Finding True Independence (With Your Gut)

When we think about Independence Day, we usually think about freedom from something.

Freedom from oppression.
Freedom from rules.
Freedom to choose.

But as I've gotten older, I've realized one of the hardest freedoms to earn is the freedom to trust yourself.

That lesson changed Arcbound.

—

In the fall of 2023, I flew home to Washington, D.C. to host what I called an innovation event.

If I'm being honest...

It wasn't really an innovation event.

It was a recruiting event.

For one person.

Blaire Kotsikopoulos.

Picture a mid-century home just outside D.C., fifty people from the innovation community, catered Chipotle, and an event we pulled together in a few weeks for less than $1,000.

Not bad.

By the end of that night, I already knew.

I wanted Blaire to join Arcbound.

The challenge was that two people on my team strongly disagreed.

"She's too intense."
"She's too strong."

Reasonable people. Honest feedback.

Enough to make me deeply question myself.
We've all had moments where everyone else's certainty becomes louder than our own.

Around that time, I shared those concerns with Allen Gannett. Blaire and I had both worked with Allen during different chapters of our careers.

He didn't hesitate.

"Service is your business," he said.

"You want exactly that."

Then Mark Green gave me advice I'll never forget.

"Find every reason not to hire the person you want to hire."

Not because you should ignore your instincts.

Because if your gut is pointing you somewhere important, your job isn't to blindly follow it. Your job is to try to prove yourself wrong.

So that's exactly what I did.

I back-channeled every person I could find who had worked with Blaire.

Five conversations. Five glowing reviews.

I kept looking for a reason not to make the hire.

I couldn't find one.
So I made the offer.

It turned out to be the best hiring decision I've ever made.

She became exactly what Arcbound needed.

I've always been wired as an optimist. I naturally see possibilities before I see obstacles.
Blaire has a gift for seeing what it actually takes to make those possibilities real.

Where I tend to believe, "This will always work."
She instinctively asks, "What's the risk?"

Somewhere over the past two years, we've rubbed off on each other.

She's become more comfortable pushing bold change.

I'm becoming slightly intentional about understanding the downside before sprinting toward the upside (Yes, I still improvements to make)!

But it’s made me better outside of work too.

Business has a funny way of spilling into the rest of your life.

Yesterday, my friend Mike Maddock asked me a simple question:

"What's driving you more—your fear or your dreams?"

When I think back to hiring Blaire, there was plenty to fear.
What would happen if key people left?
What if I was wrong and everything fell apart?

Those fears were real.
But the dream was louder.

This July 4th, that's the kind of independence I've been thinking about.

Not freedom from other people.

Freedom from needing everyone else to agree with you before you act.

If I've learned anything, do the homework, pressure test your instincts.
Then, when the evidence keeps pointing in the same direction...

Trust your gut.

Arcbound Event on July 15

When: July 15, 10 AM PT / 1 PM EST | Where: Register Here

Experts: Todd Smith,  John Belizaire, Agnes Budzyn

Moderator: Bryan Wish

As AI moves from experimentation to enterprise-scale adoption, the next competitive advantage will not belong only to the companies with the best models or most visible applications. It will belong to the organizations that understand the infrastructure behind them.

Every AI breakthrough depends on something deeper: energy, compute, data centers, capital efficiency, and the systems required to make intelligence affordable, scalable, and reliable. While much of the conversation focuses on AI use cases, fewer leaders are asking the foundational questions: Who is powering this new era? Who is reducing the cost of compute? And what infrastructure needs to exist so new companies, products, and workflows can be built on top of this expanding intelligence layer?

Join Todd Smith, Co-Founder and CEO of TAHO Labs, John Belizaire, CEO of Soluna, and Agnes Budzyn, Investor and Board Member at Bluedge Ventures, for a timely conversation on the energy and compute infrastructure underpinning the next wave of AI innovation.

Together, they will explore how power availability, data center strategy, compute economics, and infrastructure investment are shaping the future of AI, and why the companies that understand these dynamics will be better positioned to build, scale, and compete.

Expect a candid discussion on where AI is headed, what most leaders are overlooking, and how the next generation of enduring companies may be built not only with new intelligence, but with new power.

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