I did an ideation session with Claude a couple of months ago. A lot of what it suggested was crap; it was recursive, and I picked holes in it until it gave up. I went to Gemini; it brought up suggestions I hadn't even considered, but it didn't go further as it was limited by training data. It then occurred to me that AI is good for seeing whether others have had similar thought processes in the past and for understanding the boundaries of previous thinking before pushing further. AI is excellent for research before creative output. Anyone who thinks it creates new things is either severely limited in their experience or very lazy. The human mind is still more powerful than the best AI. The way we make associations over time and space to create new concepts and ideas is unparalleled. AI is a powerful helper, no doubt, but we must not give up human agency and creativity to laziness and expedience.

It is not uncommon to see obnoxious assholes who can't really run anything on their own become wildly successful in "entrepreneurship." People wrongly attribute success to their unconventional character traits and try to copy them, but they fail. Entrepreneurs or founders like these are typically unemployable because they can't align with others, and that is why they choose to start something. Many of these people end up as failures and finally go back to find suitable employment or keep trying. The reason most of the successful ones succeed is something I finally figured out in 2013: money can buy the best talent once you can make money from ideas quickly, and structure that talent to become a multiplier by focusing it on the original source of the ideas and the cash flow, then take a step back. Sounds like a very simple wealth hack, but very few people can sacrifice their ego for wealth. They always want wealth and control. They fear losing money when it is what now defines who they are. They become Kings of their kingdom. I tell people that I made more money from companies I did not run but helped grow. I could have helped them more, as I had experienced a lot as an entrepreneur and was disconnected from the day-to-day hassle of running the business. The best ideas come from experiencing the world, and you hardly get more new ideas if you are not free from the hassles of keeping money flowing. The best entrepreneurs are not the best managers. They simply hire the best managers and get out of their way. Kings are not always rich. In truly successful ventures, there is very little to no Oga/Boss led product development. This contrasts with the conventional wisdom about entrepreneurship and the "founder mode" trope, which suggests the founder comes up with all the great ideas. The truth is that founder-led companies that succeed are the exception and not the rule. In 2010, I met a Swedish guy in Dubai who founded a billion-dollar company, but he wasn't running it. He had a CEO, but he was simply "Founder and Head of Strategy." I kept meeting more people like him until @noamwass gave us the lecture on Founders' Dilemmas at HBS, which changed my entire understanding of entrepreneurship and why it succeeds. That week was when I stopped being CEO in my mind. The media's glorification of CEOs is why many still fall into the "Oga/Boss Led" entrepreneurship trap. The builders of a business are as much entrepreneurs as the founder. Many examples of operators who excel more than the original founders exist today, even in big tech, but the founder-mode trope gains steam because people believe it is largely about risk-taking. It really is not; it is more about strategy and focus. The best strategy starts with having the best team. A great founder knows this instinctively. Poor founders learn the hard way. AI will not change this.

Thinking big is very different from talking big. Some people think they are talking big but their words only reveal that they are thinking small.