I wrote this published piece about @miramurati’s strategy at @thinkymachines before reading “The Future Worth Building Is Human.” I now realize the alignment runs deeper than economics: we share a belief that AI should think with people, not for them. substack.news-items.com/p/mi…

Curiouser.AI Is Raising on WeFunder (Closes August 31) (This offering is being conducted pursuant to Regulation Crowdfunding. Our Form C and complete offering details are available on Wefunder.) We have raised a total of just under $500,000. We believe we can create value for our investors, customers and team and make a meaningful difference in the process. Over the past two decades, I have raised just under $100 million in venture capital and have founded, run and helped lead VC-backed companies. But institutional capital changes what a company must optimize for. It creates pressure to grow faster, spend more, capture market share and produce the exceptional returns the venture model requires. That pressure is not malicious or unreasonable. It is simply how the model works. Most ordinary people are locked out of investing in early-stage AI companies. Unless you are wealthy, connected to a venture capital firm or invited into a private round, you usually get to watch from the sidelines. We are raising from the people closest to what we are building: our customers, our community and individuals who believe in a more human future for AI. We are building Looking-Glass, featuring Alice: an AI thinking partner designed to think with people, not for them. We now have hundreds of paid users (not giveaways) and have co-developed our technology with our customers. We believe the future of AI should not belong exclusively to a handful of extraordinarily wealthy corporations and investors. It should also belong to the customers who use it, the team that builds it and the community that believes in it. We have raised just under $500,000. We have paying customers, real revenue and cash-flow break-even within sight. Choosing this path means we may not grow as quickly. We cannot spend millions buying market share. In fact all our growth has been organic with $0 CAC. We do not have an enormous marketing budget. Instead, we are building the old-fashioned way: steadily, thoughtfully and close to our customers. I came out of retirement to build this company. I cannot promise that we will succeed. No founder honestly can. You will not guess in a million years what I was doing for my retirement. The answer is in the video below. Hint: I don't play golf. I promise that I did not come out of retirement to give this a halfhearted try. That is the company we are building. And that is why we chose WeFunder. Below is a video explaining why I am doing. (I have to wear red because my wife thinks I look good in red and if that is what she thinks then that is what I do). (Link in comments)

Looking-Glass, a product of @CuriouserAI, is built using reflective AI. Instead of just handing over answers, it asks the questions that drive better thinking. I joined Gabe and Lexi on their podcast to talk more about how it works. Full episode link in the comments 👇

Round 3 of the MasterClass August 12 at 8:00 AM Pacific. Free and online.

This is the moment to break through. To make a difference. To maintain a presence that shows the world what makes you unique, seeing the things only you can see, and saying the things only you can say. Join us for more on this for a Free masterclass · Wednesday, July 15 · 8 AM PT · Link in comments

I believe the future will belong to the people who have the courage to ask better questions, think for themselves, and share what they truly believe. We will be offering a free Masterclass on this very topic. It's my way of giving back because I do believe I am old enough to have made just about every mistake twice and am now better off because of it. Wednesday, July 15th, 9 AM PT 90 minutes Free (link in comments) Not how to become louder. But how to become unmistakably yourself.

Listen to the Mad Hatter "And scale wonder"

I have probably spoken with 50 customers and here are 4 videos (edited) that fairly represent the reaction we get from our base.

Thinking critically isn’t a gift you’re born with. It’s a craft. And like any craft, it can be learned, practiced, and improved.

Three Years Ago, I Was Frankenstein Being Chased by Industry Insiders With Pitchforks** When we started @CuriouserAI, the reaction from the AI world was not subtle. “You want to do what?” "Slow people down and use AI to help people think more critically and solve problems for themselves?") "Are you nuts?" "Who wants to think!" At the time, the dominant assumption was simple: Generative AI would do the prompting. Humans would do the complying. AI was designed to make thinking easier. The problem with that is thinking is not easy and it's not supposed to be. The future, we were told, was all of humanity prompting machines with almost no one stopping to ask what this might do to us. We were already seeing early signals. People outsourcing judgment. Work regressing to the mean. Brain rot. Speed increasing while quality quietly declined. The proliferation of mediocrity (slop). Curiosity replaced with convenience. So we flipped the script. Instead of building an AI that waits to be prompted, we built one that asks questions and essentially prompts you. Not shallow ones. Strategic ones. The kind a great co-founder asks. The kind that slow you down just enough to make you better. An AI that listens. Remembers. Pushes back. And works with you, not over you. That alone was heresy. Then we made a second decision. We said our first use case wouldn’t be the enterprise. We said we wanted to focus on entrepreneurs, builders, and creators people in the messy middle of thinking and building something new. That’s when the laughter really started. “That’s insane.” “You can’t build a serious AI company that way.” “If you want to get funded, you go after the enterprise.” But here’s what we couldn’t ignore. Entrepreneurs and small builders create roughly three-quarters of all new jobs. They are not a niche. They are the economic engine. And unlike large organizations, they don’t need more automation theater. They need clarity. They need better thinking. So we asked a different question: What happens if you increase the probability of success for people who already know how to create value? Even a modest improvement, just 1%, doesn’t move a metric. It changes lives. It means hundreds of thousands of new jobs. Real ones. Human ones. Three years ago, this sounded naive. Or idealistic. Or “different.” Today, the industry quietly admits that speed without judgment didn’t work. Automation without reflection didn’t deliver intelligence. And replacing thinking was never the same thing as improving it. The pitchforks are gone now.

We just secured an SEC extension and updated @CuriouserAI 's Wefunder page with our latest traction data and a new video. Link in comments

Most of us say we want to think for ourselves. But our behavior suggests we’d rather let machines do the thinking.

I can't think of many examples in tech history when open-sourced solutions didn't win in the end, and I am not sure why now will be any different.