A Founder Story: An AI Startup Unleashing the Era of Ownership

A Founder Story: An AI Startup Unleashing the Era of Ownership

From Campfires to Screens to CampfireOS— Building to amplify the magic of ancient storytelling in a tech-driven world.

Introduction

If no one sees this, no one reads this, if anything at all….it is at least a letter from myself to the Universe to manifest this in this lifetime. And for those of you who are listening and following along, any claps/comments/forwards to help manifest this with us is beyond appreciated ❤

Campfires

As a child, my dearest memories were heading to the beach to build a small campfire with my closest friends, tell stories, eat food, laugh, cry, and ultimately become even closer to my friends through these shared narratives. Beyond campfires being a nostalgic memory for me, there is a symbolism behind campfires that really sparks something (pun intended) within me. Campfires can symbolize many things — friendship, warmth, magic, transformation, survival, a gathering.

But when I think of campfires, I think of the origins of storytelling. According to anthropologist Polly Weissner, in her observations about the Bushmen hunter-gatherers, apparently 81% of conversations around the campfire were devoted to storytelling. Storytelling was a cherished tradition that defined their culture and conveyed important lessons. Stories are the oldest and most vulnerable way we pass down values to each other.

The Lost Art of Storytelling

However, the way we tell stories has evolved significantly over time. We have transitioned from telling stories around a campfire to writing them in newspapers and other physical mediums, then to typing them in digital formats, and now to sharing videos, tweets, and more on social media platforms. Who knew how much the form of storytelling as well as the distribution platforms for storytelling would change over the years. Yet, one element has remained constant over time — the value of great stories. These are the stories that go viral, the ones that make us laugh, cry, and connect over (by sharing them via DMs).

But there’s something about the current state of storytelling that still bothers me. In the past, when you told a story around a campfire, your closest friends would be there, or people who were genuinely interested in your story would come and join you. Your story naturally and organically attracted the right audience. With the internet today, achieving that organic growth has become much more challenging. Organic growth no longer feels natural; instead, it has become a set of rules that you need to learn in order to gain an advantage. I’m referring to search engine optimization, understanding the algorithms behind each social media platform to boost video engagement and increase your chances of being recommended, and even this very first Medium article that I will post, which currently has zero followers. Simply relying on the quality of your story is no longer enough to reach the right people. You need to comprehend how today’s search engines and algorithms affect the visibility of your stories in order to reach the audience you believe will resonate with them. This realization is what inspired the creation of CampfireOS…

From Nano Creator to CampfireOS

After doing the corporate route, then joining multiple startups, and then getting burnt out from those startups, I took some time off. Had accomplished “objectively” a lot in my life, but felt so unfulfilled. Something that did make me fulfilled though was telling stories and sharing people’s stories. I tried to become a content creator and started a Humans of New York style blog called “Be Inphamous For” in 2020 that featured different humans in streetwear discussing a topic or story in their life that they were “Inphamous For”. It was filled with stories about defying the stereotypical, detoxing what society had engrained in us, and thought provoking ways of looking at something familiar to us. It was probably my favorite job. But after growing to ~3,000 followers after a few months, I quit.

Believe me, I didn’t want to quit. But I felt hypocritical in becoming a content creator for “Be Inphamous” because I couldn’t even be “Inphamous For” risking my corporate paid life to try to be a content creator full time. I could have tried to do it part time, but the burnout of posting content and interviewing different people was too much. Hence I quit. I’ve never felt good about that decision and I honestly wish I never stopped. I recently brought back the blog and rebranded a few months ago, but there’s something about the journey that didn’t feel the same. I felt behind on all social platforms. I felt like building in audience in 2020 was so different from building an audience in 2024. I was finally ready to take the risk and I wanted to now figure out how to make this a full time job. And that’s when it hit me.

The pains of becoming a creator of anything requires growing a following from a stagnant place but that made it that much more difficult and so NOT fun in this noisy world of algorithms, where organic growth requires some specific knowledge and tactics. As a one-person team with limited resources, but with a compelling story to tell, I realized that many others out there were facing the same problem. It wasn’t just content creators; it was anyone who wanted to create and share something meaningful in their lifetime. My definition of creators extends to solopreneurs, restaurant owners, athletes, artists, and anyone striving to share their creations with the world. I want to make it easy for everyone to become a creator by providing them with the tools and knowledge to embrace their uniqueness and build a sustainable business in the long run. That’s when I felt a deep purpose to build CampfireOS.

Growing our Campfire from 0 to 1

I have been lucky to find people in my life journey that also understand this same pain of creators and have had to find ways to package themselves to create their living. I met our amazing CSO, Andrew, at RCRDSHP building out an NFT Marketplace for music creators to sell release their music as NFTs to their community and fanbase. Andrew was always my go-to for all data insights on understanding the creator economy space and what our customers were saying so we could strategically pave the best path forward. He’s a solopreneur that specializes in data, but truly understands the ups and downs of being a freelancer that runs his own business. Ultimately, he’s always had the same mission and vision of the future as me — where 1099s are becoming the norm over W2s because of the shift in people’s priorities. A shift from security to flexibility, from job titles to skill sets, companies to projects, and stability to freedom. That led to the inspiration of CampfireOS.

And CampfireOS was Born

So what is it? CampfireOS makes it easy to turn your knowledge into income by leveraging AI powered systems. In other words, the knowledge that you share can finally be monetized by turning it into a living, breathing functional system. Leverage these systems to streamline your business operations, grow your business, or share with others! Here’s a deeper dive breakdown:

The Problem: Through our interviews with multiple creators, solopreneurs, side hustlers, and small businesses has shown us two key insights: 1) that making income online seems easy from all of the social media hype out there, but it still isn’t and 2) that for those making it on their own and making income, they are unable to scale their business due to limited resources. There are tons of AI automation tools and workflows that are trying to solve this today, but it hit me that we are approaching it completely wrong. But I think our approach just might be the one we have been looking for…

Our Approach: Our approach lies in classic systems thinking. Sounds a bit obvious and maybe too abstract but when you break it down to first principles, the problem of what’s missing in today’s AI tools for the average person becomes clear (I’ll talk about this in a future post :)). But with systems thinking in mind, we’ve created a user experience and simplified way to integrate AI into your everyday processes without really thinking about it as AI.

The Solution: Will also deep dive into this in a future post as I want to make the parallel with our systems thinking approach. But the TLDR is this: 1) Write down your step-by-step system or process for how you do something 2) Choose which steps you want to turn into shortcuts vs. do manually 3) Use that system to streamline your operations or share it with others to start monetizing your knowledge. And repeat! Maybe it sounds too simple, but knowledge sharing needs to be simple. We are in the midst of building out our MVP but excited to share with you all sneak peek previews. If you want to get real-time updates, join our waitlist at campfireos.com!

The Mission & Vision

Our mission is to democratize entrepreneurship. The barriers to starting a business or achieve income online need to be lowered. CampfireOS provides the tools, the platform, and the education to make it easy to turn your knowledge into income. Starting a business is now as easy as having a step-by-step system that you can scale with AI.

Our vision is big — it’s the comeback of the gig economy in a bigger and better way. And we believe unlocking that future lies in tapping into the beauty of humanity in which each and every individual is completely unique. We ultimately want to empower individuals to embrace their unique stories, perspectives, and experiences and channel it into tangible knowledge that they can share. And get paid for it on top of it all!

We believe that the future is already moving towards solopreneur-ship and part-time work, with individuals pursuing their own businesses for passive income. The pandemic has caused people to re-evaluate the value of their flexibility, time, and what they want to achieve in life. More and more people are leaving corporate jobs for more flexible lifestyles because, ultimately, what matters is what we do with the time we have left. With that in mind, the ownership economy is on the horizon, and we want to be at the forefront of that movement. Power is shifting back into the hands of individuals, as evidenced by the popularization of decentralization, the influential role of social media in historic and cultural debates, and the younger generation earning more than older generations with the abundant opportunities online. Do you see what we see now? It’s happening, and we will be there.Thanks for listening to whoever is out there. Dear Universe, please help us build out this Campfire :)

Thanks for Reading this Far…

If you also believe in our mission and vision, would appreciate your support by joining our waitlist at our site campfireos.com and/or checking out our socials to follow us along our journey of building CampfireOS in public.

From Campfires to Screens to CampfireOS— Building to amplify the magic of ancient storytelling in a tech-driven world.

Introduction

If no one sees this, no one reads this, if anything at all….it is at least a letter from myself to the Universe to manifest this in this lifetime. And for those of you who are listening and following along, any claps/comments/forwards to help manifest this with us is beyond appreciated ❤

Campfires

As a child, my dearest memories were heading to the beach to build a small campfire with my closest friends, tell stories, eat food, laugh, cry, and ultimately become even closer to my friends through these shared narratives. Beyond campfires being a nostalgic memory for me, there is a symbolism behind campfires that really sparks something (pun intended) within me. Campfires can symbolize many things — friendship, warmth, magic, transformation, survival, a gathering.

But when I think of campfires, I think of the origins of storytelling. According to anthropologist Polly Weissner, in her observations about the Bushmen hunter-gatherers, apparently 81% of conversations around the campfire were devoted to storytelling. Storytelling was a cherished tradition that defined their culture and conveyed important lessons. Stories are the oldest and most vulnerable way we pass down values to each other.

The Lost Art of Storytelling

However, the way we tell stories has evolved significantly over time. We have transitioned from telling stories around a campfire to writing them in newspapers and other physical mediums, then to typing them in digital formats, and now to sharing videos, tweets, and more on social media platforms. Who knew how much the form of storytelling as well as the distribution platforms for storytelling would change over the years. Yet, one element has remained constant over time — the value of great stories. These are the stories that go viral, the ones that make us laugh, cry, and connect over (by sharing them via DMs).

But there’s something about the current state of storytelling that still bothers me. In the past, when you told a story around a campfire, your closest friends would be there, or people who were genuinely interested in your story would come and join you. Your story naturally and organically attracted the right audience. With the internet today, achieving that organic growth has become much more challenging. Organic growth no longer feels natural; instead, it has become a set of rules that you need to learn in order to gain an advantage. I’m referring to search engine optimization, understanding the algorithms behind each social media platform to boost video engagement and increase your chances of being recommended, and even this very first Medium article that I will post, which currently has zero followers. Simply relying on the quality of your story is no longer enough to reach the right people. You need to comprehend how today’s search engines and algorithms affect the visibility of your stories in order to reach the audience you believe will resonate with them. This realization is what inspired the creation of CampfireOS…

From Nano Creator to CampfireOS

After doing the corporate route, then joining multiple startups, and then getting burnt out from those startups, I took some time off. Had accomplished “objectively” a lot in my life, but felt so unfulfilled. Something that did make me fulfilled though was telling stories and sharing people’s stories. I tried to become a content creator and started a Humans of New York style blog called “Be Inphamous For” in 2020 that featured different humans in streetwear discussing a topic or story in their life that they were “Inphamous For”. It was filled with stories about defying the stereotypical, detoxing what society had engrained in us, and thought provoking ways of looking at something familiar to us. It was probably my favorite job. But after growing to ~3,000 followers after a few months, I quit.

Believe me, I didn’t want to quit. But I felt hypocritical in becoming a content creator for “Be Inphamous” because I couldn’t even be “Inphamous For” risking my corporate paid life to try to be a content creator full time. I could have tried to do it part time, but the burnout of posting content and interviewing different people was too much. Hence I quit. I’ve never felt good about that decision and I honestly wish I never stopped. I recently brought back the blog and rebranded a few months ago, but there’s something about the journey that didn’t feel the same. I felt behind on all social platforms. I felt like building in audience in 2020 was so different from building an audience in 2024. I was finally ready to take the risk and I wanted to now figure out how to make this a full time job. And that’s when it hit me.

The pains of becoming a creator of anything requires growing a following from a stagnant place but that made it that much more difficult and so NOT fun in this noisy world of algorithms, where organic growth requires some specific knowledge and tactics. As a one-person team with limited resources, but with a compelling story to tell, I realized that many others out there were facing the same problem. It wasn’t just content creators; it was anyone who wanted to create and share something meaningful in their lifetime. My definition of creators extends to solopreneurs, restaurant owners, athletes, artists, and anyone striving to share their creations with the world. I want to make it easy for everyone to become a creator by providing them with the tools and knowledge to embrace their uniqueness and build a sustainable business in the long run. That’s when I felt a deep purpose to build CampfireOS.

Growing our Campfire from 0 to 1

I have been lucky to find people in my life journey that also understand this same pain of creators and have had to find ways to package themselves to create their living. I met our amazing CSO, Andrew, at RCRDSHP building out an NFT Marketplace for music creators to sell release their music as NFTs to their community and fanbase. Andrew was always my go-to for all data insights on understanding the creator economy space and what our customers were saying so we could strategically pave the best path forward. He’s a solopreneur that specializes in data, but truly understands the ups and downs of being a freelancer that runs his own business. Ultimately, he’s always had the same mission and vision of the future as me — where 1099s are becoming the norm over W2s because of the shift in people’s priorities. A shift from security to flexibility, from job titles to skill sets, companies to projects, and stability to freedom. That led to the inspiration of CampfireOS.

And CampfireOS was Born

So what is it? CampfireOS makes it easy to turn your knowledge into income by leveraging AI powered systems. In other words, the knowledge that you share can finally be monetized by turning it into a living, breathing functional system. Leverage these systems to streamline your business operations, grow your business, or share with others! Here’s a deeper dive breakdown:

The Problem: Through our interviews with multiple creators, solopreneurs, side hustlers, and small businesses has shown us two key insights: 1) that making income online seems easy from all of the social media hype out there, but it still isn’t and 2) that for those making it on their own and making income, they are unable to scale their business due to limited resources. There are tons of AI automation tools and workflows that are trying to solve this today, but it hit me that we are approaching it completely wrong. But I think our approach just might be the one we have been looking for…

Our Approach: Our approach lies in classic systems thinking. Sounds a bit obvious and maybe too abstract but when you break it down to first principles, the problem of what’s missing in today’s AI tools for the average person becomes clear (I’ll talk about this in a future post :)). But with systems thinking in mind, we’ve created a user experience and simplified way to integrate AI into your everyday processes without really thinking about it as AI.

The Solution: Will also deep dive into this in a future post as I want to make the parallel with our systems thinking approach. But the TLDR is this: 1) Write down your step-by-step system or process for how you do something 2) Choose which steps you want to turn into shortcuts vs. do manually 3) Use that system to streamline your operations or share it with others to start monetizing your knowledge. And repeat! Maybe it sounds too simple, but knowledge sharing needs to be simple. We are in the midst of building out our MVP but excited to share with you all sneak peek previews. If you want to get real-time updates, join our waitlist at campfireos.com!

The Mission & Vision

Our mission is to democratize entrepreneurship. The barriers to starting a business or achieve income online need to be lowered. CampfireOS provides the tools, the platform, and the education to make it easy to turn your knowledge into income. Starting a business is now as easy as having a step-by-step system that you can scale with AI.

Our vision is big — it’s the comeback of the gig economy in a bigger and better way. And we believe unlocking that future lies in tapping into the beauty of humanity in which each and every individual is completely unique. We ultimately want to empower individuals to embrace their unique stories, perspectives, and experiences and channel it into tangible knowledge that they can share. And get paid for it on top of it all!

We believe that the future is already moving towards solopreneur-ship and part-time work, with individuals pursuing their own businesses for passive income. The pandemic has caused people to re-evaluate the value of their flexibility, time, and what they want to achieve in life. More and more people are leaving corporate jobs for more flexible lifestyles because, ultimately, what matters is what we do with the time we have left. With that in mind, the ownership economy is on the horizon, and we want to be at the forefront of that movement. Power is shifting back into the hands of individuals, as evidenced by the popularization of decentralization, the influential role of social media in historic and cultural debates, and the younger generation earning more than older generations with the abundant opportunities online. Do you see what we see now? It’s happening, and we will be there.Thanks for listening to whoever is out there. Dear Universe, please help us build out this Campfire :)

Thanks for Reading this Far…

If you also believe in our mission and vision, would appreciate your support by joining our waitlist at our site campfireos.com and/or checking out our socials to follow us along our journey of building CampfireOS in public.