What's next for Rich Future

1 year writing about the future of work, AI, and money.

A year ago I was sitting in my home office, getting ready to press publish on my first Rich Future Weekly Brief. It was titled “We’re not all working in the same economy anymore.” The Brief’s main thesis was that AI was splitting the job market in two: 1) people becoming more valuable to the market by leveraging AI early and 2) people not using AI becoming more vulnerable to job displacement.

Honestly, it fascinates me to reflect on how much this topic has progressed across the market in just twelve months. Back then, I framed AI as a leverage tool: use it early or get left behind. It felt true at the time. A year later, it feels reductive. AI is not a blunt force leverage tool. We can use it to produce more. But does more = better? Of course not. If more was better then AI slop would be embraced by society, not vehemently resisted. Which brings us to the topic of judgment.

To quote Naval Ravikant,

A leveraged worker can out-produce a non-leveraged worker by a factor of one thousand or ten thousand. With a leveraged worker, judgment is far more important than how much time they put in or how hard they work.

Judgment is defined as “the ability to make considered decisions or come to sensible conclusions.” AI is everywhere these days. From our Super Bowl commercials to our customer service interactions. Judgment is not everywhere. Writing Rich Future for the past 52 weeks taught me that trusted judgment is more scarce than information, access, or even capital. AI makes it easier than ever to produce and harder than ever to discern.

My goal for Year 2 is to simply continue earning your trust. Some of you periodically share with me various business and investment decisions you’ve made based on what you read here. And anyone who knows me IRL knows I simply love helping people make money. So please keep doing that. Your wins mean more to me than any growth metric I could share today. But hey, a few highlights from the past year:

• Joining a social club in May that inspired me to launch a new series of Rich IRL events this year (more below)

• My brother’s engagement

• Hitting #7 Rising in Business

  

• La La Land coming to AZ… the almond croissant. Get the almond croissant.

• Establishing a monthly game night rhythm with friends. Our working theory is your game play style as an adult maps pretty well to your Hogwarts house… I’m Slytherin :)

• Writing about money. Two favorites were: “there are so many ways to make money” and “The $2T bridge to the future of money.”

• Getting emails like these… from you!

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I’ve learned a lot about myself as both writer and founder over the past 52 weeks of shipping these briefs. I’ve learned that synthesizing the future of AI, money, and culture into something worth reading every seven days is cognitively demanding. The first few Sundays after hitting publish my brain felt like my grandma’s famous fruit jello.

I experimented with Substack Notes a ton and had some viral success but if you were to ask me our relationship status today, I’d tell you… it’s complicated. I know the formats that work to grow but there’s just something about publishing thoughtful work into a feed and watching it float alongside AI-generated garbage that kinda ruins the fun. More broadly, now that I’m five years into entrepreneurship and one year into building a media business, I am pretty clear on the fact that I do not want to be chronically online, nor posting “breaking news” content that spikes readers’ cortisol. I’m interested in building the version of a media business that’s also a lifestyle business.

To me, a lifestyle business means the quality of your work and the quality of your life outside of work amplify each other. I’ve learned my writing quality improves when there’s a bit more flex in my publishing schedule. I believe shipping the Weekly Brief, every Sunday was the right call for Rich Future’s first year. I was building something new, in front of a new audience, so the Sunday rhythm established familiarity. Now we’re entering year 2. Many of you have seen me cook. I want to level up my cooking, which means creating some flexibility to share what I’m seeing about the future of work and money when there’s a strong market signal compelling me to write vs. generating on demand. You'll still hear from me weekly-ish, just not necessarily on Sundays.

Things to look forward to: I’m starting to put more time and energy into something I announced back in January…

Rich IRL.

You might’ve already seen the spotlight series I launched earlier this year, featuring founders building the future of in-person experiences. That series will continue next month with a business model I’m very bullish on. Our NY, LA, and Miami readers may enjoy that one especially.

I'm also stepping into the arena myself.

I joined a social club here in Scottsdale last May that gathered interesting people for dinners and other experiences. The dinners have themed topics like “Love in the Digital Age” or “The Future of AI” (shocking that I’d turn up for a future of AI event, right?) I noticed they did a great job of bringing people together who came from diverse backgrounds and experiences but were similar on one of the Big 5 personality traits… openness. If you’re familiar with my work, then it’s likely no surprise that openness is one of my highest scoring traits. I imagine many of you score high in this area too. It’s good to be surrounded by people with similar levels of openness, especially if you’re building things.

These topics I write about every week inside this newsletter: AI, the future of money, culture shifts, etc… I'm hungry to explore these through conversations with fellow builders IRL.

Building things, whether it be a business or portfolio, can feel lonely. I know it because I feel it too. The result of me moving seven times in the past six years is that my social circle is spread out across the country. And I haven’t found the antidote to that in a Slack community or networking event with lanyards and corporate pleasantries. Instead, I’m discovering that my life feels richer on the other side of a great meal, seated among interesting people, having conversations that leave us feeling more energized about the future than when we sat down.

So… I’m hosting the first Rich IRL dinner here in Scottsdale this spring. 12 seats. This first one is for female founders. Future dinners will explore different themes, cities, and guest lists. This is just the beginning.

If you or someone in your network should be at this dinner, reply to this email.

Thanks for a great year one.

Year 2 is where things get fun.