A few months ago, I caught up with friends I had not seen in years. A few of them had been following my journey on LinkedIn and asked me to explain what The Agentic Founder really means.
Their questions made me realise I had not shared my thoughts as they have evolved over time.
I recently decided to expand on what I call inner world building here on substack.
Some of my articles might be raw or unpolished, covering themes that have to deal with human identity, agency & consciousness.
I always try to share from lived experience what has worked for me or what I am still learning. Hopefully some of it will resonate with you.
I have often contemplated the things that make a certain founder stand out from all the rest. On the surface, they are selling the same product or service, sometimes with far fewer features or resources. Yet their impact defies their size. This is not a new pattern, but one that has repeated itself countless times across history.
This leads to a deeper question. What resources are available to founders? Do certain founders have unfair advantages? While that might be true in some cases, I believe it is worth exploring whether outstanding founders simply understand how to use the resources we all already have. Perhaps exceptional mastery of simple, everyday tools available to every founder can teach us something.
A simple observation of life shows that the things that matter most are usually free, abundant and completely underrated. We ignore them because they are always there. Always available. Reliable.
Air is the perfect example.
Every single one of us has inhaled surplus amounts of oxygen daily since the moment we were born. Not once do we wake up thinking, “Will there be enough air to breathe this weekend?”
Or, “I need to quickly dash to the shop to make sure we have enough air for our family trip to Spain.”
No one stockpiles it. No one worries about it.
Just the thought of it is absurd.
This is because air is abundant everywhere, so we naturally do not pay attention to it. Yet this resource, which human life cannot do without for even ten minutes, is sorely undervalued and underappreciated.
Because we do not value it, we misuse it, abuse it, or never think about it at all.
Interestingly, as founders, we do the same thing.
When founders think of resources, our minds immediately go to Capital, Intellectual Property, Strategic relationships, technical skills and market distribution. Don’t get me wrong, these are all important, but just like air, they are not the most valuable.
I have found that one of the most powerful, flexible and unlimited resources every human being possesses is also one of the most underused, misunderstood and ignored.
In fact, it is so underrated that it is easy to miss entirely. You really have to pay attention or you will not notice it. And honestly, I do not blame anyone for missing it.
And here is the funny part. I already mentioned this resource earlier. In fact, I mentioned it twice.
Most people still miss it.
The resource is attention.
Attention is the one tool you were born with. You carry it everywhere. You use it constantly, yet you were never taught how to direct it. We spray it, leak it, donate it, waste it, give it away for free, and then wonder why nothing changes.
Attention is the currency of the Agentic Founder.
Pretty basic, right. It really is that simple, but yet Profound.
But if you do not think attention is powerful, go ask Google.
In 2017 they released a research paper that birthed the entire modern AI revolution, including the foundations of ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. Guess what that paper was called? –
Attention Is All You Need.
Not Compute Is All You Need.
Not More Data Is All You Need.
Not Money Is All You Need.
Just attention.
In 2024 I wrote Jailbreak: Escape the Nine to Five Trap, where I explored this idea further.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CW19R49X/
But let me leave you with this:
Attention is the most abundant, most flexible and most powerful tool you already have, and the one you have likely trained the least.
It really might be true.
Attention is all you need.
I agree. I also see attention as a sequencing mechanism. What we focus on and the order in which we do it becomes the structure of our history. Time is the name we give to that ordered pattern of alignments. Exceptional founders use attention in a way that produces coherence across moments. This is interesting work, Peter!