Founder charisma is a kind of financing instrument.
Every startup runs on two balance sheets, one for cash and one for belief, and early on the belief one matters more. Employees join before there's certainty, customers buy before the product's finished, investors commit before there's proof. That gap has to be financed by someone, and in the beginning it's the founder, through charisma or credibility or just a track record of being right.
Whatever form it takes, they’re asking people to invest time and money in a future that doesn’t exist yet.
Eventually revenue replaces belief.
But until then, the founder’s social capital is the company’s working capital.
after some deep consideration i am pivoting this account. this is now a delusionally bullish techno-optimist builder-poasting generational wealth manifesting cryptoeconomy expert superbased account
Barbell strategy for killing it in an age of superhuman AI:
Simultaneously get as close to AND stay as far away from AI as humanly possible.
1. Get close — play with AI models, use them to help you think, ask them to teach you about the world, get them to help you create, work with them to write code, understand what makes them tick, embed them into your everyday life, have fun.
2. Stay far away — learn to tell stories, make eye contact, build a team, lead with courage, connect far-flung ideas, build lifelong friendships, debate persuasively, think forbidden thoughts, handwrite ideas, confess your fears, fall in love.
Spend less time trying to master mental transformations that are purely mechanical — building spreadsheets, analyzing trades, balancing accounts, writing code by hand, following playbooks, searching for needles in haystacks. These are the emerging no-man's land, squarely the domain of AI.
Venture to the extremes. That’s where all the fun is anyway.
If you want to be an innovator, you have to be comfortable looking stupid for a long time.
You’re going to piss some people off and you’re going to get a lot of nos. That’s the only way to start having valuable breakthroughs.