Why founders get trapped in the theater of success
AI has made everyone enabled overnight. So why do so many of us still spend more time consuming trends than actually producing real value?
I’ve been reflecting on the quiet drift that happens in the age of AI. It’s the moment when the flood of accessible tools and instant knowledge makes everyone feel capable, yet most strategies still lean heavily toward consuming the next shiny thing instead of actually producing something useful with it. The lowered barriers and rapid distribution let individuals, teams, organizations, and even governments become AI-enabled overnight. But real leverage comes from creation, not from endless absorption of information and performance boosters.
This pattern echoes much of Derek Thompson’s Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction, where he shows how virality is fueled by spectacle over substance. Algorithms reward what’s shocking or instantly digestible, drawing people into cycles of attention-chasing that feel productive but rarely are. In the startup world, this shows up as founders without a steady internal direction. Without that north star, it becomes natural to chase likes, shares, and perceived ecosystem status instead of solving concrete problems. Some VCs do the same by projecting deep operator wisdom they’ve never lived through, building rockstar images from the safety of their capital gatekeeping role. It’s cosplay masquerading as authority.
For me, the way out has always been to move decisively from consumption to production. Consumption is passive and seductive. You scroll AI trend threads, sign up for every new tool, read one more newsletter, and walk away feeling sharper and more in the game. But the momentum is mostly illusion. It’s like filling the tank repeatedly without ever turning the key. The energy leaks into distraction and external validation loops instead of building anything real.
Production is different. It’s active, grounding, and forces decisions. You channel attention into making and crafting solutions for specific pains, iterating on messy prototypes, shipping value that exists independently of applause. Consuming ten AI platforms can give you ideas. Building one tailored solution actually solves something. Take a custom AI wrapper that fixes a precise workflow bottleneck in your startup. Sure, some people roll their eyes and call it too easy or not innovative enough. Yet those same voices usually haven’t taken ten minutes to wire up a Google Gemini Gem with NotebookLM, which basically gives you a personal super brain for both work and life tasks. The moment you start building, clarity arrives on its own. What exact problem am I addressing? Who benefits right now? How does this measurably improve things? That line of questioning turns scattered habits into durable discipline and pulls you out of performative theater into genuine forward motion.
In my own path this shift was everything. Early days were heavy on consumption, such as podcasts on loop, newsletters stacked, tools trialed endlessly, because it felt like progress. It left me fragmented, always one step behind the next hype wave. When I flipped to production, prototyping something as unglamorous as automated pattern detection in user feedback data, the fog lifted. The work wasn’t viral material, but it produced results, sharpened my judgment, and tied directly to a north star of real value. Over months and years that orientation becomes protective: you stop performing for an audience and start creating for impact. Authenticity turns into armor against the mask.
That’s the discipline I’m still honing.