Entrepreneur explains why he doesn’t want socialism… 🤔

Doing the minimum because you feel underpaid is one of the most expensive things you can do to yourself. You are not just withholding effort from your employer. You are withholding growth from your future self. You are choosing not to learn the hard skill. Not to solve the overlooked problem. Not to become the person who can be trusted with more. Not to build the reputation that gives you leverage. The goal is not to work for free forever. The goal is to become so valuable that you have options. Your employer can recognize your value. Or another employer can. But if you decide that the job only deserves the minimum version of you, eventually you become less valuable in the market too. Create value. Build capability. Let the work compound. And if the environment is exploitative, unsafe, or never rewards growth, use the skills and reputation you built to leave. But do not steal your own upside just to make a point. #ForgedinAmerica

Here’s a case study in why investors look for “outs.” You hear “PayPal” and think of a checkout button. You see the stock’s old narrative and assume the story is over. But then you look beneath the surface. There is Venmo. There is Braintree. There is a large payment-services business operating behind merchants and transactions people use every day without ever calling it PayPal. And then you look at the cash flow. In Q2, PayPal generated $1.8B in adjusted free cash flow. Management guided to $6B+ for full-year 2026. They also guided to $6B in share repurchases. That does not guarantee a winning stock. It does not mean every part of the business is fixed. But it does create multiple paths for the thesis to work. Venmo monetization improves. Braintree keeps growing profitably and attaches more value-added services. Cost savings improve the model. Buybacks reduce the share count. The market rerates the business. You do not need every outcome to go perfectly. You need enough ways to be right. That is what good investors mean when they look for outs. #ForgedinAmerica

Your kids do not need more instant validation. They need more situations where the inputs come long before the outputs. That is why sports matter. Sports teach merit. Sports teach accountability. Sports teach discipline. Sports teach that you can work incredibly hard and still lose. Then wake up the next morning and do it again. A great athlete is built through early mornings. Practice. Repetition. Failure. Consistency. The results do not show up on day one. They often do not show up in year one. Then, after enough invisible work, they appear to arrive all at once. That is not luck. That is compounding. It is the same in a business. The same in a podcast. The same in a career. People see the result and call it “overnight success.” They do not see the three years of work that created it. Expect little at first. Do the work anyway. The outputs follow the inputs. #ForgedinAmerica

Myth: AI is only a job-replacement story. Reality: AI may be the greatest entrepreneurial-leverage story in a generation. Think about what a founder can do today with tools like Claude. Research faster. Write faster. Prototype faster. Build a website faster. Analyze a market faster. Test an idea faster. Reduce unnecessary expenses. And give a small team the leverage that once required a much larger organization. That is not necessarily about replacing people. It is about making people more capable. A founder can use AI to do more with the same resources — then redirect time, money, and talent toward the work that creates the most value. If you were building a company in the late 90s or early 2000s, imagine what you could have done with today’s tools. The opportunity is extraordinary. Not because every business will win. Not because AI makes execution easy But because AI lowers the cost of trying, learning, building, and iterating. Entrepreneurship is not going away. It is getting more leverage. The people who learn to use these tools well will be able to build faster than anyone thought possible. #ForgedinAmerica

Here is the case study every parent should think about. Two 16-year-olds both spend a few hours a day on screens. One uses every minute only to consume. Scroll. Watch. Game. Refresh. The other spends 10 minutes a day getting their hands dirty with AI. They ask questions. They brainstorm. They explore how to build a website. They learn how to research an idea. They test how a tool can improve their writing, organize a project, or help them understand a difficult subject. Neither kid needs to become an AI engineer. But one is beginning to build AI literacy. And the other is not. That difference may compound fast. Schools are not teaching AI the same way everywhere. Parents cannot wait for a perfect curriculum. Use a free model. Use a paid tool if it fits your family. Set age-appropriate guardrails. But get your kids using it. Five minutes a day is enough to begin. Ten minutes a day is better. AI should not replace critical thinking. It should give young people more leverage for their critical thinking. The future will not reward the people who were afraid to touch the tools. #ForgedinAmerica

We keep asking what changed politics. Maybe we are asking the wrong question. The real question is: What changed how we raised our kids? A generation of parents had hard roads. They did not want their kids to suffer the same way. So they made life easier. They fixed every problem. They removed every obstacle. They protected their kids from every consequence. They spoon-fed comfort, opportunity, and certainty. And now we are surprised when people confuse support with entitlement. When they confuse discomfort with injustice. When they confuse compassion with a promise that no one should ever struggle. Helping people is good. Supporting people is good. Giving people opportunity is good. But preparing people for a world that will never be perfectly fair is also good. At some point, the most compassionate thing you can do is stop pretending life will protect them. Teach them to handle adversity. Teach them effort. Teach them responsibility. Teach them that no one is coming to solve every problem for them. That is not cruelty. That is preparation. And maybe that is the political conversation we have been avoiding. #ForgedinAmerica

Myth: Empathy means removing every obstacle from someone’s path. Reality: Real compassion prepares people to face the obstacles that will still be there. Parenting teaches you this fast. At some point, every parent has to tell their kid: “I am not here to be your friend. I am here to prepare you for the world.” The world will not always protect them. It will not always reward them. It will not always be fair. So your job is not to remove every hard thing. Your job is to help them become capable enough to handle hard things. That is why parenting changes how people think about entitlement. If you shield someone from every consequence, you may feel compassionate in the moment. But what are you preparing them for? A world that does not exist. Real compassion is not cruelty. It is standards. It is accountability. It is resilience. It is teaching effort. It is helping people build the capacity to stand on their own. The goal is not to make life easy. The goal is to make people stronger. #ForgedinAmerica

Here’s a case study in why you should never send a message you would not want published. People who have never been sued usually do not understand discovery. They think their texts are private. They think their emails are private. They think the notes on their phone are private. Then litigation starts. And suddenly they learn how much information can move to the other side. Emails. Texts. Files. Photos. Cloud documents. Depending on the case, electronically stored information can become part of discovery. That does not mean everything is automatically handed over. Relevance matters. Privilege matters. Proportionality matters. Court orders matter. But the lesson is still simple: Never send anything in a text or email that you would not want on the front page of a national newspaper. Because once you hit send, you do not control where it can end up. Teach your kids early. Your phone is not a diary. Your inbox is not a vault. Your messages can outlive the moment you wrote them. Think before you text. #ForgedinAmerica

Stop using one sympathetic immigration story to avoid the national-policy question. Compassion matters. Of course it does. If a good person who has worked, built a life, or helped a family gets caught in a large-scale enforcement system, that can be heartbreaking. That should matter. But it cannot be the entire basis for immigration policy. Parents understand this instinctively. Not every risk is the same. Not every bad decision carries the same consequences. You do not treat a harmless mess and a catastrophic risk as if they are morally identical. So why would we treat every immigration outcome as if it settles the question of border policy? A country has to weigh: Security. Enforcement. Fairness. Capacity. Due process. Human dignity. The consequences of allowing millions of people to enter or remain outside a lawful system. That is not cruelty. That is responsibility. The honest conversation is not: “Do you care about sympathetic people?” Of course you do. The honest conversation is: “What policy protects the country while still treating people with dignity?” If you refuse to ask that question because one case makes you uncomfortable, you are not being compassionate. You are avoiding the hard part of governing. #ForgedinAmerica

Myth: The best summer for a teenager is one where they succeed at everything. Reality: The best summer might be one where they fail at something hard — then show up to work anyway. A 15-year-old spent three weeks trying to build a website with Claude and a friend. It did not go anywhere. It basically failed. And that was the point. He tried to build something real. He learned how difficult it is. He learned that starting a business is not an idea. It is work. Then he spent six weeks working full time at an educational nonprofit. Up at 6:30 a.m. Biking to work. Getting home late. Never missing a day. Setting his own alarm. And every week, you could see him growing up. Failure taught humility. Work taught discipline. But the most valuable part may have been having a boss. Not a parent. Not a teacher. A boss. Someone who expects you to show up. Someone who expects you to meet a standard. Someone who holds you accountable. That is incalculable for a young person. Kids do not need every experience to be comfortable. They need hard things. They need responsibility. They need to learn that effort matters — even when the first attempt does not work. #ForgedinAmerica

Here’s a case study in why “America is an outlier” is not an argument against America. Someone says we should get rid of the Senate because America does not have the kind of parliamentary system common in much of Europe. The assumption is simple: Europe does it one way. America is different. Therefore America should become more like Europe. But that skips the only question that matters: Different in what way? America is an outlier in a culture that still celebrates the person who comes from nothing and makes it big. Come from another country. Start with no connections. Work. Build. Create value. And if you succeed, people do not just tolerate it. They celebrate it. That is the Horatio Alger story. The belief that a person can rise, reinvent themselves, build a company, create a life, and earn success. America is not perfect. No country is. But copying another country’s political system is not automatically an improvement. The Senate, federalism, separation of powers, and a distinct constitutional structure exist because America was built to solve a different set of problems in a different way. The goal should not be to make America more like everyone else. The goal should be to preserve what makes America uniquely capable of attracting ambition, rewarding risk, and turning outsiders into builders. That is not a flaw. That is a strength. #ForgedinAmerica

Stop acting like wealth is a fixed pizza. It isn’t. The left’s biggest economic mistake is often the assumption that if one person becomes rich, someone else must have become poor. That is a fixed-pie mindset. One pizza. One set of slices. The only question is who gets more. But entrepreneurship asks a better question: Why not make more pizzas? That is what wealth creation is. Build a better product. Solve a real problem. Start a company. Employ people. Increase productivity. Create value that did not exist before. A recent analysis found that the collective value of immigrant-founded U.S. unicorn companies rose from $168 billion in 2016 to $5 trillion in 2026. That is not simply slicing the same pizza differently. That is making more pizzas. Does that mean every outcome is fair? No. Does it mean distribution never matters? No. But it does mean the economy is not automatically zero-sum. The real question is not only: “How do we divide what exists?” It is: “How do we create more for everyone?” That is the difference between a redistribution mindset and a wealth-creation mindset. Make more pizzas. #ForgedinAmerica

Myth: Immigrants only fill gaps in America’s labor market. Reality: They are building some of America’s most valuable companies. According to a 2026 analysis, 59% of U.S. unicorn companies have at least one immigrant founder or cofounder. That is 455 out of 775 privately held startups valued at $1 billion or more. Let that sink in. More than half of America’s billion-dollar startups were founded or cofounded by someone who chose to come here. That is not just an immigration statistic. It is an innovation statistic. An entrepreneurship statistic. A job-creation statistic. A story about what happens when ambitious people can take a risk on a new life and build something extraordinary. These founders arrive, compete, hire, innovate, and create value that reaches far beyond themselves. That is the American promise at its best. America does not win by making opportunity smaller. America wins by remaining the place where talented people can come, build, and create. #ForgedinAmerica

Here’s a case study in how the woke right and woke left can make the same intellectual mistake. Different politics. Same bad reasoning. The mistake is emotional reasoning. And the tool is single-variable analysis. It works like this: Take a complicated problem with many causes. Then reduce it to one easy explanation. On the left, it can become: “Everything is because of oppression.” On the right, it can become: “Everything is because of a conspiracy.” Different story. Same intellectual failure. You see it everywhere: “Stocks are down because of this one thing.” “The country is broken because there are no term limits.” “Everything happened because someone planned it.” But real problems are almost never that simple. Markets involve incentives, rates, technology, regulation, consumer behavior, geopolitics, and time. Government involves institutions, culture, history, tradeoffs, human behavior, and unintended consequences. When you reduce all of that to one emotional explanation, you stop thinking. And when you stop thinking, you start producing dumb policy. Because if your diagnosis is conspiratorial or simplistic, your solution will be conspiratorial or simplistic too. That is why the woke right and woke left are mirrors in one important way. Both can confuse certainty with understanding. Both can mistake an emotionally satisfying answer for a true one. The cure is not picking a better tribe. The cure is better analysis. More variables. More context. More intellectual humility. #ForgedinAmerica

Stop pretending border security and a pathway to citizenship are mutually exclusive. Both can be true. A serious immigration policy starts with a secure border. A country has to know who is entering. It has to enforce its laws. It has to control its border. That is not radical. That is the minimum standard for a functioning country. But once the border is secure, there is a separate question: What do you do with people who have lived in America for decades? People who have worked. People who have raised families. People who have employed others. People who have become part of their communities. The answer cannot be a slogan. You can believe in enforcement without treating every long-term immigrant like a stranger. You can believe in a lawful immigration system while recognizing that people who built real lives here deserve a serious, lawful conversation about their future. This is not open borders. It is not amnesty without standards. It is a practical position: Secure the border. Enforce the rules. Then create a legitimate, earned pathway for long-term contributors who have become part of American society. That is what makes America great. Not chaos. Not cruelty. A system with rules — and the confidence to recognize people who have earned a place within them. #ForgedinAmerica

Myth: Immigrant success is just luck. Reality: Moving to a new country often selects for people with unusual drive. Think about what it takes to leave home. Cross an ocean. Learn a new culture. Study in a foreign country. Build a life from zero. That is not an easy decision. It requires risk tolerance. It requires sacrifice. It requires adaptability. It requires a belief that a better future is possible. That is why you see this pattern across so many communities — Indian, Korean, Filipino, Japanese, and countless others. It is not that every immigrant is identical. They are not. It is that the decision to start over often selects for people willing to do what most people are unwilling to do. They leave what is familiar. They accept uncertainty. They compete in a new system. They keep going when rejection would make most people quit. Even studying in another country is a major act of ambition. That is the immigrant self-selection effect. And it is one of America’s greatest advantages. America attracts people who are willing to bet on themselves. People who are willing to work. People who believe the future can be better than the past. That drive does not guarantee success. But it creates the conditions for extraordinary outcomes. #ForgedinAmerica

Here’s a case study in why immigrants are often among America’s most committed believers. They have perspective. They have traveled. They have seen what life looks like outside the American experiment. And that comparison matters. Americans who have never lived elsewhere can forget how rare this country’s combination of freedom, opportunity, entrepreneurship, safety, and upward mobility really is. America is imperfect. Of course it is. Every country is. But many immigrants understand something that gets lost in the online outrage cycle: America remains an extraordinary place to build a life. To raise a family. To start a business. To work hard. To take a risk. To fail and try again. That is why many immigrants and children of immigrants are intensely pro-American. Not because they think America has no flaws. Because they have seen the alternatives. They understand that gratitude and criticism can coexist. You can want America to improve while still believing it is worth protecting. You can support immigration while also believing that people who enter this country should respect its ideals and values. Freedom. Opportunity. Personal responsibility. Equal dignity. A shared commitment to the American experiment. The question is not whether America has problems. The question is whether we still believe in the principles that make America worth improving. #ForgedinAmerica

Stop underestimating immigrants. They're not just coming to America. They're self-selecting for success. Here's the proof: Andy Grove. When Andy Grove fled the Hungarian Revolution, he interviewed with refugee resettlement people. They turned him down the first time. Most people would have accepted that rejection. But Andy Grove didn't. He ran around and found a person he had talked to earlier in the week. He tracked that person down. He pledged that he would be a good American. That he wanted to study. That he was committed. And he was accepted. That's the self-selection principle in action. Think about what that story reveals: Andy Grove was rejected. He could have given up. Instead, he tracked down the right person. Made his case. Pledged his commitment. That's not passive. That's not waiting for an opportunity. That's actively pursuing it with everything you have. And that drive, that determination, that refusal to accept rejection—that's what Andy Grove brought to America. And what did he do with it? He founded Intel. He helped build Silicon Valley. He transformed the technology industry. He became one of the most important businesspeople in American history. Because he was self-selected. Because he wanted it badly enough to fight for it. And that's the principle: Immigrants who come to America tend to be self-selected. They're driven. They're motivated. They're determined to succeed. Even refugees are ironically somewhat self-selected. Because the ones who make it here are the ones who want it badly enough to fight for it. And that drive is America's greatest competitive advantage. #ForgedinAmerica

Here's a case study in why successful businesspeople don't run for office. It's not about corruption. It's about the appearance of impropriety. Here's the nightmare scenario: You've had a successful business career. There's a lot about you on the internet. Stock trading. Crypto. Investments. Business decisions. Tax returns from 17 years ago. Now you run for office. Suddenly, everything is scrutinized. Every investment. Every trade. Every business decision. And the mere appearance of impropriety—even if you're completely innocent—is enough to destroy you. He says it perfectly: "If I ever ran for office, I swear to God, I would feel like I would have to become a Jehovah's Witness and literally give my money away and have a sugar daddy that was publicly giving me food." Because that's the standard. Not: "Did you do anything wrong?" But: "Does anything look wrong?" And when you've had a business career, things can always be made to look wrong. A stock trade that was perfectly legal? Looks like insider trading. A crypto investment that made money? Looks like corruption. A business decision from 10 years ago? Looks like a conflict of interest. None of these things are wrong. But they all look wrong to someone who wants to make them look wrong. And in today's environment, the appearance of impropriety is as damaging as actual impropriety. Because accusations spread faster than corrections. Because narratives are more powerful than facts. Because the mere suggestion of corruption is enough to destroy a reputation. That's why successful businesspeople don't run for office. Not because they're corrupt. But because the standard is impossible. Because anyone who has actually built something has a history that can be weaponized. And that means the people who run for office are increasingly those who have never built anything. Which is exactly the wrong people to be running the country. #ForgedinAmerica