Editor-in-Chief's Letter

Guest Editor: Marcello MariMarcello Mari explores the changing relationship between founders, venture capital, and technology from firsthand experience. Having worked at the intersection of AI, blockchain and robotics since 2016, he was employee number one at SingularityNET and later founded SingularityDAO, building and raising capital in some of technology’s fastest-moving sectors. In this essay, he examines why the traditional venture model is being challenged by a new era of entrepreneurial independence. The subtle reordering of who matters in venture, and why A friend of mine, a venture capitalist of the unflinching, well-read kind, said something at dinner recently that I haven't been able to shake. He'd been discussing a company that reached a few million in revenue with two people and no outside money. "The frustrating thing," he said, "is that I would have been useless to them. They didn't need me a year ago, and now I can't get in." A week later, at the AI Salon in Dubai, Lee Kasler — an investor at the Dubai Future District Fund — made a similar point in a more measured tone. The old model, taking a twelve-year illiquid bet on a thesis written at the seed stage, was starting to look like an artifact of a different decade. Both remarks describe the same shift from opposite ends of the capital…