Professor Profile - Leo Guinan
My goal is to win a Nobel prize in economics by 2030. I'm planning on doing it by proving that people are the world's most undervalued asset.
I founded Build In Public University based on this thesis. When people build their own things, they have a better understanding of what it's possible to do. When they share what they are doing with the world, that helps more people know what's possible to do. That's why building in public was such an important concept to me.
My Story
During the pandemic, I went through a personal transformation. Being faced with uncertainty and fear, I realized something: I'm going to die some day. Why the fuck am I living a life I don't want to be living? I'm killing myself for everyone else and not getting anywhere.
I started writing online, and discovered the creator economy, which blew my mind.
"What do you mean you can get paid for the ideas in your head? I've got lots of those!"
Then I took a bad route, went viral, received backlash, and went back into hiding.
The illusions of life faded away and I started to realize what actually mattered to me. This coincided with a eureka moment about the value of information. I realized that the largest problem is how we are valuing attention, and who has control of the data. I tried to surface this idea in the large company I was working for. They told me they wouldn't support me, but would own it if I created anything with it.
I quit the next day.
Ahead of me, I saw two possible paths. The first was a path through academia. I was considering going for a PhD in Quantum Computing based on the algorithms I was working on. But then I saw a different path. One that felt like an adventure. The path of the startup.
Thus began a winding journey where I tried to learn what it meant to launch a startup.
I remember one of my thoughts when I saw the funding announcement of some startup back in 2020: "they were able to raise $X million for that? Any idiot must be able to raise money. That means people will throw money at my idea!"
The pain of hubris is a bitch.
There were a lot of ups and downs, but ultimately, my first startup failed and I went back to the drawing board. It's amazing how much you have to learn about the world if you aren't really in it, and you don't have others around you who are.
It's harder than it looks on Twitter.
But that failure led to a job with Copy.ai (oddly enough, the company I was following via their "building in public" on Twitter, which gave me the belief I could launch my own startup), which blew my mind. It was a team of high-performers who cared about the problems they were solving. And their customers loved them. It felt incredible.
It was the best job I ever had, and I was learning a ton. And then, 2.5 years into that journey, I was fired.
It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I felt free, and I realized how out of alignment I was at Copy.ai. I didn't want to just write code anymore. I wanted to write about my ideas. I wanted to do research. I wanted to teach. That's the building I wanted to do, because that's what is needed now more than ever.
That showed me once and for all that the coordination mechanisms inside of companies aren't working correctly. A lot of the value I was providing didn't count, because it wasn't in the right categories. I tried to communicate my ideas to the company, because I believed I had insights into the future that AI enables. And I failed. As a result, I drifted out of alignment, and they felt it was better if we no longer had any connection.
I'm not bitter about being fired. I'm bitter about being fired 3 weeks before a company retreat to Cancun. I was really looking forward to that.
That lit a fire under me, and I began to build. I launched my venture studio and got to work. I saw so many options ahead of me, surely I'd be able to get something to work, right? The reality was that I found a lot that kinda worked, but nothing that quite felt right.
Then Olu approached me about some ideas I shared on Twitter around the nature of startup investing. We shared a lot of values about getting more resources into new ecosystems and opening up venture capital to everyone, and ended up launching Score My Deck and PreloVC. These are the first products using the Submind architecture that I've been developing.
I'm also working with RADAR to use subminds to help them monetize their community as an abundant system and explore possible collective futures.
There's a reason I wrote The Optimist's Manifesto. I believe in a future we create together. It starts with understanding you have agency. Then it moves into learning how to coordinate the future you want to see.
It's time to move from a scarce world (past-focused) to an abundant one (future-focused).
I'm launching Build In Public University because I believe everyone should have a chance to build the future they want to see. So I'm giving everyone the tools they need in order to be successful in doing so.
Where I'm Sharing Ideas
Engineering Generosity
This is my Substack where I'm sharing ideas related to my first book. Eventually it will turn into sharing the actual writing of the book in public, but I haven't managed to quite get the overall structure I want yet. My hope is that Build In Public University will help me create more space in my life to write more.
Idea Supply Chain
This is a brand I've been putting together, based on the concept of idea supply chains. We can't actually get fully down to first principles, because there's always a deeper level, but we can start with something. So I believe an idea supply chain is about finding ideas that have a trusted source. Build In Public University is helping identify and share the trusted sources in the world who are being open and transparent.
How To Scale Yourself
This is a podcast I ran for a bit, while I wanted to know what it looked like to scale your life from various aspects. I chatted with a bunch of really cool people and learned a ton.
Social Media Links:
Twitter (still not gonna call it X)
Social Proof
After working on these ideas for a few years, I don't have anything giant to show you. I don't have huge successes or big numbers to throw around. Because that's not what I was looking for. I wanted to do a couple of different things: I wanted to understand how people learn, I wanted to understand how money behaved, and I wanted to understand how we use products to coordinate behaviors.
In talking with people, making friends, and sharing insights, I know for a fact that I've been able to touch some lives. One example of this is the highlight video my friend Lobow created for me.
Here are some more testimonials:
"Leo turns your idea into a business and your business into a meaningful relationship. I know this because he is now one of my best friends but we also work together. He is the bridge between two worlds we've always been told to keep separate." ~Lobow
"I've worked with Leo for some time now, and I can honestly say that he's one of the best AI engineers I've had the pleasure of working with.
We worked across building Content AI, LLMs for Venture Capital and a host of other projects.A technology agnostic technologist who excels at bringing together the right solution for a known problem.
Leo focuses on the outcome and executes at an insane pace to build a minimum viable solution that meets a business objective.
Aside from that, he is an all-round awesome human with a passion for helping others succeed." ~Olu Adedeji
"I highly recommend Leo. He really helped me get started and a lot of his work is geared towards helping content creators." @HausOfErostribe
"Leo helped me and is helping me still. That understates by an order of magnitude the actual difference he made but ill try and do it justice.
I'm a teacher and a parent. I was raised in the world of secure day jobs and old world thinking. Both as a teacher and parent I knew I needed to understand what it meant to create and master all the tools and techniques I would need to do it.
But nothing and no-one in my professional and personal world resonated with that clear and present need, that anyone not ready for what was coming, a world where everyone is a brand, a one person business, would fall by the wayside, ultimately doomed to be replaced by those that had unapologetically embraced the obvious reality, that AI enabled and enhanced creative and productive individuals would rise above those that weren't.
Leo was the one that allowed me to make that shift, to take what had felt distant and unattainable, the secret knowledge of in-groups and remove its mystique. He made it all seem doable. He made it not scary. He is an ideal example of someone that continues to create, innovate and iterate, with joy, kindness, patience, creativity and professionalism, even while being a busy father and partner.
He gives me hope that as a parent and teacher I can spread the idea that these tools, ideas and the cultures and communities of which they are a part need not be hidden and exclusive, but are an open and welcoming way of learning how to create authentically in a world that rewards creators over consumers.
I have been a creative person my whole life inside my own head. Seeing the kids I teach and their families i'm convinvced that many people are like I was too. But since I met and started working with Leo, I believe its possible that everyone can and should give themselves that gift, the tools that allow without gatekeeping or permission seeking, anyone to create anything, for human beings to become Augmented individuals. The best school I can imagine is build in public.
When I achieve that goal I can say definitively that I will always remember who was there in the beginning. I won't die wondering what could have been and Leo will be the reason why. Strongly reccomend him as a teacher and guide for anyone even if you aren't a digital native. Appreciate him and I know other people will too. <3" @JustinAllingham