Jules Vern wrote about the submarine 1883, in 1920 the submarine was invented. 

There is a general attribution made to authors, fiction authors, who in their books “predict” a future technology. 

But the more I think about it, the less this feels predictive. It feels more like a manifestation. 

• They imagine a future technology within the context of their novel 
• They publish the book 
• The book gains attention, and becomes widespread 
• With it, so does the idea of the technology
• The idea of the new technology is seeded into peoples minds, some of whom are technical
• The technical person digests the concept. 
• They think to themselves “I think I can build that”
• Then they do

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So did the author predict the technology, or did they birth it? I think the latter. 

An idea is like a seed. A seed that if planted in the right mind, can be brought to life. 

You see this in business regularly. A visionary seeds an idea to a technical co-founder in order to build something new and novel. (eg. Jobs + Woz)

Not to say there hasn’t been examples of people able to bring ideas to life on their own. Tesla famously could “build” or visualize models of his latest invention in his mind, before putting any physical objects in place. And then did. But those folks are exceptionally rare. 

Technology is changing at a rapid pace. The number of steps in bringing an idea to life are shrinking. The number of minds required to bring an idea to life is shrinking. 

Technology is quickly reaching a point where a person able to dream and articulate an idea, will be able to bring it to life themselves . We’ve always heard imagination is our limiting factor in what we can do (or build). But that is going to have a completely new meaning in the next few years. 

Jules Vern did not have the technical capacity to build a submarine, but what if he did? We’d probably have explored more than 10% of the world's oceans by now. 

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This is what the future looks like: 

• Creatives with the ability to clearly articulate an idea
• Build the things that they imagine
• In increasingly shorter timeframes
• Without persuading a huge amount of people to join their team
• Without persuading people to invest money in their ideas
• They will simply birth it into existence 

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“Execution is everything”. That’s all I’ve heard my entire life building products and businesses. And that has been accurate to date. But, what if execution is table steaks? What does a world look like then? 

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Building Pre 2025

Idea

Fundraising 

Team building

Product Building

Marketing

$$$$ (many people, big investment) 

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Building Post 2025

Idea

Product building (describe it) 

Marketing

$ (one person, little investment) 

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Soon, anyone will have the ability to build something novel. The barrier to building new things is diminishing. It’s diminishing towards words. 

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Writing and taste will be the key skills of the future. 

Writing forces you to distill a thought. When an idea is in your head, it’s loose and incomplete. It’s only when you put it down on paper that you begin to see gaps. filling those gaps improves the idea. It crystallizes it.  To write clearly, is to distill your idea. 

​​Taste is the ability to discern and appreciate the appeal of something. Typically from personal experience, knowledge, or cultural context. It’s ability to distinguish between the subtle differences in what is exceptional in a given context. 

Soon, these skills alone will allow an individual to build worlds. 

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So what’s interesting about this time in the context of business? Well, in the immediate term what’s interesting are the companies that are building these infrastructure layers. The ones who break down technological barriers to creating things. 

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Words to things companies. 

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Words to apps 

Words to games 

Words to images and movies 

Words to music 

Words to analysis 

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Even though we’re in the early innings, there are incredible businesses making this thought a reality. And remember, the tools right now are the worst they will ever be. 

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Cursor - text to web/apps

Suno/Udio - text to sound 

Midjourney/Flux - text to images

Runway/Kling  - text or images to movies 

Lindy/Relevance - text to agentic teams

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This is a golden age for builders. The barriers are low enough that we’re already seeing a huge influx in new products from small teams. And the barriers will continue to fall. 

We’re going to see impossibly large single person businesses. An idea brought to life by an individual, managed by a team of autonomous agents, generating huge amounts of revenue. 

A category of taste maker will be born, Experience DJs. They will blend visual, auditory, sensory technologies to give completely novel experiences to people. 

Those will be subjects for another day. I’ll let your mind wander with that for now. 

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Until next time,

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