I’m tired of it. So much so that I’m at the edge of blasphemy, ready to blame everyone and anyone.

And as it happens, lately, the one I blame for this resurgence of nonsense is a French dude I talk to more than my partner. Claude, it calls itself.

Not a fan.

Especially when it always thinks it is right.

It is as if a marketing agency married a forecasting engine and the child came out fluent, confident, and with no idea what it’s talking about all at the same time.

The crazy part: that’s exactly what happened.
The confusing part. It’s that I kind of like it while simultaneously hating it.

And in between the crazy and the confusing, a debt is rising, whether in you, your team, or your organization, and by the time you figure out what’s at play, it will be too late.

Welcome to the circus.

Ben requires no introduction, even though he is the last person I thought would get this.

In an interview back from 2024, he gave a relatable explanation of what AI is and isn’t, saying: “AI is a craftsman at best. A craftsman can learn to make Stickley furniture by sitting beside somebody, seeing what their technique is, and imitating. That’s how LLMs basically work.”

He followed with a more technical explanation, which I’ll skip, because the real insight came after: “Craftsman is knowing how to work. Art is knowing when to stop.”

That was profound. “When to stop” is the whole act. Not only to distinguish AI’s strengths from ours as humans. But more so to explain how we collaborate.

And isn’t that splendid? To look at creation from the angle of NOT creating.

Ben Affleck got it.

And to help you see it too. You need to leave the craftsmanship to AI and become an artist. And there is no better way than “vibe coding.”

AI will code.
And you will vibe.

The net is out, and you are standing on the trapeze. I’m hoping you will jump.

Vjera is a dear friend and collaborator who recently asked me about vibe coding and unintentionally voiced the hesitation you are feeling now, so thank you :)

She said: ”I’m not vibing coding because I do think that you still need to understand a bit of coding in order to vibe code.”

So here is what I suggested:

The solution isn’t to make you a coder. Instead, it’s about understanding how to collaborate with our French dude or any of his friends, Ben style.

Meaning knowing when to stop. And that requires you to think in terms of systems. The smaller the system, the better. And here is why.

The problem with programming is that when you have no clue what is written, you need to anchor yourself somewhere.

So if you think of the code as a black box. Then, you better know really well what goes in and out of it.

And even then, you don’t have to do it alone. You can use AI to help you. Tell it to describe it, and now you have something that you can work against that you understand.

And with that understanding, you learn another thing. Where the boundaries are, so when the time comes to say NO, you know.

So to vibe code: Define the system. Edit the system. And only then, tell it to build. This is true whether you’re building a waitlist, a product, or a platform.

You are now ready to let go of the trapeze. Will you jump?

If you did, one word is sure to greet you: (Recommended). If you are not familiar, you will encounter it early, as you are defining the system or during the build.

It comes in the form of a menu. Option A. Option B. Option C. And next to one of them, a little tag: (Recommended).

I loved that for the first few iterations, and you probably will too. It took away my need to think, and it was easy. Yet at the same time it was the source of my frustration.

Because five weeks into capping Claude Fable every single week, something broke. I started to notice how often Recommended was not, in fact, recommended.

And just like that, fifteen years of software development came flooding back with anger. And NO became my go-to answer.

No, not like this. This is stupid. No, don’t do that took center stage.

And in a nutshell, this is the tension rising between those who know what good looks like and Artificial Intelligence.

And with it, a relationship is created. It surfaces here as resistance, but for most of you using AI for advice, emails, or board presentations, that tension hasn’t peaked yet, so it goes unnoticed.

And as of now, you are a clown standing in the middle of a ring with no whip, and the lions are about to eat you.

And by all means, they will because the debt is accruing regardless, and its ramifications will creep up on you out of nowhere.

So a fair warning to heed. Because by the time the shots are fired, the circus is over. And after 15 years, 5 weeks, and endless conversations on Human Behavior x Technology, these are the relationships to watch out for:

The first relates to Creativity. AI knows how to work. It will never know when to stop. So it will out-craft you before breakfast. It can generate a hundred options; it cannot want one of them. The wanting — the taste, the refusal of the other ninety-nine — is where creativity actually lives, and it is yours. Here your product or brand lives or dies.

The second comes for decision-making. AI can offer you options, but you have to know where the boundaries sit and what good looks like. Not picking an option from a menu, but holding options against a system you understand. No system, no measure. No measure, and whatever menu is in front of you quietly becomes the decider. That’s your governance fading.

The third hides in behavior. The relationship is real, and it’s being written whether you recognize it or not. Every session trains two models: the one on the server, and the one in your head. If the conversation becomes one-sided, something is lost, and it may just be you, not the model. This is where culture erodes, and it's the last thing you'll notice.

The relationship debt is building, and like technical debt, it accrues in your people rather than your codebase and compounds faster. And your AI ROI deck is the last place it will show up, if it ever does.

So if you don’t want to explore this alone, and I have been working on this for a while now and would love for you to join the conversation; we have prepared a one-pager and an upcoming session to discuss this further with you. Drop your email at realitycheck.institute/the-hidden-debt-of-ai.

Looking back, it is always easier to omit the connective tissue that binds us and watch history as a fairy story rather than reality.

Every shift happens in the openings of hesitation and doubt, married with frustration. That’s where the questions that matter live. They don’t trust the certainty on display, but have faith in the blurry middle that keeps the wonder.

And today with AI, it is no different. So instead of answering, focus on the asking.

Because the future lives in understanding the relationships we hold and with whom, and that’s what will outlast this efficiency craze we are in.

So, which of the three is already showing up in your team: creativity, decision-making, or behavior?

Until the next time,

Carlo Mahfouz

Not to be too dramatic or anything, but here is what happened.

Over the course of 10 days, I took a leap of faith and committed to the $200-per-month plan to get “50% of the time” access to Fable. Still not sure what that means.

All I know is that I watch the bar that says weekly limit, and when it hits 100% and goes red, I’m out — waiting for next Thursday, 5 a.m., for the reset.

If you can’t tell, the game already started.

Over 10 days, I watched my limit get consumed at varying degrees — something I’d gotten familiar with from using Opus, Sonnet, and their sidekick ChatGPT.

But before I got sold on this investment, I had encountered an animation bug in React Native that none of the other models could solve.

To my surprise, Fable fixed it on the first go — by searching online rather than endlessly trying to reproduce the bug, relying solely on a screenshot I gave it.

I was impressed. Mind you, my background is in software engineering, so I was double impressed.

Loading an animation in a browser and catching the exact millisecond it fails is still something LLMs are bad at. Because of race conditions and all for the tech-savvy.

A dilemma of sorts that kept happening, even though I had explicitly said to the agent file, "Don’t ever test animations."

You burn tokens like there’s no tomorrow and end up back where you started — frustrated, fighting an opinionated LLM with a big unresolved bug.

Don’t go there. It’s dark.

So the game continues — and you start feeling the resistance.

Now, in those 10 days I accomplished what would have taken me 6 months. So this is not a rant about how expensive LLMs are, nor a plea to stop using them.

But as always, there’s a catch.

Sharing my marvelous creation with a friend to test, she asked me how I came up with this — a fully fledged app which you will learn about in a minute — and instinctively I said:

"It was me and Claude."

And then a few messages later I followed with:

“And of course 15 years of product development lol minor detail 😂” — verbatim.

The trap was set, and I was falling into it headfirst. The temptation was so extreme that the roles had started to mutate.

Who is the engineer and who is the machine? Who is programming who?

And that’s where it hit me.

You see, not so long ago 4 years to be exact I launched my first book, Reality Check.

The day I did that, I forcefully and begrudgingly entered the social media game to spread the word about it.

So to the whims of the machine learning systems behind these algorithms — the original LLMs, if I may say — I had to calibrate my content.

And I hated it.

One day I reached 1,000 people; the next, 500. An overnight loss I had to readjust to so my reach didn't falter. And at some point I gave up. Well, frankly, at multiple points.

The creator was at the mercy of the platform they were creating on — rather than the message their content had to deliver.

And there. Right there.

Déjà vu.

That’s what is happening with LLMs, and it’s deeper than the role reversal.

Over those 10 days, and another 10 that followed, I started noticing the patterns.

One: if you're spending more than $200 per month on your LLM, the roles have reversed — you are being played. You are now optimizing for the LLM, the same way you once optimized your content for whatever algorithm was ranking and placing it that month.

Two: context is both a blessing and a curse. The more you build, the more your agents.md file grows — and with it, the constraints on what you can do. You get stuck in a rabbit hole where half your context window is loaded before you even start. Split it into agents. Trim it ruthlessly. Most of it is useless. Same as your hashtags.

Three: the opinionated algorithm — your unapologetic LLM. This is where it truly becomes a game of social media. The model has tastes, same as the algorithm did. Fighting them burns tokens, so you give in. And slowly it’s shaping how you build, the way the algorithm shaped what you made.

Yet all is for naught. As for better or worse, here it is.

That app my friend tested is called Exercise Bites — a two-minute movement practice built around questions, because I needed it before anyone else. It’s now in public beta: exercisebites.fit

Try it. I’ll respond to every single one of you — happily.

Before Thursday, 5 a.m., of course.

Thus, the dependency is born the same day social media told you consistency is key and to post every day. Can you see it?

If not yet, that's okay. Don’t stop playing. But do remember: you know what good looks like — and when you don’t, it lives with your users’ feedback or the experts in their respective fields.

Nothing new here; the old playbook is still the same.

And after all of this, I don’t know if I nailed it — the marketing or the development. All I know is that the list of algorithms I keep contending with just keeps growing.

And so does the cost. $200 or $8000 is only the part you can see. The real cost is the behavioral one shaping you or your organization in every corner.

So, as the lines between you and your LLM blur, a fair warning — not a judgment call.

And even then, keep playing.

Hope this helps you, and best of luck on your journey!

Carlo Mahfouz

And overnight, all of that disappeared. Well, kind of. A hundred years is nothing from a behavioral standpoint. We simply don’t evolve that fast. Our instincts and wiring haven't caught up — and they won't anytime soon.

So, looking at where technology has gotten us today, it feels like we live in a world no longer within reach. The speed of change has kept us preoccupied.

Our default tendency is to slip into the romance of the old days, hoping that the safety of our old behavior will save us. And when that doesn’t work, we crumble under the weight of overwhelm. Then discouragement. And ultimately get so stuck that we do nothing. Instead of gaining traction, we keep falling behind. And it becomes so easy to blame technology for it all because the alternative is more difficult to admit.

Yet, after 20 years of building digital ecosystems, whether by hand or transforming organizations to do so, the pattern is always the same. Technology is not the complex system in this equation. Human behavior is.

Our resistance, our fear, our psychological defaults under pressure — that's where the real obstacle lives. And until we're honest about that, no amount of better tools will close the gap.

How to capitalize on it?

Optimizing for human behavior is where the real competitive advantage lives. As AI accelerates the commoditization of tools and capabilities, three investments remain durable regardless of what technology does next.

1. Onboarding is the golden bridge.

Every time something new is introduced, a behavioral gap opens that is rarely addressed. It presents as poor adoption or resistance to change, yet most often it is poor onboarding or, in most cases, no onboarding at all. The integration stage becomes a bottleneck as real-world needs clash with the ambitious solutions. This dissonance is where the investment stalls and the transformation loses momentum.

2. Relationships for derisking.

Most risk lies in the multitude of variables you cannot control. No technology or capital can help you there, because the biggest variable is always human. By investing in relationships, you activate deeply human instincts — the sense of obligation, the willingness to share information selectively, and the tendency to prioritize those within your circle when things get difficult. Build that capital before you need it, because when volatility hits, it is the most underleveraged derisking strategy available.

3. Adaptable culture is the engine.

Technology can be replicated. With AI, sometimes within months. What cannot be replicated at the same speed is the behavioral infrastructure of an organization — how it absorbs change, makes decisions under pressure, and onboards new realities without losing cohesion. The delta between how long a transition was supposed to take and how long it actually took is your culture tax. Invest in that infrastructure, because it is the only competitive advantage that gets stronger the more disruption you absorb.

Why does it work?

Because focusing on the least volatile component in the system is a long-term strategy that compounds. It sounds absurd that the slowest cog wheel, our human behavior, becomes what sets the foundation to handle the speed of everything else.

Technology moves fast, which means any advantage it creates is, by definition, temporary. Once established, human behavioral patterns are sticky and hard to replicate.

As every tool becomes a legacy system. Every competitive advantage enabled by technology gets commoditized. Every market shifts. What does not depreciate at the same rate is the behavioral muscle.

Thus, proper onboarding increases adoption rates while simultaneously improving stickiness — not through lock-in tactics, but through genuine integration into how people work.

The trust infrastructure built through the right relationships grows over time, opening more doors and opportunities, reducing exposure to risk.

And a system where humans are well-oriented behaviorally can absorb new tools and disruptions more easily, because the underlying operating logic stays intact even as the surface-level technology changes.

What cannot keep pace with the speed of technology is precisely what keeps it in check.

Understanding the system is the easy part. Living inside it is another thing entirely. And the best part is that all you need, you already know — the only problem is that in that moment, it will feel as if you are behind, have no control, and are ready to spiral back into overwhelm. Holding steady while living inside the disruption becomes essential.

What to expect and how to hold through it?

Leaning into the human, this is going to sound poetic and doesn’t have answers. Instead of resolving the dissonance, we will embrace it and rely on old behaviors not as a romanticized fantasy of what’s old is better but as a recalibration mechanism that forces us back into what’s real and close.

1. Walk to reach your destination. Every time you feel overwhelmed, slow down and find your footing. What is the next step I can take? Where am I? Can I do this alone? — Focus on the onboarding.

2. Hear only what’s within your vicinity. Anchor back into what influences you. Who/What is around me? Who/What to remove or add? When I move what stays close, what shifts? — Focus on the relationships.

3. See the horizon in front of your eyes. You can handle only what you can see. What behaviors and constraints are shaping my reality (good or bad)? Where do I feel more comfortable and supported? Where can I find what excites me? Focus on the culture.

The Behaviors in Action

We came to believe that logic and analytical rigor are where our answers live — and so we reach for them first, especially when disoriented. Yet what we overlook is that our emotional and philosophical capacities are no less potent in shaping our reality — and require as much, if not more, tending to keep moving.

That is the aliveness adaptive behavior creates. Instead of playing catch-up to every trend and shiny new thing that comes your way, you are proactively shaping the foundations to handle any disruption.

Technology won’t slow down.
The behaviors will lag behind.
But now whatever comes next is within reach.

That’s The Founders Truth: Ambiguity, Absurdity, Aliveness.

And you can experience it today. What feels most out of reach right now?

Have a great day,
Carlo Mahfouz

P.S. I had a great conversation with Dave Van Bennekum about how we communicate differently when the environment shifts — and why that's harder than it sounds. Listen!​

P.P.S. Struggling to Make Decisions When Bandwidth Is Scarce — I wrote about it last week. Read.

P.P.P.S. On Saturday, March 7th, and I are hosting a workshop on Digital Presence by Design. Sign up here.

Every choice feels like survival. You know the pressure, even if what's at stake for you is different. It's easy to get overwhelmed. To burn out. To freeze and become unable to move. And through it all, the question that holds us hostage is whether we are doing the right thing.

But what high-pressure environments often reveal are the constraints we ignore:

1. Decision-making is a cognitively taxing activity

2. Under pressure, we don’t have the luxury to invest the energy or even the bandwidth to undertake such an endeavor.

Yet instead of conserving our capacity to operate, we keep burning it by trying to perfect each decision, when reality demands a different approach.

So today, we focus on optimizing a different type of capital: the energy and bandwidth to keep moving. And it starts with something my dad, who lived through the civil war, still repeats to this day. One I internalized without even realizing it. For years, I thought it was just a survival mechanism, and in some way it probably was.

But as I look back at it now, it was so much more. Three words that outline a simple strategy holding the key to the right decisions without needing them to be right.

“Move Between The Dots”

The constraints you face are real — whatever they are. Given limited bandwidth and cognitive load, this approach prioritizes momentum over perfect decisions. It's always in motion.

Three components:

Move

Movement doesn’t come from feeling ready—it comes from leveraging whatever energy is present. Fear, anxiety, urgency, excitement—all of it creates momentum. It flows continuously because it isn’t an event you prepare for and recover from.

Between

You’re always in transit, moving through the space between decision points. There’s no “before” or “after”—only during. No right or wrong, even. You’re staying open to multiple interpretations and accepting decisions that aren't fully understood or justified.

The Dots

No “major” versus “minor” decision points. Career move, capital allocation, market entry, partnership pivot—just dots. This flattens the pressure. When there’s no inflection point, no single moment that defines everything, paralysis loses its grip. Each dot is one node in the network, not a fork that splits in two.

Why does it work?

Because you stop assuming that any decision is inherently righteous. You stop separating yourself from the flow of events, trying to stand outside them and choose “correctly.”

Control is fleeting. What feels right today becomes wrong tomorrow—and vice versa. The landscape shifts faster than your analysis can keep up.

When you stop trying to optimize each decision, you reclaim bandwidth. The pressure doesn't disappear—it redistributes. Instead of crushing you at every decision point, it flows through you as momentum. The absurdity is that we waste energy optimizing for outcomes we can't control, instead of embracing a fluid reality.

When it’s working, decisions keep happening—but decision-making disappears.

You’re not trying to nail the perfect choice. You're accepting that what you deem the wrong choice today might be exactly what you need tomorrow. And that some of the justification or rationalization you might not fully capture in that moment.

With that realization, decisions no longer feel like endings. They become openings—regenerative rather than terminal. Where each dot is a world of options, not a single inflection point.

How to maintain momentum?

The constraint is cognitive bandwidth. The question isn't just "how do I move?"—it's "what's stopping me from moving?"

These practices are diagnostic; think of them as reality checks. Each reveals where your energy drains and where your tolerance for ambiguity breaks. They help you find the aliveness in motion itself: not making the right decisions to survive, but maintaining the energy to thrive.

1. Do Nothing to Move.

Do nothing, that includes trying not to do anything. Which means you will most likely be doing something. Don’t fight it. The purpose is not to capture time to do more, but to observe where your attention drifts. Understand what’s occupying your cognitive and emotional capacity. It is a practice to almost empty yourself from “the doing” to reclaim your energy. Allow thoughts to come and go.

What it reveals: Where your energy is actually going versus where you think it's going. The gap is your leak.

2. Read or Write Poetry to Understand The Between

Living in the between means engaging with ambiguity and unclear meaning. Poetry trains you to sit with ambiguity without resolving it. It includes processing emotions faster—not by avoiding them, but by feeling them fully without needing absolute answers. If you can’t sit with that, you won’t have energy for movement.

What it reveals: Your tolerance for multiple, unresolved interpretations. If you feel compelled to find the "right" meaning or extract one definitive answer, you're still seeking certainty instead of embracing movement.

3. Zoom Out to See The Dots.

The closer you are to each decision, the more massive it feels. Zoom out. Make it a dot in a field, not THE DOT. Let go of control over how it resolves. This doesn't diminish its importance — it strips away its power to paralyze you. The pattern of moving between dots defines your trajectory, not any single decision. Don't map outcomes. Observe the dot's size relative to all others.

What it reveals: Which decisions you're unconsciously inflating. If you can't zoom out, the decision has captured too much bandwidth—you're trying to control outcomes rather than maintain momentum.

The Movement in Action

In the long term, enduring enterprises and unconventional paths compound from sustained momentum, not perfect decisions.

A friend who’s known me for almost 20 years said recently, “Your energy in keeping pushing through is commendable.” She’s witnessed my journey across oceans, multiple domain shifts, countless decisions—some that worked, many that didn’t.

And it made me realize: this is the right metric for making the right decisions. Not the outcomes. The sustained energy to maintain momentum.

Instead of being paralyzed, you're pivoting underconstraints and moving through more decisions, not fewer.

The pressure won't disappear.
The cognitive load won't lighten.
But the decisions no longer hold you hostage.

That’s The Founders Truth: Ambiguity, Absurdity, Aliveness.

And you can experience it today. What's stopping you from moving?

Have a great Sunday,
Carlo Mahfouz

P.S. Looking for poetry/prose to read? “Let the wind carry you” is my latest.

P.P.S. Struggling to know how to start — I wrote about it last week. Read.

P.P.P.S. Exploring the Self: Technology’s Role in Our Reality: I had a great conversation about this with Vjera Orbanic. Listen!​

And it's rarely a problem of not knowing what to say or not having ideas, but a resistance to putting something out there that feels safe. Our fight or flight response is still active as if we were living in caves. So, how do you go up against built-in programming?

The answer requires some imagination.

Imagine there were two tracks. One I'm going to call the mind track, and another the real track.

~ On the mind track, you need control; thus, habits, systems, and anything that provides security. (Most got this one down)

~ On the real track, you have no control. Uncertain territory filled with ambiguity. You can observe it, but you cannot change it; yet it’s where everything happens, including starting.

You cannot change the built-in programming, but you don’t need to dismiss the real track either. In holding both truths, you are no longer hostage to either.

Let’s play the dance between both tracks…

Start with a number. Like this #001.

When engaging with uncertainty, the first thing the mind seeks is certainty. And while the ambiguity is the predicament, it can be contained rather than dismissed. A number satisfies one track without requiring the other to resolve first.

It signals:

1. A starting point, even if you don’t know where to start.

2. Continuity, even when you have no clue what the steps are.

3. A pull for the next number that’s hard to explain but undeniable.

Why does it work?

Because numbering lets you operate on both tracks simultaneously, but only if you recognize it. That might sound like a small shift, but it is a key one.

Mind track gets: Constraint through commitment. A schema. Structure that bypasses "the right first step" because you're not claiming rightness—just sequence. The certainty it craves.

Real track stays: Messy. Uncertain. Free to emerge. You're not forcing it to crystallize before it's ready. Let it!

You’re not resolving the ambiguity — you’re containing it.

Most people make the mistake of waiting for the real track to become clear before engaging the mind track. They treat ambiguity as a blocker to everything, when it's only blocking one track.

The absurd part is that the ambiguity is necessary. It signals you are still on the real track. If you lose it, you are operating in the spiraling mind and will never start.

Because what we usually dismiss is that we work in a one-dimensional world, but the reality is that we operate in a multi-dimensional space. As absurd as it might sound:

In one dimension, you can be completely clueless. In another, you can be absolutely certain. And neither negates the other, nor is a substitute.

You can move forward with absolute confidence while being absolutely confused. Both states are real. Both are happening simultaneously. And frankly, you know people who represent this, and you smirk at their ability to pull it off every time you see it.

So stop trying to optimize a single track. Stop waiting for all the ambiguity to resolve before you act. Leverage the dimensions you actually live in—the certain and the uncertain.

All of that sounds great, and yet something is missing.

You understand the two tracks. You have your numbering system. The intellectual prison doors are loosening. And yet you're still not moving.

What actually enables you to dance between both tracks?

This is the hardest part to accept because it requires something outside of you. The aliveness born from connection.

In other words, you need help. Three bridges between the tracks:

1. AI, your content generator on steroids.

This is the most passive and artificial, but for some, it is enough. Don’t seek it for answers but for discovery. The mind track loves processing. Give it a recorded meeting or an idea, and ask it to extrapolate and help you understand it; from that, learn. In learning, you create a stronger connection to what you seek, thus helping your mind track make sense of what’s emerging on the real track, creating momentum between them.

2. Voices through podcasts and books.

Listen to others share their lived experiences to inspire reflection and, in turn, create space for new thinking. Don’t look for answers but inspiration. These provide the mind track with patterns to recognize, while the real track mirrors and reflects. The connection happens in the resonance.

3. Reach out to People.

Ask for help publicly, privately, or even paid support from coaches or experts. This is the most direct bridge. Another human being creates aliveness that exists on the real track but energizes action on the mind track. Within that space, ingenuity flourishes.

The Dance in Action

Do all three— give the mind track its system containing the ambiguity rather than dismissing it, embrace the absurdity of moving while confused honoring the real track's uncertainty, tap into aliveness through connection—and before you know it, you will look back and see that somewhere around #043, you notice you’ve been creating value for weeks, and people are asking how to pay you.

That’s when you discover: You already started a business. And “how to start” disappeared in the flow of the dance.

The mind track is still seeking control.
The real track is still uncertain.
But now you're dancing between them.

That's The Founders Truth: Ambiguity, Absurdity, Aliveness.

And you can experience it today. So what’s #001?

Have a great Sunday,
Carlo Mahfouz

P.S. This is #001 of a reboot — my 5th attempt at keeping this weekly newsletter alive. If this resonated, I'd love to hear what your #001 is. Just hit reply.

P.P.S. Beyond the self-made founder and the Power of an Ecosystem: I had a great conversation about this with Vjera Orbanic. Listen!​

P.P.P.S. Want my help in a 1:1 call? I’m on Intro, where people book my time for quick consulting calls. Let’s talk!

Spotify:

Or on YouTube. You can find all episodes and links to the podcast platform on podcast.thefounderstruth.com

Happy Listening,
Carlo

As for what’s coming next year:

📚 Book Trilogy announcement

🎙️Podcast Announcement

💬 New socials for The Founders Truth to follow:

• LinkedIn

• TikTok

• YouTube

• Instagram

And last but not least, early reveal of new cover for the second edition of Reality Check which I would love to hear your thoughts on 👇

HAPPY NEW YEAR 🎊🥳🤗

In this short trailer, Youri Hermes teases out all the remarkable facets the podcast will introduce for aspiring and established founders, exploring themes of ambiguity, absurdity, and aliveness, not just success stories.

The podcast complements the book trilogy by offering dynamic discussions. If you are interested in joining an episode, please let me know. We will also have some episodes open to community members.

Some Takeaways:

• No founder is truly self-made; support systems are crucial.

• Understanding the harsh realities of entrepreneurship can reduce stress.

• Engaging in conversations about team dynamics in ambiguous situations is essential.

That’s why with the second edition of Reality Check, it is all about being more explicit and getting you there as fast as possible.

The original edition was already structured around three pathways: analytical (the first three chapters), creative (the middle three), and spiritual (the final three). But many readers didn’t realize it, so the new edition changes that.

It opens by clearly defining these personas so you can immediately identify your starting point. This is you? Start here.

In addition to that, each section will now include a map that helps you locate where you are now and how you’re moving. Not because mapping will get you there, but because it creates the right environment. The right mindset. The right space for you to visualize the process.

And the best part, you can do all the latter by reading one chapter.

If you could only read one chapter to get unstuck right now, would you know which one to choose?

P.S. If you already have the book, the new mapping tools will be shared in a separate workbook, and I will announce here how to get your hands on it.

Book One: "Reality Check” focuses on the individual founder — removing distractions, sitting with ambiguity, and finding clarity in that paradoxical space. It’s about the internal work that precedes everything else.

Book Two: “Relativity Has Lost Its Purpose,” shifts to teams. No founder succeeds alone, and this book examines team dynamics through the lens of cultural behaviors rather than performance metrics.

Book Three: “The Culture of Why & The Rise of AI” explores how technology can actually remove disconnection. It examines how we’ll collapse timelines, identity, and environmental constraints, creating a space for our humanity to flourish.

The trilogy aims to give founders a complete journey while cutting through the conventional wisdom that often misleads us about technology, teams, and ourselves.

Which book excites you the most, and what questions arise for you that you’d like to see answered?

Today, a trilogy is born.

Because once you find yourself, you still have to lead teams trapped in the rigor of optimization. And even great teams can’t escape systems designed for a world that no longer exists.

Self → Teams → Society.

Three books that move through the layers where transformation gets stuck and reveal what becomes possible when we stop pretending we have it figured out.

The Founders Truth Trilogy begins in March 2026 with a founder-focused relaunch of Reality Check.

This newsletter documents the patterns in real time. I invite you to join us on this journey for founders who refuse to optimize away their humanity.

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