Candid accounts of building, closing and rebuilding companies. Decisions, mistakes and changing beliefs, alongside essays on ownership and technological change.
I killed most of my businesses in December 2025. The SaaS. The acquisitions. The MRR goals. The courses and playbooks. All of it was sitting in the kill zone - information products, tool products, advice products. Everything AI was eating for breakfast. A few years ago, you could build a business around knowing things other people didn't. You could package expertise into consulting engagements and courses. You could be the per
I heard about this test from people who survived World War II. The question is simple. Would this person hide me in their home? Not retweet me. Not take a meeting. Not "hop on a quick call." Would they risk something real. It's an extreme question. Most of us will never face that version of it. But I think the underlying idea applies to everyone. And I think most people — especially founders, especially people who've spent ye
I should probably feel behind. It's been three months since I killed the majority of my businesses. Three months of working 20 hours a week. I don't feel behind. I feel like I can see for the first time in years. The calendar My calendar went from six to eight meetings a day down to one. Sometimes zero. The meetings I do have aren't scheduled three weeks in advance — if I need to talk to my engineering team or my ops team, I
I Am My Hedge Fund February 2026 TL;DR: * I spent $300K and hired 5 full-time people to build a quant trading operation in 2020-2021. * We had researchers, strategists, developers. We still lost. * Today I manage my own money alone, with my own thesis, published openly at founderreality.com/investing. * No fund. No fees. No hiding. Here's why I think one person with conviction beats a team with algorithms — and why the era
TL;DR: * There are dozens of open-source AI models and new ones drop weekly. * Most comparison guides are benchmark tables that mean nothing to business leaders. * Here's how we actually chose — why we went with a smaller, "less impressive" model over the flashy options, and why that turned out to be the right call. In my last post, I wrote about self-hosting our own AI for $700 a month. A lot of people asked the same follow-
TL;DR: * Full self-hosting of top-tier AI costs $20,000–$50,000/month and isn't worth it for most businesses. * Cloud-hosted models (AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex, Azure) are the underrated middle ground — you get the best AI with your data staying in your account. * I built a private AI setup for $700/month and it covers 80% of daily tasks. Here's the full breakdown, the real costs, and a decision framework for what makes sense
Tuesday. 11am. I opened my brokerage, looked at a portfolio I'd held for years, and started selling. VOO. QQQ. SCHD. UNH. All of it. By noon I'd rebuilt the entire portfolio from scratch. The portfolio I woke up with looked nothing like the portfolio I went to bed with. It took one hour. It took me six months to get here. I'm publishing this with a date on it because I want a record. Not of the trades — of the thinking. So th
For all of modern economic history, human intelligence was the scarce input. That was the whole game. You knew something. You charged for knowing it. You analyzed, reviewed, compared, translated, processed. The knowing was the value. The fee was the premium. Lawyers charged it. Accountants charged it. Consultants charged it. Developers charged it. Analysts, researchers, translators, underwriters, financial advisors — all of them
Everyone has an AI business idea right now. AI DevOps. AI infrastructure. AI safety. AI agents for whatever vertical you can think of. Every week someone pitches me. Every week my LinkedIn shows another person who pivoted into "AI strategy." I've said no to all of it. Not because the ideas are bad. Because my gut refuses. And my gut is smarter than my ambition. The Pattern I Keep Seeing I can see the trajectory. I've seen i
A reader asked me: "What skill should I learn right now?" I used to have an answer for this. Pick something that compounds. Learn to code. Learn to sell. Get good at writing. Find your niche and go deep. I don't say that anymore. The Half-Life Problem Every skill is getting compressed by AI faster than you can master it. Coding? Claude writes better code than most junior engineers. And it improves every quarter. Writing? AI
"Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world." Einstein never said this. That's the first problem. The second problem is that even if he did, it would be terrible advice for the world we're walking into. The Gospel I've read the books. The Intelligent Investor. Psychology of Money. A Random Walk Down Wall Street. Rich Dad Poor Dad. The Millionaire Next Door. The Bogleheads' Guide. I Will Teach You to Be Rich. They a
Everyone's watching the stock market. S&P down 3%. Nvidia earnings. DeepSeek wiped $1 trillion in a day. Software stocks lost $2 trillion in a week. Fed minutes. CPI print. Jobs report. That's what makes the news. That's what people react to. That's where the attention goes. Meanwhile, the documents that actually tell you what's coming sit on corporate websites with zero engagement. Nobody reads them. I do. What the Builder
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