The Gap is Coming. Are You Ready?

Hey Everyone - All the stuff going on in the world right now has me pretty unsettled. I’ve been thinking a lot about how I can diversify, build my own tribe, and be as independent as possible in the future. I’m really not sure how AI fits into all of this.

No intention of being a debbie downer though. To me, when bad stuff happens, it is a call to double down on what I can control to secure my own situation as much as possible.

This week:

Let’s dive in.

Block laid off nearly half its staff last week. That alone is not unusual. Tech companies have been cutting headcount for years now. What made this one different is what they said about it.

Most companies couch layoffs in vague language. "Restructuring." "Right-sizing." "Aligning resources with strategic priorities." Block did not do that. They said they adopted AI tools and as a direct result no longer needed as many workers. The stock jumped 15%.

That is worth sitting with for a moment. A company told the market "we replaced a large portion of our workforce with AI" and the market rewarded them for it. If you do not think other executives noticed, you are not paying attention.

I want to be clear about where I stand on this. I do not think AI is going to permanently eliminate all the jobs it displaces. New tools have always created new needs, new industries, new roles that nobody could have predicted before the shift. "Social media manager" was not a job title fifteen years ago. There will be equivalents we cannot imagine yet, and existing jobs will reshape themselves around AI in ways that change what it means to do that work. Whether the number of new jobs will fully match what is lost, I honestly do not know. Nobody does. But I do believe new opportunities will emerge.

The problem is timing.

Previous revolutions had a built-in buffer. The industrial revolution needed railroads, factories, power grids, and telegraph lines. Building that infrastructure took decades and employed millions of people during the transition itself. The workforce that was being displaced by mechanization was partially absorbed by the massive physical buildout that mechanization required. The internet followed a similar pattern. Laying fiber, building server farms, constructing the physical backbone of the digital economy created an enormous amount of work during the transition period.

AI does not work that way. It runs on infrastructure that largely already exists. The cloud, the internet, the global network of connected devices. Yes, data centers are being built. There will probably be small economies that spring up around that construction. But it is a fraction of what previous revolutions required. There is no equivalent of "build the railroad" to absorb the millions of people whose jobs are being automated right now.

That means the gap between displacement and creation could be much larger and much more painful than anything we have seen before. Not because the jobs will never come back. But because AI is moving faster than we can figure out what the new jobs are. The technology is displacing roles at a pace that outstrips our ability to adapt, retrain, and reorganize around it.

Anthropic published a research paper this week that found something interesting. At the aggregate level, AI has not caused a measurable spike in unemployment yet. But when they looked more closely, they found suggestive evidence that hiring of younger workers has slowed in the occupations most exposed to AI. The senior people are fine for now. The entry-level pipeline is quietly narrowing. That is exactly what a gap looks like in its early stages. Not a sudden collapse. A slow tightening that does not show up in the headlines until it is already well underway.

I do not know exactly how long the gap will last. I do not think anyone does. But I think it is the most important thing to be honest about right now. The optimists who say "AI will create new jobs" are probably right, eventually. The pessimists who say "AI is going to devastate the workforce" are also probably right, in the short term. Both things can be true. The question is what happens in the middle.

So what do you do about it.

Do not wait for your employer to make the decision for you. The Block employees who got cut last week probably knew AI was changing their industry. Many of them probably did not have a backup plan. Start building something on the side now. A newsletter, a consulting practice, a small local business, a product, anything that does not depend on a single employer deciding you are still needed.

This is not just about having a safety net. Building your own thing gives you something that a traditional job does not: the ability to move fast. When new roles and opportunities emerge on the other side of this gap, and they will, the people who capture them will not be the ones updating their resumes and applying through job boards. They will be the ones who already have the flexibility, the skills, and the infrastructure to pivot quickly. If you are already building, you can see a new opportunity on Monday and start moving on it by Tuesday. If you are dependent on a single paycheck from a single company, you are waiting for someone else to create that opportunity for you and hoping you hear about it in time.

The gap is coming. The people who come out the other side in the strongest position will not be the ones who predicted it correctly. They will be the ones who were already in motion when it arrived.

I have been back on my local newsletter grind and I am excited to share that we have secured a few sponsors for Austin Founders Feed and will hopefully be profitable this month.

I really love the local newsletter business. There are so many ways to create value for the audience and so many ways to monetize. We can get sponsors. We can sell products like guides. We can run affiliate partnerships. We can host events. We can build a paid community. Each one of these is a viable revenue stream on its own, and they all reinforce each other. A sponsor wants to reach the audience. The audience wants the guide. The guide builds credibility that attracts more sponsors. The events create content and relationships that feed back into the newsletter. It is a flywheel that gets easier to turn the longer you keep at it.

But what is not on that list is honestly the most valuable part, and it is the hardest to quantify.

Being a staple in your local community changes your entire trajectory. I cannot put a dollar figure on what Austin Founders Feed has done for me beyond the direct revenue. The introductions I have gotten. The partnerships that started with "I read your newsletter." The invitations to rooms I would not have been in otherwise. The deals and opportunities that showed up not because I went looking for them but because enough people in Austin associate my name with this community.

I think this invisible surface area is worth more than all the other monetization channels put together.

This is what I mean when I talk about building a pipeline. The newsletter is not just a media product. It is a reason to talk to thousands of people. It is a reason for people to talk about me when I am not in the room. Every issue I send is a touchpoint with my community that keeps me top of mind for opportunities I cannot predict. Some of those turn into sponsor revenue. Some turn into partnerships. Some turn into things I never would have thought to pursue on my own. That is what serendipity actually looks like in practice. It is not random luck. It is surface area multiplied by consistency over time.

If you have been thinking about starting something local, I cannot recommend it enough. The revenue will come. But the pipeline it builds into the rest of your life is the real asset.

If the gap I wrote about in this week's Signal plays out the way I think it might, a lot of businesses are going to feel pain. When layoffs rise and spending contracts, any business that depends on customers is exposed. It does not matter how good your product is or how loyal your audience is. If people have less money, they spend less money. That is true for startups, local businesses, freelancers, and Fortune 500 companies alike.

Investing is one of the few ways to build wealth that does not depend on someone else deciding to buy from you. There are no customers. No sales cycles. No churn rate. You are making decisions based on your own research and your own judgment about where value exists and where it is going. That does not mean it is easy or risk-free. But it means your income from investing is not directly tied to the same economic forces that squeeze every other revenue stream during a downturn.

In fact, downturns are often where the best investment opportunities appear. When markets drop, assets go on sale. The people who have the knowledge and the capital to act during those moments are the ones who build real, lasting wealth. But you cannot learn to invest during a crisis. By then it is too late. The skill has to already be there.

Here is what I mean by learning to invest. I am not talking about day trading or checking stock tickers every fifteen minutes. I am talking about developing the ability to look at a business or an asset and determine whether it is worth owning at the current price. That means understanding how to read a balance sheet. It means learning to distinguish between a company that is genuinely undervalued and one that is cheap for a reason. It means building a framework for making decisions based on fundamentals rather than headlines or hype.

It also means learning to look at trends and ask a simple but powerful question: what is not going to change?

Everyone is focused on what AI will disrupt. That is important. But as an investor, some of the best opportunities come from identifying what stays. People will still need to eat. They will still need housing and energy and healthcare. They will still want to be entertained, to connect with other people, to feel safe. The businesses that serve those enduring needs, and serve them well, tend to hold up through every kind of disruption. The specific technology changes. The underlying demand does not. Learning to see through the noise of what is new and identify what is durable is one of the most valuable investing instincts you can develop, and it is especially useful right now when so much attention is being pulled toward whatever is shiny and AI-adjacent.

This is a skill that compounds in the same way that building a network or developing credibility compounds. The more reps you put in, the better your judgment gets. Every investment you research sharpens your ability to evaluate the next one, even if you decide not to buy. Over time, you develop a sense for value that becomes almost instinctive. But that sense only comes from doing the work repeatedly over months and years.

The practical starting point is simple. Pick one company you are interested in. Read their annual report. Look at their revenue, their margins, their debt, their competitive position. Form an opinion about whether you think the business will be worth more or less five years from now, and why. You do not have to invest a dollar to start building this skill. You just have to start paying attention with intention.

The people who will navigate the gap best are the ones with multiple ways to build and protect wealth. Investing is one of the most important and most overlooked. Start learning now, while the stakes are low and you have time to make mistakes that do not cost you much. When the downturn comes, you will be glad you did.