Funny thing is Time, it doesn’t negotiate, nor does it give a 💩 about you or me. It just continues to roll forward with the indifference of a freight train, with an ability to compress decades into months, memories and lessons to be learned. all the while leaving us humans scrambling to keep up. In its wake empires rise and crumble, technologies emerge and fade, entire civilizations flow like tides against the shores of history however one constant remains: everything changes, whether we’re ready or not.
Today, we are not ready. The pace of change and transformation is accelerating off the charts. I’ve had the pleasure of watching and dreaming about this acceleration for two decades now — through three economic cycles, countless startup pitches, and more VC events and meetups than I care to count.
The Long View
Before we continue, let’s go way back in time. The year is 2019 BC (Before Covid), and we’re still swimming in the future of work, Internet of Things, Web3 blockchain blah hype era.
Being the “creative technologist idea guy,” I’ve always had a clear vision of what the future holds — which makes it dangerously easy to spot problems, gaps, and opportunities that a convergence of technologies would bring. Enter my next startup: a domain-specific hardware computing device that could manage IoT devices, financial instruments, crypto, and personal or critical business data in a cyber-secure, air-gapped, decentralized way.
Deep down, I knew I’d bitten off way more than I could chew. But I didn’t care — this is what entrepreneurs live for.
While knee-deep in research and prototyping, I tumbled down a rabbit hole, diving deep into AI agents and automation. For the first time, I could see exactly how the friction between idea, execution, and market fit would dissolve. The technology was almost there. The infrastructure was emerging. The only missing pieces were timing and resources.
Needless to say, the startup ultimately failed.
In the Trenches
During this period of heightened activity — meeting with founders, VCs, investors, and even joining a recognized accelerator program — I had a front-row seat to the entire ecosystem.
Here’s what I observed during those years in the trenches:
Of the many founders and teams I had met, I was able to identify a number of different archetypes — the Technical Genius, the Serial Entrepreneur, the Domain Expert — and then there was the rare JOAT (Jack of All Trades), who could do a little of everything but wasn’t necessarily the master of any one thing.
Ideas Reality Check: Execution is nothing with out Ideas. All ideas were definitely not created equal. As Peter Thiel puts it in Zero to One: “Every moment in business happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine.” Most founders were building in the decimal range.
The Success Formula: The startup journey from idea to execution to product-market fit required several critical components assembled in the right order — like a complex recipe where timing, sequence, and proportions all mattered. Miss one ingredient or add them in the wrong order, and the whole thing starts to collapse.
Then There Were the VCs
Back then, the choice was brutal: seek VC funding or bootstrap into oblivion. For most founders, the VC route was the dream. It made sense — VCs held all the cards: money, networks, and influence. Some of the critical components startups desperately needed for success. For entrepreneurs like myself, that felt like the only real route to scale.
The problem? Due to the success the VC industry had during the mobile era, much of the VC world had become a clichéd, formulaic caricature of itself. Epitomised by clubby gatekeeping dressed up as value creation, with an unhealthy preoccupation with Ivy League schools and big tech credentials.
This often left entrepreneurs jumping through hoops for access while building the future with their bare hands.
What always struck me was: despite the many startups that do get funding, roughly 90% still end up failing. Which indicates there’s still something fundamentally missing from the equation and plenty of room for optimization.
Don’t misunderstand me — venture capital has been an extraordinary force for innovation. The Valley exists because smart money met bold ideas at the right moment in history. But I recall thinking that VCs were missing a massive opportunity. They should take some of the advice they dish out to startups and innovate themselves — find ways to merge ideas with execution and capital instead of optimizing for yesterday’s signals.
The irony wasn’t lost on me: an industry built on disruption had become remarkably resistant to disrupting itself.
The Starting Gun
An AI-Powered Tsunami
November 2022 changed everything. ChatGPT’s release was the starting gun for what many still don’t realize is the biggest transformation in human history. What seemed impossible in 2019 suddenly looked inevitable, and the compressed timelines I’d predicted accelerated beyond my expectations. Shit It’s really happening!
While others scrambled to understand what AI meant for their industries, I could relax. I knew the tech wasn’t quite there yet, but it would be soon, and when it did, execution costs would start collapsing toward zero. When anyone can prototype, test, and iterate at near-light speed, the bottleneck will shift from “how” to “what” and “why.”
Fast Forward 2025
Coding is apparently dead, and all you need is attention — both online and in your AI models. The new playbook: Pair attention with AI, automation, a dose of creativity and a bit of hustle, and you’ve got the most efficient, cost-effective path to validating a product or service.
Now the same entrepreneurs who once begged for seed checks are building with $10K budgets and AI amplification. The gatekeepers are getting replaced by real-time communities, open-source intelligence, and AI agents. If execution keeps getting cheaper and faster, how and where do the old guard VCs place their bets?
In case you weren’t paying attention, we’re entering a world of instant retail, 24/7 livestream commerce, hyper-personalization, gamified engagement, AI automation, and personal brands flipping into product brands overnight. Your professors aren’t at Harvard, Cambridge, or Berkeley anymore — they’re on YouTube University, teaching real-world skills while traditional institutions debate curriculum changes.
The New Paradigm
Communities have always formed around technological shifts. The venture capital industry itself emerged from such a moment — when California’s aerospace engineers turned their attention to semiconductors and software. Today, new communities are coalescing around AI, automation, and creator economics, but they’re meeting in Discord servers, TikTok comments, and GitHub repositories.
This is where DLT Café comes in. We’re building infrastructure for the new paradigm instead of defending the old one. Think of it as the open sourcification of venture building — community-centric, flexible, and designed for the world where insight scales better than gatekeeping.
For founders, creatives, and executors, there’s now an alternative. For traditional VCs, there’s a choice: adapt your thinking and diversify your approach, or watch alpha migrate to places you neither recognize or understand.
Welcome to the Revolution
Coffee houses have always been centers of enlightenment and revolution. From London’s Lloyd’s to Vienna’s Central Café, the combination of caffeine and conversation has sparked movements that reshaped the world.
What if the next Facebook emerges as a cooperative-powered company? What if the most valuable ventures of the next decade are built by communities rather than lone founders? What if the future of business looks more like open source collaboration than traditional hierarchy?
These aren’t hypothetical questions anymore. The infrastructure is being built. The communities are gathering. The revolution is brewing.
So, welcome to DLT Café. Pull up a chair, join the conversation, and help us build what comes next.
How would you like your coffee?
