A Letter to the Person You're About to Become

I've been lucky more than once.

In 2007, I was weeks away from launching an ad company. I'd left my agency job. I was freelancing to cover the bills. Everything was lined up.

Then I answered a Craigslist ad.

I walked into a small room with six or seven people. The company was called HubSpot. I didn't know it then, but I was stepping into something that would soon define a new category: inbound marketing—the idea that you could pull people in with content and ideas instead of pushing them with ads and cold calls.

I was so convinced something important was happening that I paused my own plans and went all in on a philosophy that said ads were dying.

Eventually, I left and actually launched BuySellAds.

Eighteen years later, it's paid creators over half a billion dollars. I went all in on anti-ads and then built an ad company anyway. That contradiction still makes me smile.

In 2013, we built a way to buy Reddit ads with Bitcoin. Most people thought it was pointless. I thought it was interesting. That curiosity pulled me deeper until I co-founded Great American Mining in 2019, using flare gas from oil wells to mine Bitcoin. We sold the company to Crusoe in 2022.

I've been wrong more often than I've been right. But I've learned to recognize moments when paying attention matters.

I'm paying attention now.

What I Just Did

A few weeks ago, I restructured my entire company.

I took parts of the business that some of my longest-tenured people were running—people who had been loyal to me for years—and sold those businesses to them for a dollar.

Not because they failed. Because the core business needed focus, and they deserved to own the upside of what they'd built.

It's a strange thing to decide on behalf of other people. But I believe it gives them the best chance to win. I'll do everything I can to help them prove me right.

The people who stayed are the bet I'm making on what comes next.

Will Guidara once wrote: "Sometimes the best time to promote people is before they are ready. So long as they are hungry, they will work even harder to prove that you made the right decision."

This isn't about throwing people into chaos. It's about trust. About giving people room to grow into responsibility instead of waiting until they're perfectly prepared.

I know some of the people who left may read this and feel conflicted. I don't have perfect words for that. Both things are true: I believe deeply in the people who left, and I believe deeply in the people who stayed. One group gets to build something that's theirs. The other gets to build something new with me.

Company transitions are hard. This decision wasn't taken lightly. I want to see us all win.

The Honest Part

Here's something I haven't said publicly.

Since 2018, I've been bored with BuySellAds.

That was the year I spun out Great American Mining. I became obsessed with Bitcoin, with infrastructure, with building something new. BuySellAds kept running. It stayed profitable. It kept paying creators. I didn't abandon it—but I was coasting. Letting it idle while my curiosity lived somewhere else.

For six years, I maintained a business I was no longer deeply curious about.

Then something changed.

Late last November, I was working with AI the way I had been for a while—using it as a faster search engine, a better autocomplete. But suddenly the answers weren't just faster. They were right. Consistently right.

And I noticed something unsettling.

I wasn't teaching it anymore.

It was teaching me.

I was learning faster. Seeing angles I would've missed. Reaching for it the way I'd reach for a colleague whose judgment I trusted.

That was the moment.

For the first time in six years, I felt genuinely curious about BuySellAds again—not the old version, but a version I couldn't have built before.

Why This Changed My Ambition

What surprised me wasn't speed. It was ambition.

I've never lacked ideas. The problem was friction. Interesting ideas used to require coordination—experts, meetings, momentum, patience. By the time anything tangible emerged, the curiosity that sparked the idea had already faded.

Now I can take an idea from a sketch to something real in hours or days instead of months. I can push it until it breaks. I can see where it shines. And I can do it on my own.

That changes what you're willing to attempt.

Not because you suddenly want more—but because progress itself becomes interesting again.

A year ago, rebuilding parts of BuySellAds or testing entirely new directions would have required weeks of planning and a team just to explore. Today, I can prototype, pressure-test, and decide whether to double down or walk away in a weekend.

That doesn't just save time.

It expands the size of the ideas worth trying.

What I'm Seeing

I'm not early to AI. Plenty of people have been talking about it for years.

But a couple of months ago, something clicked. This isn't going to unfold gradually.

It's going to happen faster than most people think.

Not faster than the optimists think.

Faster than that.

I've spent two decades in tech. I've watched hype cycles rise and collapse. I've seen confident predictions turn into footnotes.

This doesn't feel like that.

It feels like HubSpot in 2007. Like Bitcoin in 2013. Too early to know exactly how it plays out. Too obvious to ignore.

The difference this time is the window.

What took the internet fifteen years will take AI five.

And we're already well into year three.

The Math That Haunts Me

Two people.

Same job. Same talent.

One figures out how to work with AI in the next twelve months. Uses it daily. Learns to think with it.

The other waits.

Eighteen months from now, they aren't comparable. Not because one is smarter—but because one has a multiplier the other doesn't.

Scale that across every role, every company, every industry.

That's what I see coming.

What I Think You're Feeling

If your work depends on thinking—writing, designing, deciding, building—you can feel this shift coming, even if you can't quite name it yet.

You've seen the headlines. You've tried ChatGPT. You know you should probably be doing more.

But you're busy. It's not urgent yet. "Eventually" feels sufficient.

I felt that too.

Then I did the math. And "eventually" stopped being enough.

The Person You're About to Become

There's a version of you eighteen months from now.

They haven't mastered this—but they've figured it out.

They move faster, yes. But more importantly, they think bigger. They take on projects they wouldn't have attempted before.

They look back at this moment as the inflection point.

That person is available to you.

Eighteen months from now, this won't feel like a trend you missed. It will feel like a baseline you didn't build.

Not because you can't catch up—but because others won't slow down.

One More Thing

I've always admired writers who are clear and direct. No wasted words.

I'm not naturally that kind of writer. For years, I avoided putting my thoughts out publicly because I didn't think I could do them justice. And I don't enjoy doing things where I don't have a chance to be good.

This changed that.

These are my thoughts. My story. My point of view. But I used AI to sharpen the focus, refine the structure, and push me through the parts where I got stuck.

A year ago, I couldn't have written this—not because I had nothing to say, but because I didn't have a partner that could help me say it clearly.

Now I do.

That's the point.

AI doesn't replace what makes you you. It removes the friction between what you have and what you can make.

I've had this story in me for a long time.

Now it's out.

What's in you that's been waiting?

I'd rather be wrong for moving too early than wrong for moving too late.

One mistake you recover from.

The other compounds against you.

I've made my choice.

I'll see you on the other side.