Eric R. Parker
11/6/2026
A good friend asked me yesterday what Silicon Valley was like in the 2000s. They were commenting on the current buzz across the region, all focused on AI takeover of every sector of the economy, with illogical sums of money being thrown at every idea with AI attached to it. Obviously, it becomes reminiscent very quickly of the late ‘90s dotcom era, and as an echo, also informed by it. But technically, the 2000s were a time of their own as well. And as I remember that time, there is a very key distinction between the ‘00s and the ‘20s.
The ‘00s were an era of, if not true Tech Altruism, at least Tech Optimism. We believed at that time that computers and the internet were going to make the world a better place. Companies had the lofty goals of organizing the world’s information and bringing humanity together through shared connections. Google even famously had its motto “don’t be evil.”
Were we naive in hindsight? Perhaps, but not any more so than the naive wonder apparent in the eyes of a child within a loving family who has yet to step out into the harsh criticisms of the world beyond. If we’re honest with ourselves, we still root for that childlike vision of the world; that place within time, unguarded by deadlines and comparisons, that allows us to experience the flow of life instead of fighting it.
The ‘20s have brought us fully into the age of Tech Egoism. We no longer focus on how we help people do anything, only how to replace them. It isn’t that AI is going to destroy civilization. What will destroy us all is Egosim. We chase it now in everything.
For the end users, AI is the ultimate technology of individualism. Its promise is that with it, you don’t need other people. You can do everything on your own.
At the top of it all, a handful of technology executives truly believe they can own, or at least seek rent, for the entire economy. They are funded, with valuations far outside of any norms, by people willing to agree that civilization can be economically captured, so long as they own their share.
But if there is one thing George Lucas tried to teach us, when we follow the path of Egoism, there can be only one at the top. For even that master’s apprentice will one day kill them to seize power themselves.
But is the duality of Egoism versus Altruism a false choice to begin with?
From a practical standpoint, choosing either path leads to extremism. Ken Burns wrote in a recent New York Times Op-Ed that, in establishing American democracy, founders recognized that maintaining a democracy would be an active exercise in honoring both individual freedoms and collective freedoms.
Like democracy, AI holds the potential to honor both of these freedoms, but our struggle is that both of these systems are currently captured by Egoism.
When my kids were growing up, I built a Dungeons and Dragons-like role playing game called “The Known World”. It was set in the remnants of a post-apocalyptic Silicon Valley. There were a mix of character types navigating what was left of the physical world, but another world existed where the remains of its fiber and cloud infrastructure were still navigable by a small group that used it to create ‘magic.’ While the backdrop and mechanics were fun, the real objective of the game was to discover how binary logic had destroyed the world, and to have your character achieve post-duality consciousness.
Like so many games, and perhaps the same can be said for life and business, carrying that throughline within interactive roleplay was impossible without becoming heavy-handed. However, it became a guiding architecture for decision-making.
That type of decision architecture is, I think, what we lack today. Mine is the world of entrepreneur support and ecosystem building. Within it, I think we struggle with the same core questions. When AI can think and act, what is our role?
When GPT-3.5 opened our eyes, along with the rest of the world, we saw an opportunity to use a nondeterministic model to guide founders through a defined logic structure developed by examining thousands of startups and identifying the decisions and practices most likely to lead to success. Our software evaluates and mentors founders at each step. It doesn't design their business for them.
In short, our goal was to help people be better, not to replace them.
What I was admitting to our team, though, was that I wasn’t sure those intentions were enough to succeed in the market. Do we believe there is room for helping founders test the way they think, when so much of the promise around AI is that they won’t have to? Are we comfortable accepting a smaller market share in service of our principles? And how do we know when we are holding to our values, versus simply holding to an idea because it was ours?
It became a reflection on our own striving for authenticity. I still believe in what we set out to do. But believing in something doesn’t relieve us of the responsibility to question it, especially when other people are taking risks alongside us.
I find myself carrying a similar question into our work with founders.
I have been told that the kindest thing I can do is tell them to get a job. And sometimes, helping someone recognize that they need a reliable income may be exactly the right advice. It is entirely possible that the business won’t work. I help founders set timed guardrails around how long they can keep going, what they need to learn, and when something has to change.
But I also see the people who have already left their jobs to build something they believe in. They bring their kids to our sessions while they juggle everything else that life requires of them. And having been an entrepreneur for a long time, and worked with thousands of entrepreneurs and wantrepreneurs, there is a persistence you sometimes see in someone’s eyes. You recognize that they aren’t going to quit simply because you have explained the risks.
That persistence doesn’t tell me whether the business will succeed, but it does make me question what my responsibility is once I see it.
How do we help them take a risk without allowing a failed business to have generational consequences? How do we give them enough room to discover whether something can work, while preserving their ability to recover if it doesn’t?
This is why I've become critical of the capital structures we drive entrepreneurs towards.
Within entrepreneur support, we spend a lot of time preparing founders for capital. I wonder how often we stop to ask whether that capital is appropriate for the businesses and communities we want to build. Is Venture Capital the right financial architecture for our communities? For some businesses, maybe. But how did it become the model against which we measure so many others?
Even among pre-seed angels, I increasingly encounter an expectation of meaningful revenue traction before an investor is willing to take a risk. I understand the logic. If almost anyone can build an app with a modest budget for AI credits, having an app means less. It makes sense to look more closely at whether someone wants it, whether they will pay for it, and whether they will keep using it. It is also reasonable to believe that some startups will need less capital for engineering.
But I keep coming back to the founder bringing their kids to our sessions. What, exactly, has become less expensive for them?
They still have to discover the customer, earn their trust, and stay with the business long enough to learn what works. They still need housing, food, and health insurance. Their kids still need them. And if AI makes the job they left harder to return to, the consequences of getting this wrong will undoubtedly be more severe.
The app may be cheaper to build. The time to turn it into a business is not.
If $250K in annual recurring revenue is the gateway to an early investment conversation, how many people can afford the runway to get there? What founders can make it through that filter, and what founders can never afford to take that chance?
I understand why an investor would wait. I also understand why a founder would keep going. It's the space between those two entirely understandable decisions that our field wrestles with.
How much of the risk of growing our communities are we leaving with the person who may be least able to carry it?
We say we want stronger communities, broader ownership, and more people solving meaningful problems. Yet we structure our investments so that founders must carry the earliest uncertainty alone. Once they have removed enough of it, we become willing to participate in the upside.
I don’t think acknowledging that makes investors bad people, any more than persistence makes every founder deserving of an investment. It does make me wonder whether we have accepted a financial architecture that cannot consistently produce the community outcomes we ask of it.
Perhaps this is where the decision architecture I was trying to build into The Known World becomes useful outside of it. I can care about a founder and still question their business. I can respect an investor’s need for a return and still question how much risk we expect someone else to absorb before that investor participates. Holding those concerns together means we have more work to do in designing what comes next.
We need room for capital that helps founders reach traction, with expectations appropriate to that stage. We need financing that can succeed when a business becomes profitable and lasting, even if it never produces a venture-scale exit. And if community benefit is part of our investment thesis, it needs to influence the terms, the timeline, and the risks we are willing to share.
When I talk about moving past egoism and altruism, yes, I am talking about acknowledging the risks, and also sharing them. Yes, I am talking about growing profits, and also building communities. Yes, I am talking about helping people be better, and also to do more.
I don’t have all of that architecture worked out. I am still trying to understand what it asks of our own business, our investors, and me. Good intentions won’t make every business viable. Persistence won’t either. But I struggle to accept that the best we can do is help people prepare, then wait to see who can afford to survive.
I still root for that childlike vision of the world I described earlier. I also know that the children coming to our sessions with their parents will live with the consequences of decisions they did not make.
I want their parents to have a real chance to build what they believe in. And if it doesn’t work, I want them to have a way back, with enough left to build a life.
That seems like something worth designing for.
