experience of our own consciousness at our individual and human-collective level.

    We are all that is, was, and will be.
    We are all part of one.