i thought so too. but now we are onboarding project managers in non-tech fields to Claude Code and they are crushing it. on a terminal. vs code. the first thirty min is the hard part, after that the feedback loop kicks in. they ask for what they really want, they get it.
because that pretty much is the state of any kind of speach it could apply to. either we operate from it as a first principle/“sacred text” or its scope shrinks as modern life loses any literal comparison to life in the late 1700s
What I offer may be helpful, but you likely have strong reasons to ignore it:
I have been a part of a dozen “next Silicon Valley” projects across the US, with friends who have done it internationally.
I’d suggest studying how it happened in Paris/France and also how Portgual lost it.
The only thing that works is founders helping founders. Everyone else responds to the signal they generate.
If you try to send that signal with investors/vendors, you will attract a lot of people who will not build much value.
One formula I’ve see work is to faciliate college student talent interest in startups meeting with founder/CEOs who built very successful companies. It gets a fly wheel going.
When I was on the ground floor of the NYC startup scene, it took ten years to build up to a viable startup scene.
Your effort will likely take longer.
So the best help I can give you is this - don’t waste your life.
If you are willing to contribute a generational effort towards this goal, find every founder from N Mexico and meet them. Ask for their advice on your vision. Do what they recommend.
If not, save yourself the dissapointment. There are literally 1,000s of attempts that have failed. Venture studios do not work. Angel investments from people who are not in the industry of your startups do not work.
It takes a lifetime to build a network in an industry. That is what early stage founders need access to, from people who understand how to succeed in them.
That’s how it is today, but that was also the case at the birth of e-commerce. Amazon was a large eCom store but many others were successful and switching for price was common. Not so much anymore.
Because that is not their motivation and no amount of spin casting changes it.
There’s a simple counter-factual for people with this level of ability:
“Making money” can be easily pursued at BlackRock or any number of PE firms.
Creating historic technology, of unknown difficulty and scale of impact, is not something pure capitalism can or is designed to deliver. What would investors or customers buy at the start of OpenAI?
While OpenAI may end up a corporation like any other, it would not have achieved what it had as one.
Film is such a nascent art form. The 90s as “peak blockbuster action” is a valid stance on taste but hard to defend as superior to all that came after. Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight is leagues aways from the 90s Batman, as an auteur friendly and obvious comparison. Pixar another on the animation front.
There have been great films made in every era, but the trend towards tighter writing, more legible and compelling action, and emotionally impactful story telling is strongly trending upwards overall.
And nothing will ever top the merchandising mania of the 80s!
Humanity has almost never been prepared for anything and almost never successfully prepared when it has chosen to.
almost all progress has been in reaction to change that has already happened.
while on its face this piece is a logical, reasonable stance, it is more likely to become a political foil than deliver anything tangible.
we can either have superintelligence or others will have it and we will not. guns, germs, and steel and all that.
it is bizarre how convinced we are that we can take coordinated action in advance of a threat as a body politic or a species.