THE COMMITMENT
Free. Forever.
No paywalls. No courses. No upsells. Nothing.
Everything on Founder Reality — every essay, every series, every podcast — is free and will stay free.
The Internet Broke Trust
The playbook became obvious. Then it stopped working.
You read someone's blog post and you can feel the funnel. The “helpful” article that ends with a pitch. The “free guide” that's really a landing page for a $997 course. You download it and know exactly what's coming.
Everyone learned the same playbook: give away just enough to seem generous, then gate the real stuff. Build an audience, then monetize it. The content isn't the product — you are.
“You become a marketer who writes, instead of a builder who shares.”
I didn't want that. Not because I'm above it — because I could see where it leads. Every piece of content optimized for conversion instead of truth. Every relationship reduced to a pipeline stage. That's not the kind of thing I want to build for 30 years.
What Changed
AI ate the margins. The smart pivot was courses. I went the other way.
In late 2025, I shut down revenue lines. The “smart” move would have been to package everything into courses — sell knowledge, build a membership, create tiers. That's what everyone was doing.
But the course you're selling today is tomorrow's free ChatGPT prompt. Information has a half-life now, and it's getting shorter every month. I didn't want to build a business on something that was actively being commoditized.
What Gets Commoditized
- Courses & info products
- Prompt engineering guides
- Templates & frameworks
- How-to content
What Doesn't
- Judgment built from real stakes
- Relationships and trust
- Willingness to tell uncomfortable truths
- Skin in the game
The Model
Two layers. One philosophy.
Founder Reality
THE PUBLIC LAYER
Essays, series, forum, podcast. Free. Always.
Where I document what I'm building, what I'm seeing, what I believe.
ANC Advisory
THE BUSINESS LAYER
Strategy calls, ongoing advisory, freedom cohorts.
For founders who want to go deeper on their specific situation.
FR doesn't exist to sell advisory work. The essays aren't a funnel. The podcast isn't a warm-up. If you never spend a dollar with me and just keep reading, that's the system working.
Because the more trust FR builds, the more the right people self-select into working together.
Why This Matters Right Now
AI is displacing entire categories of knowledge work
Engineers, PMs, analysts — smart people are watching their expertise get automated in real time. The response from most of the internet? Sell them something. A $997 prompt engineering course. A “future-proof your career” membership. Another gated community extracting money from anxiety.
That's not what I'm doing here. Founder Reality exists because I believe you deserve honest thinking from someone who's actually in it — building, making decisions, taking real risk — not someone selling you a map from the sidelines.
“You deserve honest thinking from someone who's in it with you — not someone selling you a map from the sidelines.”
The Tools Live on SimpleDirect
Same philosophy, separate brand. FR = content. SimpleDirect = apps.
Like How I Think?
I'm not building a tools company.
I help founders build businesses they'll own for 30+ years.
The best thing you can do right now is keep building.