Debt is optimism with a maturity date. This week, I explored what the AI boom’s increasingly elaborate financing structures reveal about the psychology of the moment—and where the first signs of missing cash flows are likely to appear.

AI doesn’t eliminate friction—it relocates it. As agents make tedious work cheap, old software moats weaken and scarcity shifts to compute, energy, capital, security, and trust.

What happens when every founder reads the same book? Jerry Neumann's Red Queen thesis, William Hockey's boredom moat, Benn Stancil on AI and empathy, and a brutal market reality check from Palm Valley Capital. Issue 17 explores why systematizing what works is the surest way to kill the edge — and what to do instead. Plus: the contrarian case for going slow in a world obsessed with scale.