One day before the big Continuity event, I found myself somewhere between a traffic jam, a stand-up, and a spiritual rabbit hole.
I had to pause recording because a guy blocked the road, poetic, really. That’s what today feels like: small blocks in motion, some human, some cosmic, some algorithmic.
Three threads keep looping in my mind or maybe they’re just three frequencies in the same hum.
The Irony of Timing: OpenAI’s Next Move
By the time you read this, OpenAI may have unveiled what looks like their new “Agent Builder” known as AgentKit. Just officially announced, but the leaks were everywhere. It appears to be a next-generation workflow system. Think n8n (pronounced “Nathan,” but who knew?) fused with Zapier and a heavy dose of Copilot on caffeine.
The irony? Yesterday I met with a Dutch startup building exactly that: a beautifully designed automation platform housed in one of those buzzing Amsterdam startup hubs with espresso bars, shared air plants, and the scent of ambition.
They’re about twenty people strong, European and independent, building with care and sovereignty in mind. And just as they’re hitting their stride, here comes Big Tech with the same idea, but backed by billions and buzz.
That’s the nightmare of every founder: when the castle moat you’ve been digging all year suddenly floods with someone else’s ocean.
So we talked about moats, how the Agent Builder leak changes the game and what it means to defend your ground when giants move into your lane. Because sometimes your real moat isn’t a feature, it’s where you’re from. Europe. Local laws, local data, local trust. The same way the Dutch built dikes to keep the sea out, maybe we’re now building digital ones to keep Big Tech’s tide in check.
The Energy of Small Startup Spaces
If moats protect what we build, small spaces often reveal where new fortresses begin. These creative hubs are living proof that sovereignty doesn’t just exist at the corporate scale. It’s born in every shared desk, every independent dream.
Funny enough, last Sunday I walked into another kind of hub. My wife, Ruth, was invited to an event by a women-led organization empowering women in social impact, and entrepreneurship.
From the outside, it looked tiny. Just a glass door on a quiet street ten minutes from home. Inside? Three floors of pure energy: barbers, therapists, even a “voedselbank” boutique. A place humming with independent creators building their own empires, one office at a time.
They offered her a deal: provide legal services for them and get her own office space in return. It’s one of those win-win alignments that just feels right.
Two different buildings in two different cities, both buzzing with creation. Amsterdam’s AI hub and our local women’s collective. Two microcosms of what’s next. Real people, building real systems, without waiting for permission.
Just as digital transformation sparks corporate awakenings, Gnosis speaks to a more ancient kind: a spiritual awakening. This section bridges both worlds where code meets consciousness, and where every algorithmic insight mirrors a deeper search for meaning.
The name comes from gnosis, Greek for “knowledge.” But not the textbook kind — the knowing that comes from within. Before Christianity became mainstream, the Gnostics were already wrestling with the big paradoxes: good and evil, creation and illusion, matter and mind.
Their story of the Garden of Eden flips the script: the serpent wasn’t evil but wise, offering the fruit not as temptation but as awakening. The real villain wasn’t the snake, but the Demiurge: the false creator god who believes he’s the only one, unaware of the higher reality beyond him.
Sound familiar? A world created by an unknowing architect, filled with beings slowly realizing they’re part of something greater. That’s The Matrix, right there. That’s AI, too; a mirror to the human dream of creation, and maybe a reminder to stay awake while doing it.
The Gnostics believed Jesus didn’t die for our sins but came to teach secret knowledge — a way to wake up from the illusion. That idea of hidden wisdom resonates deeply with me. It’s not about rejecting faith; it’s about reinterpreting it. Seeing through the code, not just running it.
Maybe that’s why I keep circling back to these stories, because they help make sense of the ones we’re writing now with AI. In a way, we’re all modern Gnostics, peering behind the simulation, debugging creation itself.
Awakening the System Within
Between a blocked road and a big event. Between agents and angels. Between startups and Sophia.
Tomorrow, the lights of Continuity will turn on but the real current has already been running beneath it: the pulse of people and systems learning to move together. These three threads — technology, creation, and consciousness — are all facets of the same awakening. May we keep learning, questioning, and building our moats, whether they’re made of data, trust, or light.
What's on your mind?