Learning about Ideas & how to Execute them. Engineering | Storytelling | Business

"You are the world you have created."

That line from Cormac McCarthy hit me at month 7 of unemployment. 68.8% rejection rate. 1 month of finances left.

I wasn't getting rejected because I lacked skills. I was getting rejected because 10 years earlier, I'd made a choice I didn't know I was making. I picked legitimacy over authority. Proof over interpretation.

Engineering credentials over storytelling instinct.

Every project after that: one more vote for a future I didn't consciously want.
By the time I noticed, the shape was drawn. I was at the crossroads thinking there was a choice, but the choosing was done a long time ago.

I stopped applying to jobs.

For 4 weeks, I wrote. Not to explain what happened. To see what I'd been building without realizing.
The answer showed up in 15 minutes.

Short story writing wasn't a hobby. It was the access mechanism.

Stories surface assumptions before they harden. They let you test futures without betting your life on them first. They show you the world you're building while you still have time to choose differently.

I built a workshop around it. Ran 6 sessions in 2 weeks bfeore I even had a job offer.

A 30-year scenario planning veteran at Morgan Stanley told me: "I've been trying to do this for three decades. You just solved it."

Here's the method:
- Write for 15 minutes. First-person future. One day. 
- Don't think. Let details emerge.
- Signals guide the writing. Your unconscious does the rest.

What surfaces:
- Assumptions you didn't know you were making
- Prereqs you hadn't considered
- The gap between what you think you want and what you're actually building

A computer programmer: "Blank canvas that made me rethink what was possible."
A marketer: "More engaging than mood boards or strategy docs."
A startup chief of staff: "Discovered new angles to a problem I'd been stuck on."

I spent 7 months learning what McCarthy meant.
Now I help people see the shape before acceptance becomes the only option.
DM me if you're building something and want to surface what's driving it.

Mohammad Khan

She followed startup advice perfectly & created a disaster. 

Elizabeth Holmes followed advice you’d find “Zero to One” by Peter Thiel
• Built a monopoly (proprietary blood testing technology)
• Eliminated competition (aggressive NDAs, patents) 
• Created switching costs (Walgreens and Safeway locked in multi-year contracts) 
• Owned her category (redefined blood testing)

Succeeding at everything Peter Thiel teaches. Except the technology didn't work. She was a fraud.

By the time anyone discovered this:
• $700M trapped in investments
• Partners locked in multi-year contracts
• Patients receiving false medical results
• Employees silenced by NDAs

“Zero to One” can't distinguish between a successful startup and frauds like Theranos.

Both can claim they have products 10x better than competitors, capture markets, and make money.

Thiel's framework has no test for "does the technology actually work?"

Because the framework assumes you'll exit in 5-7 years. Well before the technology has to prove itself long-term.

You can't "move fast and break things" in cancer therapeutics. You can't "exit" before your technology proves it works.
But that's what startup advice assumes you'll do.

So what can deep tech founders do? 

Instead of focusing on growth & exiting, focus on proof points & partnerships. 

• Instead of Gatekeeping > Educating the market 
• Instead of eliminating competition > Transparent tech demos 
• Instead of optimizing for growth rate > Optimize for customer success rate. 

Same goal of building a successful company but on different timescales. Different worlds built, a sustainable one instead of extractive.

Elizabeth Holmes followed the playbook & built an extractive monopoly.

But the playbook doesn't care if the technology works. It only cares if you can build power before anyone finds out.

Deep tech founders can't afford that gamble. 
You're building for 20 years, not 5.

Teaching professionals to navigate uncertainty through short stories | Engineer building future-prototyping workshops in public

I read "Zero to One" in 2019. It changed how I thought about building a business. 
I read it again in 2024. It's an indoctrination manifesto.

Then I read Octavia Butler. She predicted what Thiel was building, 21 years before he published his playbook.
---

In 2019, I was devouring business books.

"Zero to One" was high on people's lists. And it made sense. A concise book on growing your business and what to aim for.

Took some notes & moved on.

2022: ChatGPT launches

A question stuck in my head 
"What problem does this actually solve?"

I couldn't answer it.

2024: I reread "Zero to One" 

ChatGPT broke every rule Thiel teaches.

Thiel's thesis: build monopolies by making something so uniquely and often 10x better that they escape competition

OpenAI didn't build 10x better technology. They published first with better marketing & lower costs.

And Thiel funded them anyway.

That's when I realized Zero to One isn't methodology. It's business ideology.

An indoctrination manifesto from survivorship bias that built the world we live in today. 

2025: I read “Parable of the Sower” by Octavia Butler 

She wrote it in 1993 & set the story in 2024. And she showed me what happens when Thiel's ideology runs for 20 years.

Most startup advice assume you'll exit. But what if you can’t exit? 

What if these companies built themselves a monopoly they now have to manage and can’t exit? Something so entangled in the market where leaving risks collapse? 

What happens when you plan on exiting but can’t? 

In Butler's story:
• Corporations own entire towns
• Employees become debt slaves
• Technology serves monopolists only
• Workers can't leave (leaving means death)
• Corporations call this "providing value"

If “Zero to One” gives the extractive monopoly ideology, then “Parable of the Sower” shows you what happens when that ideology runs unchecked.

If you’re building technology that will take 20 years to mature, you should understand the world your advice is quietly trying to create.

A fiction book made me ask: What world am I building?
Then I rewrote my entire business model.

In 2025, I read “Parable of the Sower” by Octavia Butler

She predicted what "build a monopoly" creates after 20 years:
• Company towns for employees
• Employees indebted to the company
• Technology serving monopolists only
• Workers can't leave (leaving means death)

Then I looked at my own positioning company.

I was helping science and engineering companies:
• Lock in customers (switching costs)
• Dominate categories (eliminate alternatives)
• Become the "only" choice (build monopolies)

Butler forced me to ask: What world is MY company creating?

If everyone wins by becoming a gatekeeper, everyone loses.
Customers lose freedom. Innovation slows. Switching becomes punishment.

I didn't want to make money building a world I wouldn't want to live in.

So, I pivoted.

Just published a newsletter on What world are you building?

Deep tech founders don't exit in 5 years. You live with what you build for 20 years.

Make sure it's a world you want to live in. 

Read more here: https://lnkd.in/ggN9us6v

In 2025, I trusted my future plan because it was clear. Turns out clarity can be the problem.

I had just gotten back from a long trip. It was Christmas. While others were decorating, I was sitting with my laptop open, staring at a plan that still made sense.

8 months & no job and the plan was coherent and useless.

The plan said, 'network to find work', but it didn't say what happens when your contact gets laid off the week before your coffee meeting.

Every milestone assumed nothing would go wrong. Not one backup. Not one 'what if this fails.'

So instead of refining the plan again, I changed the test.

I wrote two stories from first-person perspective.

Two story lines:

I wrote Tuesday morning, best case. New job, coffee with the team, solving problems.
 
Then I wrote Tuesday morning, month 9 unemployed. Checking the bank account. 

My original plan never asked, "what if no one picks you?"

Plans optimize for clarity.
Stories expose consequences.

It's not about making a better plan for the future, but what you do when your plan gets punched in the face

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How can you feel so strongly about the passing of someone you haven’t spoken to in 25 years? 

I received a message this morning about the passing of one of my flatmates from my time at Edinburgh University. She was from Delaware and was going to spend 6 months with us. 

It was the fist time I was living away from home in a shared accommodation with 5 other people. My friend was one of them. 

Those six months were intense as we formed strong bonds fast. The 6 of us were a little family that did everything together, yet we were all different. 

She was my age. 
Now she’s gone. 

If I were to die now, today, will I have lived a life fulfilled. 

Mostly. But not completely. 

There are many things to change of which one is... maybe later. 

If I want something, I want it now, not later. 

Here’s to no more waiting for we do not know when this gorgeous life of ours will end. 
And to letting people know that they are loved and missed even though you may not talk all the time. 

I can easily segue into business lessons... but today, let’s just stay in a space of love, remembrance and presence. 

X Ivy

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The Creative Flight Season 2 is coming up with the fisrt episode releasing on Tuesday, 13th Jan with Gabriella Killeen. 

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Chats are just under an hour (season 2 attempts to keep it at 30 mins) and solo episodes are 5-15 minutes. 

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One single line that was said to me 20 years ago changed everything for me. 

Why haven’t you done it yet?

It was powerful as it was full of curiosity. 
It implied that I would. 

My mind raced a million miles per second and I came up empty. 
There was NO reason why I hadn‘t and so I did. 

My first business plan was born within 30 days. 
Investment secured within 60
Location found within 120 days
Location secured within 240 days 

Doors opened to my first restaurant 12 months later.

I exited that business 10 years later and started my coaching business. 

My question to you is the same... whatever you are dreaming about, whether the next level in your business or simply starting a new project...

𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲𝗻’𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗱𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗶𝘁 𝘆𝗲𝘁?

X Ivy

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X Ivy 

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