The Great Inversion

Ideas used to be cheap and execution was everything. AI flipped that.
January 30, 2026

Something really significant is happening right now.

Ideas used to not matter much because the difficult part was execution.

Now, execution doesn't matter if you don't have ideas.

The filters now are:

  1. Drive
  2. Creativity, and
  3. Your skill with AI

Drive

If you're not driven, you'll just get crushed by the people who are.

Only the highly ambitious will win because they'll keep taking swings and learning from failures.

If you are passive, you will lose no matter how creative or good with AI you are.

Creativity

The next filter is being highly driven but not having opinions or ideas.

The worst thing you can be right now is inert. No opinion. No perspective. No thing you wish existed.

You have to be on the field and want things to be different in some way.

Your Skill With AI

And finally, even if you have both of those, you have to be able to deliver end-to-end by yourself.

If you need a dev, and a marketing person, and a business person, and a finances person, you'll be way too slow. And slow is dead.

AI is the skillset of vertical integration.

Working Backwards

So when someone asks what people should study, or learn, or whatever, start with this list and work backwards.

The first two are more attributes, and they come from lots of exposure to the world. Nurture them by reading 100-1000 great books.

And AI is the meta-skill.