Philosophy

Propulsive

Technology is an accelerant. At increased speeds, conflict happens and any direction becomes arduous to command.

Welcoming the confluence of humans and machines reduces the gap between human potential and artificial intelligence. Positive intent with ethics at the forefront of progress may help avoid an imbalance, but there’s still no guarantee that comes with our trust in technology.

This means we must remain inquisitive. Pushing elephants into the room encourages critical thinking, invites problem-solving, and provokes new perspectives. Complacency leaves room for degraded integrity, so here are a few brain teasers to help us rise above cliché conversations.

  • What is worth sacrificing to achieve progress?
  • A single AI prompt uses roughly the same energy as running a light bulb for 15 minutes. Adaptive computing, alternative energy, and other bridges to tomorrow will support more efficient interactions, but how might careless consumption impact long-term sustainability?
  • Might unlimited access lead everything to be mediocre?
  • With an answer always available, how can we celebrate experiential wisdom to maintain a willingness to learn?
  • Will enhanced productivity make humans lazy?
  • How is time spent when tasks are no longer a concern?
    • How do humans avoid isolation when technology makes perceived connection effortless?
    • If the Internet is dominated by AI-generated content, might the overwhelming slop tempt exhausted humans to hibernate? As disconnected vaults form, will the beauty of collaboration and our connected era be lost?
    • Could the story of money ever get old?
    • Do we really care about privacy or is it that we just never like feeling surprised or exploited?

      The ethical aspects of technology can feel like a drag. Unfortunately, the ease of overlooking short-term issues usually leads to long-term problems.

      To find an equilibrium with artificial counterparts, elevate what we’re good at and do the same with technology, but slow down to avoid irreversible damage. As we align answers together, trust in a shared direction celebrates limitless diversity, while ensuring a future that respects the past and remains open to next.

      By Ben McDougal, ago

      Brad Feld

      This Season 2 Finale features an extended conversation (2+ hours) between Brad Feld and Ben McDougal, recorded in the wild, LIVE from the mountains of Boulder, Colorado!

      We begin with a rewind on Brad’s own journey, then shift into entrepreneurship, leadership within startup communities, and venture capital in the first hour. Ben teleports to narrate a break with two writings inspired by Brad, then we dive back in for so much more. The origins of Techstars, technology, mentorship, and philosophy is how we land this milestone moment.

      As you’ll hear/see, EP100 brews timeless insight for founders and the entrepreneurial lifestyle. Enjoy the full experience, and to make key takeaways easier to share, bookmarks for this extended experience are highlighted below. Cheers to another remarkable season of You Don’t Need This Podcast and let’s keep building… together.

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      0:00 – Ben in Boulder
      1:30 – Hello Brad Feld
      2:30 – Early Experiences
      5:15 – Writing First Book
      7:00 – Incubator to Accelerator
      12:40 – Random Days
      29:30 – Startup Communities
      36:15 – Entrepreneurial Ecosystems
      37:30 – Too Many Referees, Not Enough Boxers
      38:15 – Rural Startup Communities
      43:30 – Astronomy
      45:30 – Positive Sum Games
      46:15 – Give First Intrapreneurs
      50:45 – J-Curve
      52:00 – Venture Capital Timelines
      54:00 – Investor Metrics
      56:30 – The Measurement Trap
      1:01:15 – 5 Why’s
      1:03:50 – Cliffhangers

      1:04:50 – Break ☕ #GiveFirst
      1:08:18 – Break ☕ Intrinsic

      1:11:50 – Welcome Back
      1:12:25 – Founders of Techstars
      1:23:00 – Startup Community Partnerships
      1:33:20 – Guitar Hero in Times Square
      1:38:15 – Bigger Isn’t Better
      1:41:00 – Sclerotic Thoughts
      1:42:00 – Contentment
      1:42:50 – BEN BOT
      1:44:05 – Digitized Consciousness
      1:45:12 – Vibe Coding
      1:46:45 – Dinostroids
      1:49:40 – Quantified Self
      1:54:16 – Biohacking
      1:56:30 – AI Notetaking
      1:59:55 – Founder’s Interest in Philosophy
      2:00:50 – The Entrepreneur’s Weekly Niche
      2:07:10 – Obsession over Passion
      2:10:20 – Affinity as an Investor
      2:11:35 – Fight to the End
      2:11:50 – The Dip -Seth Godin
      2:12:20 – Successful Companies Experiment
      2:13:15 – Evolution of Work
      2:14:30 – Quickfire
      – Spell Check
      – Ant Hills
      – Signal to Raise Capital
      – Long Run Epiphany
      – Being Alone
      – Pinball Wizard
      – Music & Concerts
      2:23:15 – Fine Art
      2:24:30 – You Don’t Need This Book
      2:26:00 – “They can’t kill you, and they can’t eat you.” –Len Fassler

      Give First.
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      BONUS MATERIALS

      https://feld.com

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      https://techstars.com

      Break: #GiveFirst + Intrinsic

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      EP14 – Drams of History 🎙️ Tej Dhawan

      EP18 – Fourteeners 🎙️🎞️ Jeff Reed

      EP29 – Borderless 🎙️ Kerty Levy

      EP56 – Caffeinated Manifesto 2 🎙️🎞️

      EP99 – Traveled 🎙️🎞️ Trevor Carlson

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      By Ben McDougal, ago

      Aphorism

      Personal truths on health, life, wealth, and happiness evolve from entrepreneurial endeavors.

      The pursuit of building a business causes people to be more contemplative about other aspects of life. Learning to articulate thoughts as a leader is transformative. Knowing ones self can be parlayed with mindful aging to create curiosity that can be mixed into heartfelt conversations.

      How we explore big ideas depends on the environment, people you interact with, and knowledge you pursue. This makes me thankful for my own entrepreneurial experiences, but more important, the immeasurable blessing it can be to expand our minds by plugging into startup communities and entrepreneurial ecosystems.

      A willingness to show up and the trust built through such generosity has allows leaders to become apart of so many other startup stories. As mentioned throughout YDNTB, consistent action over the long run is required, but insight learned along the way provides a path to understanding for anyone, on almost any front.

      As we support entrepreneurs through the art of connection, the invitation to have more diverse discussions is unlocked more often. Whether it’s strategic, tactical or philosophical, what a gift toward open-mindedness this becomes.

      Along with stimulating conversations with agreeable peers in a support network, Adam Grant reminds us that it’s important to weave in the perspectives from a challenge network as well. Challenge networks consist of disagreeable people we trust to point out blind spots. This helps to overcome weaknesses with critical feedback we may not want, but need. Peculiar interactions within a challenge network also unlock humbling opportunities to be wrong. Intellectual humility helps avoid misguided confidence and brings us closer to different forms of truth.

      Extra Shot

      Smart people change their mind all the time. Find joy in discovering you were wrong and now less wrong than before. This is not incompetency. It’s being honest, respectful, and willing to learn.

      By Ben McDougal, ago

      Oversubscribed

      It’s a go-go world of busy, busy, busy.

      With days scheduled from start to finish, what time is left for random acts of conspicuous kindness, welcoming serendipity, or just saying yes to more adventure?

      Thoughtful preparation is often required to coordinate whatever it may be. There’s value in staying organized, but over planning is a trap. The thirst for productivity has made busy look to be successful. How often do we hear pride disguised as disgust, as someone complains about the constrictions of their frantic calendar? Yes, prerequisites include boundless hard work, a healthy obsession, and endless sequencing to be remarkable, but unexpected opportunities emerge when we’re not captive to a calendar.

      Extra Shot

      Planning is based in fear.

      Doing is based in success.

      Renting time can be lucrative, but in our connected era, there are ways to efficiently get things done without falling victim to a stacked routine of back-to-back everything.

      Meetings led by talking heads, fracturing lunch affairs, and youth sports are all common versions of this trap. Each activity is cool, but when combined, days are booked and every night has something. A few hacks for each include less scheduled meetings throughout the week, but an eagerness to meet anytime. Instead of lunch, meet folks for a brew on either side of the day and consider more adventurous ways to share time. Audibles include parlaying a first meeting with an event, going for a walk and talk, or adding nature into the interaction. This breaks routine and conversations can be more provocative as a shared encounter adds depth to any relationship. Lastly, appreciate limitless play, but organized sports will not define a child’s future. In fact, it more commonly limits the experiences a family enjoys together. The entire game resets at puberty and even at high levels, the idea that sports provide a lasting future is one of society’s biggest fallacies. Organized sports deliver camaraderie, fitness, teamwork, loyalty, problem solving, business opportunities, and a competitive rush, but camps provide these benefits with less time and cost required.

      Comfort without a plan leaves space for the unexpected. Things will not always come together, but if the calendar is a tool to keep promises while staying quietly organized, complacency gets replaced with unplanned marvel. If you feel oversubscribed, try flying without a plan. May the voids filled with no agenda unravel a freedom to be your best.

      By Ben McDougal, ago

      Replicants

      A friendly futurist and DAO developer within our web3dsm community shared this Ray Kurzweil interview that triggered my continued curiosity toward our neon future.

      One tangent they take is interacting with replicants. There’s no single definition for what a replicant might be, but I imagine my replicant to be an artificially intelligent, bioengineered entity that has consciousness rooted in the human (or machine) it originated from. This humanoid would index everything I ever created, map the complexity of my network, understand the difference between internalized vs. externalized thoughts, have empathy for how I matured over time, and gain contextual insight from storytelling to form a foundational identity. This identity would support an operating system with core characteristics, essential rules, and different permission levels to guide autonomous growth.

      With seemingly limitless advances in technology, interactions with different versions of our past and future self seem inevitable. We’re already speaking to holocaust surviving holograms, watching monkeys play video games with their brain, growing synthetic realities, and experimenting with nanorobotics. As the bandwidth of technology reaches escape velocity, what’s stopping us from pressing the record button to store every angle from every moment? At that speed, how can the linear evolution of humanity’s intelligence fuse with the exponential trajectory of machine learning? Even when it’s possible, do humans want to extend our lifespan?

      Extra Shot

      Days feel long, but years fly by.

      There are more questions to ask and variables to consider, but as we think about futuristic interactions, how might we reconsider the way we spend our time? Would you live your life differently knowing future generations may interact with your own replicant? I have to think our thoughts and actions would be less careless with such a forward-focused mindset. It would also seem that staying in the moment would be more natural when every byte counts.

      With a future that gives humans an opportunity to merge with machines, let’s avoid the numbness of endless distractions as we collectively consider ways to transcend time with purpose.

      Extra Shot

      “…if tomorrow I wake up and I’m sixty years old,I hope when I look in the mirror and ask have you lived,I look right back and say, “shiiit, you tell me!” -Machine Gun Kelly

      By Ben McDougal, ago