[DISCLAIMER: This is a purely fictional "letter from the future," a bottled message tossed into the sea of time with a hint of provocation and a smile. No time travelers were involved in the writing of this post].
Dear partners, customers and technology watchers of 2025,
I am Fabio Lauria, founder of Electe (yes, we still exist in 2028!)*, and I decided to break every rule of corporate marketing to share with you some thoughts from this side of the time bridge.
In 2025, you are still debating the "middle crisis" of AI and writing endless whitepapers about the "right integration" of human and machine. We here in 2028 look back on that time as the time when the entire technology ecosystem was completely missing the point.
As a founder who went through three funding rounds, two pivots, and a failed last-minute acquisition, here is the truth that no strategy consultant wanted to admit in 2025: we were all optimizing the answers to the wrong questions.
The most innovative companies were not those with the "best AI implementation strategy," but those that had the courage to completely redefine the problems they were trying to solve.
In 2025, your KPIs still measure how fast AI can perform existing tasks. Here in 2028, we measure how radically AI allows us to rethink those tasks, or eliminate them altogether.
The turning point came when we stopped asking, "How can we use AI to optimize our X process?" and started asking, "If we could redesign our company from scratch with these technologies, would the X process still exist?"
If you are a company that is investing millions in "incremental improvement" through AI, you are building a Ferrari for a world that will soon be moving by teleportation.
Here's what your CTO should really be doing:
The startups that are eating your market in my 2028 are not the ones with the best AI. They are the ones that have used AI to completely rethink what it means to be a company in your industry.
In my timeline, companies that simply "implemented AI" are like those that simply "created a website" in 1995. Necessary but tragically insufficient.
The companies that dominate are those that had the courage to imagine, "If we could solve this problem from scratch, with technologies that look like magic, how would we do it?"
So while everyone in 2025 is busy debating the right balance between automation and human potential, do yourself a favor: ask yourself if the problems you are trying to solve will still exist three years from now.
I am waiting for you here in the future. It is stranger, wilder and infinitely more interesting than your boring whitepapers predict.
Fabio Lauria, CEO & Founder, Electe, May 11, 2028
P.S. Amazon just acquired OpenAI. And yes, we were all as shocked as you will be.
Q: Are you the new John Titor? Should we be concerned about time paradoxes?
A: Unlike Titor, I am not here to warn you of impending catastrophes or to talk about IBM 5100. I do not own a "C204 Time Displacement Unit" mounted on a Chevrolet - just a laptop with too much caffeine in the system. My "time travel" occurs exclusively through creative speculation. No space-time continuum has been damaged in the writing of this article.
Q: Which companies should we buy/sell based on your "information from the future"?
A: If I were really from the future and had this information, sharing it would be the last way to keep it accurate! The very act of revealing future information changes the path of the present. In any case, investing based on provocative internet posts is generally a questionable strategy. To quote an essay from my time, "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."
Q: What do you mean by "the Denver incident" that you mentioned?
A: Ah, that. Let's just say that in 2026 we will all learn an important lesson about the limits of algorithmic optimization in critical systems. But don't worry too much - it accelerated needed reforms and led to the Denver Declaration on Technological Accountability. As I always say, sometimes you have to break an algorithm to make a revolution.
Q: Are you serious about the idea that we should stop focusing on efficiency?
A: I am not saying to abandon efficiency, but to relegate it to its proper place: a means, not an end. Efficiency without direction is like having a Ferrari without a destination. In my 2028, the brightest companies ask first "What should we create?" and only then "How can we create it efficiently?" Reversing these questions has been our collective mistake.
Q: What is the real practical advice behind all this futuristic fiction?
A: Devote 20 percent of your AI resources not to optimizing what you already do, but to exploring what you might stop doing altogether. The real competitive advantage will belong not to those who do old things the fastest, but to those who first realize that some of those things no longer need to be done. Creative destruction begins at home.
[DISCLAIMER: The above is pure creative fiction. No market forecasts, financial advice, or actual knowledge of the future is implied. The author assumes no responsibility for business decisions made based on bottled messages from alternative timelines.]
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