FOMO.03: Malpractice, Martyrs, and the “Five-Guy” Committee
It’s midnight. Most sensible people are asleep or recharging.
I’d bet a significant amount that a public health official would walk in right now, snatch this laptop away, and order me to bed.
The irony isn’t lost on me. This week, I attended the MIT Disciplined Entrepreneurship bootcamp. It was a masterclass in building resilient, revenue-generating scale-ups, but it also involved 15+ hour days.
The startups were being taught to build the future while simultaneously testing the structural integrity of our own nervous systems.
The Stone Age Software
As Dr. Ann Leen Mahhov pointed out in a viral wake-up call this week, our bodies are still running “Stone Age” software. Back then, the “fight-or-flight” response helped us outrun tigers. Today, the “tiger” might be a pitch deck or a term sheet.
When you work 16 hours a day, you keep your sympathetic nervous system in a state of constant red alert. You are burning resources faster than you can build them. Ann Leen’s math is simple: between 8 hours of sleep, 2 hours for loved ones, and 1 hour of movement, there isn’t a timeline where a 16-hour workday doesn’t result in a physical crash.
In medicine, they call this a hazard. In the startup world, we call it grit. But as the data shows, it’s actually malpractice. On both sides. Research shows that extended shifts are associated with 36% more serious medical errors.
If a tired doctor is a danger to their patient, a tired founder is a danger to their company, their cap table, and their family.
There can be casualties on both sides.
The Unfiltered FOMO Truth
Let’s be honest: a startup is not a “normal” business. This often requires a kind of “Extraction Phase” — a period where you pay for the future with your sleep. As our co-founder Triin Hertmann often says, investors aren’t buying your time; they are buying your obsession.
Who is driving the ambulance? The “Village IT Man”?
This week, Karen Burns called out the elephant in the room: the Estonian government’s new AI advisory committee. It’s composed of five technologists. All men. No women. No ethicists. No sociologists. One member even compared AI to “your village IT man.”
Karen’s point is sharp: if we treat AI as just a tool for “doubling productivity,” we are ignoring the 10X Elite Paradox. This is the risk that a tiny group of AI-enabled workers holds the entire economy hostage while the rest of the tax base evaporates. If the “advisors” only understand the tech and the profit, who is looking out for the people?
KAREN K BURNS: Estonia Deserves Better Than This AI Advisory Committee
The composition? Five men: three entrepreneurs, one venture capitalist, and one IT figure whose relevance peaked years ago. No member has deep experience in building or researching AI systems. Not one woman. Not one ethicist, sociologist, legal scholar, or representative from the vulnerable communities this technology will profoundly affect.
The Shortcut to Mediocrity
This ties into Aleksi Partanen’s warning. He watched Finland’s education system collapse because it traded “difficulty” for “autonomy.” He sees Estonia’s AI Leap (TI-Hüpe) as a potential slide into the same trap.
“The struggle of being stuck and frustrated is not a bug; it’s a feature. It builds the psychological capacity to tolerate uncertainty—the exact capacity required to start a company.”
If we use AI as a self-driving Tesla to avoid the hard work of thinking, we aren’t creating 10X founders. We are creating 1X humans with 10X shiny slide decks.
ALEKSI PARTANEN: The Unicorn Paradox
Last weekend, while having breakfast at a hotel in London, I did something unusual: I read a physical newspaper. It was the Financial Times Weekend edition, the kind that leaves black ink on your fingers and makes you feel like you’re participating in a dying ritual.
The FOMO Verdict
Whether it’s a founder at an MIT bootcamp at midnight or a government committee planning our “AI future,” we are obsessed with output and ignoring impact.
A 16-hour day is often just management malpractice disguised as hustle.
A five-man committee is policy malpractice disguised as innovation.
Estonia deserves better. We have the researchers, the ethicists, and the female founders who are actually building these systems. Why are they in the audience instead of at the table?
If we want to build unicorns that actually matter, we have to stop treating humans like machines and stop treating machines like “village IT men.”
The real “AI Leap” isn’t about the tech. It’s about having the guts to sit with the hard questions — even when they don’t fit into a 16-hour day.
A Call to Action: The Shadow Board
We believe the “polished response” isn’t enough. We need a “Shadow Advisory Board” to represent the legal, ethical, and human side of AI in Estonia.
Who would you nominate to join the table? Reply to this email with the names of the experts the Prime Minister missed.
About this 5-Man-club. I have serious split personality issue here. I am not ambigious, i am not on fence, nothing vague about it - i am pro both sides simultaneously. I think the 5 Men in the club are probably best 5 Men i could have picked myself. Maybe i would have selected 1 or 2 other Men but just because there are several other worthy candidates, not that there is anything wrong with them. They all have proven their understanding of innovation, vision and foresight with successful startups and investments. Nothing speaks as loudly as results.
And i firmly agree that this committe is wrong. Not only because there are no women (BTW i believe women who we are thinking about as possible members there, would faltly refuse if anyone would offer them the position because of gender) but I think if anything, this committee is perhaps too predictable and too homogenious. Its Createst Hits of our ecosystem here. But createst hits are usually already heard thousands of times, there is no surprise any more. I dont know if it is possible for 5 very innovative persons to be homogenious but i am not sure how far out of the box they can think before their experiences born of their own successes start shaping their thoughts.
So how to fix it? Replace whole bunch? But its like saying that "you are not good enough any more". And this is wrong, because these guys have still lot to give. Switch around few names? But who? And as there are then only couple available spots, should we go with gender quota to make sure we are not back in same place after change? Just adding more people risks making this committee non-functional. We all know that from some level, in too big groups some people feel that they dont get enough attention and lose interest at all - and we dont need that.
So what about - lets make 2 committees - one of usual suspects and one of "other people". Lets make essay competition and select some pupil/student with wildly imaginative mind. Tech visionary, sociology PhD, ex politician without party loyalty strangling him/her, backpacker fresh back from traveling the globe - whatever the types are, they have to add new angle to the group. And then lets ask both groups to work for set period of time and ask them to introduce their ideas. I would be very interested to see what comes out from there.