Why we are taking the compass down

In 45 minutes I’m taking the software I spent 5 years, and something like 15,000 hours building off the public face of the internet. I’m going to put it into hibernation, or a cocoon or a sudden winter. I’ve never done this before, so I don’t know what you call it, taking something like this down.

Those who are onboard when that happens will have the option of staying on board, and those who are not will not view it in this incarnation, if at all. It may become something else entirely and re-emerge; it may get sold. I don’t know yet.

I’m hoping a few more people create a subscription before I do that, but if not that’s fine as well.

I still think it is possibly the most powerful self-healing platform on the internet.

And at present, I am personally down $2,400,000 on the project, our investors are down $500,000, and I am paying off about $300,000 dollars in company debt incurred during the build. I went after this project with a ferociousness that I reserve for things that I think could have systemic impacts on humanity-at-large, and we fourteen times failed to find product-market fit. (Or at least, that is how many versions there are.) If someone asks me to write another pitch deck, I would probably punch them in the face.

For a long time- the first twelve versions actually– I tried to figure out if there was something wrong with what we had created. Like-what is the flaw that is keeping people from using it? Why aren’t they signing up? We experimented with various prices, packages, channels, business models, including licensing it to therapists (they didn’t particularly like it, as it shortened their duration with clients substantially, which was not good for business). We learned– don’t sell a product to people whose business it undermines. A good lesson because it means we need to understand what business people are actually in, which sometimes isn’t the business people think they are in.

For a period of time we explored large scale agreements. We were close to doing something structural with Extinction Rebellion, a project on which I worked with several of their founders for a non-trivial number of months (about ten), which wanted it to support their activists who were burning out, but that turned out to be like trying to herd a petri dish of amoebas (you thought herding cats was hard?).

We tried to use it with a global executive coaching and leadership development firm and their corporate clients, and they tried to steal it, lied to us about a bunch of stuff…

With each version, we would solve something that seemed to be a major issue or impediment, and we would make a series of investments of time and talent and money to get the build done. It would really feel like we were on the threshold of breakthrough. And we would announce the next version, and not get the fit.

I still think the idea is correct:

Autonomic diagnostics > foundation model to interpret > appropriate interventions > narrow those down to a relevant few > practice them > change autonomic baseline

But the world has changed since we launched the software. It has changed economically (starting in November 2021 with macro-economic changes when the Fed raised rates). The business models that are viable in tech have shifted by several cycles (crypto came, crashed, came back)(virtual reality came, crashed, and crashed– remember the metaverse?)(augmented reality kinda came, crashed, and crashed- what glasses did which big tech company make?), AI came and stayed.

ChatGPT thieved everything on the internet, swallowed it, Sam Altman obfuscated, they got sued a bunch of times, nothing happened, and now the entire engine of growth in the US economy is related to structural buildout around AI. I’m not saying it is useless, but I am saying

• Apple is a 4 trillion dollar company and their voice agent is so laughably bad I can barely use it to send a text while driving

• ChatGPT-5 was so bad it had to be taken down within days

• A web of circular deals is pushing up AI stocks in ways that do not make sense even if you believe the hype

• OpenAI (on target to make 13B this year) has committed to spending 1.4 trillion dollars the last time I checked

• This essentially ties its fate to all the companies that have agreed that it makes some kind of sense to do a $300 billion deal with a company that is not profitable and whose monetization doesn’t make sense yet

• If you haven’t realized this yet, everything that comes out of the mouth of these CEOs (Sam Altman)(Elon Musk) is designed to cause the valuation of the companies they run to stay sky high. Tesla is not a car company, it’s an ____________ (autonomy company)(robotaxi company)(humanoid robot company)

• the labor market is down 30%

Someone in the tech space told me recently and not to give up on the software, and I was like, Fuck off.

I haven’t given up on anything, but I need my time back and I’m really done staring at a screen.

Someone else told me that the software was ten years ahead of its time, which wouldn’t be a problem if I could pay for my groceries with the revenue we are going to make in ten years when the world catches up. (If someone knows how to do that, let me know.)

I have learned alot on the ride.

I’ve come to the conclusion that there is almost no relationship between invention and commercialization (a lesson I will not forget).

Nikola Tesla could have told me that, I suppose.

That technical/creative founders do not make good operators. Another lesson I will not forget.

And that there are some things that, although I can do them, are actually not how I want to spend my time. (I kind of knew that already, but it was brought home in a different way.)

Despite all of this, the company has not crashed. I have not given up on bringing Autonomics into the world.

I feel pretty relaxed, and pretty resolved, all things considered.

In August, in my mind, I built a giant bonfire and burned through all of the history, the griefs, the time, energy, talent, and treasure that has not turned into something we can use yet.

Much of the past seven years have felt like a battle to me.

I’d like that to be in the rearview mirror.

Last night was Halloween. At dusk I looked out over the valley behind our house, felt the thinness of the veil between the worlds, and considered the transition from harvest to winter time.

I took a walk late, felt the chill in the air, stared at the stars, felt elemental energies moving, held my wife’s hand.

This morning I woke early to watch the sunrise. For a moment, before the orb rose above the horizon, the entire line of it hummed electric, almost like horizontal lightning. And then it rose. And I thought:

This is how the light comes into the world this day.