In the gray, sterile halls of corporate power and the coffee-scented open-plan offices of venture-backed startups, a new language is spoken. It is a dialect of English, but one whose primary purpose is not to communicate information, but to obscure it. It is a language of profound, almost religious conviction, designed to create a reality distortion field around ideas that are often unprofitable, unoriginal, or simply absurd. It is the language of the new priesthood, the venture capitalists and their founder-prophets.
At the heart of this lexicon, its most sacred and versatile utterance, is the phrase: “We’re building the future.”
This statement is the alpha and omega of startup jargon, a conversation-stopper, a get-out-of-jail-free card for any annoying questions about revenue, ethics, or viability. But what does it actually mean? Like all effective propaganda, its power lies in its deliberate vagueness. To navigate the modern world of technology is to become a translator of this new Newspeak. This guide, therefore, is offered as a public service, a decoder ring for the most common VC-funded delusions.
A Glossary for the Skeptic
“We’re Building the Future.”
This is the foundational myth, the Genesis story of every pitch deck. It conjures images of flying cars, gleaming utopias, and humanity’s upward march toward progress. The speaker is not a mere businessperson; they are a visionary, a historical agent shaping the destiny of our species.
The translation is, of course, more mundane. Most often, it means: “We have identified a previously un-monetized human interaction and are constructing a digital tollbooth upon it.” Sometimes, it is a more honest confession: “We have received a seven-figure seed investment from individuals who expect a 100x return, and ‘building the future’ sounds significantly better on a press release than ‘desperately searching for a business model that isn’t just selling our users’ data’.”
In its most potent form, this phrase channels the ghost of men like Thomas Midgley Jr., the brilliant inventor of leaded gasoline and Freon. Midgley died a celebrated hero, believing he had made the world a safer, more efficient place. He was, in his own mind, building the future. It was only decades later that the world understood he was the single greatest contributor to atmospheric damage in human history, a purveyor of slow-acting, invisible poisons. When a founder tells you they are building the future, it is always wise to ask what invisible poison they might be releasing into the environment—be it social, political, or ecological.
“We’re Fostering a Community.”
This phrase paints a wholesome picture of a vibrant ecosystem, a digital village square where like-minded individuals gather for connection and shared purpose. It suggests belonging, a family, a movement. It is almost never true.
The translation is: “We are assembling a large, unpaid focus group.” This “community” is a pool of subjects to be endlessly surveyed, A/B tested, and analyzed. Every interaction, every post, every click is a data point that helps refine the actual product, which is almost never the platform itself. The community is the resource being mined.
This is the operating principle of what my book calls the AI Anxiety Industrial Complex. In this system, user engagement is the ultimate goal, and the most effective way to drive engagement is through powerful emotions like fear and outrage. The “community,” in this context, is not a family; it is the fuel for a machine that runs on anxiety.
“We’re a Pre-Revenue Company.”
This is delivered with the quiet pride of a monk who has taken a vow of poverty. It implies a higher purpose, a strategic decision to prioritize growth, user acquisition, and product perfection over the grubby, short-term pursuit of profit. It is a sign of seriousness and long-term vision.
The translation is almost always: “We have absolutely no idea how this will ever make money.” It is the linguistic equivalent of a squirrel in a jetpack—a lot of noise, a brief illusion of impressive momentum, and an inevitable, messy collision with the wall of financial reality. It is the perfect expression of the “Tyranny of Exceptionalism” that has infected the tech world. The story of becoming the next Google is so compelling that no one is supposed to mention that, for now, you are just a cash-incineration machine with a good logo.
“We Are Disrupting the [Insert Stodgy, Old Industry Here] Space.”
This casts the startup as a heroic David and the established industry as a lumbering, idiotic Goliath. It is a narrative of creative destruction, of bringing sleek, efficient, tech-driven solutions to a world of dinosaurs.
The translation is often far less heroic: “We are using billions in venture capital to subsidize a service at a loss, driving out all existing, profitable businesses, with the explicit long-term goal of establishing a monopoly and then charging whatever we want.”
The story of Netflix and Blockbuster has become a foundational parable for this delusion. But the lesson has been warped. Founders now see Blockbuster’s failure not as a complex story about hubris and changing infrastructure, but as a simple morality play that justifies any and all aggressive tactics. “Disruption” has become a moral carte blanche, a noble-sounding word for a ruthless process of market capture that often replaces stable, middle-class jobs with precarious, algorithmically-managed gig work.
The Purpose of It All
This new language is not a bug; it’s a feature. Its purpose is to suspend disbelief. It is a tool for managing the psychology of investors, employees, and the media, keeping them focused on the grand, utopian promise of tomorrow so they don’t ask too many hard questions about the balance sheet of today. It is a system where, as the conclusion of my book argues, the options are to “be first, be smarter, or cheat”. This language allows for a fourth option: pretending to be all three.
It is a world that values being first above all else, creating a race to the bottom where ideas are replicated in minutes and competitive advantage is fleeting. It is a world where using AI to cheat your way to a credential seems like a viable strategy, because it offers the reward without the struggle.
The ultimate defense against this linguistic assault is to do what these founders hope you never will: apply first-principles thinking. To look past the grand narrative and see the mundane reality. To understand that the glittering promise of “building the future” often conceals the simple, age-old business of building a box to hide a human in , or a statistical machine that is merely a very sophisticated autocomplete. The language is designed to make you feel like you are part of a miracle. Your job is to remember that the miracle is almost always a magnificent lie.
Have you encountered other examples of VC-funded Newspeak in the wild? Share your translations in the comments. We must build our dictionary together.
Had Enough of the Delusions?
If you’re tired of being told a food delivery app is solving humanity’s oldest problems, or if you suspect that “synergistic value-creation” is just buzzword for “we’re still not profitable,” then you need a better translation guide.
My book, “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Prompt,” is the definitive decoder ring for the doublespeak of the digital age. It teaches you how to step out of the feedback loop of hype and reclaim your sanity from the anxiety machine. Find it on Amazon and start seeing the world for what it is, not what the pitch decks claim it to be.
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