I try really hard not to be news reactive in this publication, but this week I just couldn’t help myself.

Instinct AI, founded by a 23-year-old, just raised $1B at a $10B valuation, one month after raising $250M at $2.5B, which is nuts.

And it confirms one of my favorite patterns of the modern age:

You can just do things.

Just look at Instinct:

Just a straight-up AI wunderkind coding his way to becoming a billionaire.

I have been using it for the last week or so, and I love it.

It’s already saving me hours by automating mundane work (scheduling meetings), increasing my preparedness (morning briefs / to-dos), ensuring fewer balls get dropped (proactive nudges throughout the day), and once I connected it to my Claude, it actually became something akin to my personal EA.

But underneath this shining star and bellwether is a real structural shift that is happening across all industries.

↓↓↓

For most of modern history, doing things required permission.

There were gatekeepers at every stop, because the scarce input was access.

But technology has "democratized" access to everything, and every new layer of it shortens the distance between deciding to do something and actually being able to “just do it.”

And we have now officially hit escape velocity.

(1) Personal finance. Over fifty years, investing moved from high-minimum institutional products to free trades on your phone.

(2) Shipping products. The cost of building software, tools, and other products has fallen to zero (or as much as you’ll spend on Claude tokens).

Companies like Instinct are building far more with far less.

I built this website in under an hour using Claude Code.

(3) Building media. The cost of producing and distributing a show or a publication has fallen to zero (or as much as you’ll spend on an iPhone).

All-In started during the pandemic as four friends talking on Zoom and now runs one of the most sought-after conferences in tech and politics, with its own tequila to match.

I built 🧭 At the Center, and my friends and I launched Clubhouse, under the same principle. Nobody green-lit us. We saw a need and met a need, and that will almost certainly lead somewhere good.

(4) Launching commerce. Once you own the attention, you can “just do” whatever you want with it.

Sure, launch that chocolate bar, MrBeast. Build that massive sports playground and write the whole thing off, Dude Perfect. The world is your oyster.

(5) Private markets. The cost of running a private market deal has fallen because of platforms like Sydecar, which has directly accelerated the rise of independent sponsors all across sports, media, and entertainment.

Post one banger on LinkedIn and your DMs will be flooded with deal flow, and Rogo will help you run the entire process and run the analyst diligence for you.

While LinkedIn deals might not necessarily be the best ones out there, the ability to sidestep traditional fundraising and deploying processes is at an all-time high.

And you certainly don’t need two years of IB, two years of PE, and two years of HBS or GSB to be successful by the age of 30.

Gatekeepers still exist, but the gate has moved somewhere more meritocratic.

Success is no longer dependent on the credibility of the institutions standing behind you, but rather on the proof of your ability to execute.

When the cost of “just doing things” falls to zero, the premium moves downstream: proof that you did it, and the relationships that let the work compound.

The next decade of sports, media, and entertainment belongs to the people who stopped waiting for permission and started collecting proof.

🎙️ All-In style show on the business behind sports, media, and entertainment with Brent Peus and Dominyck Bullard.

I could not think of a better way to end this Patterns post than our episode with Mac Hereford, ex-Alabama football player, Renaissance man, and the king of “just doing things.”

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