Welcome to the Future

I'm Martin. Swiss-born, Iceland-obsessed, and I've spent the last decade watching technology reshape how we work, think, and connect.

I run three companies. humAIne handles cybersecurity and AI for enterprises that actually understand risk. Sigrun helps people build sustainable online businesses without burning out. Sea Growth sources some of the world's best seafood, because eating well matters. I'm married to Sigrun, who's Icelandic—and yes, that's where the company name comes from. She's far smarter than I am.

But here's what really drives me: everyone's obsessing over AI's capabilities when they should be obsessing over what it means for us.

The past decade of tech was a race to the bottom on cost and speed. Move fast, break things, optimize the algorithm, watch the engagement metrics climb. We outsourced judgment to machines. We treated humans as data points. And we're still doing it.

Then AI arrived and suddenly everyone woke up.

What they got wrong: thinking the problem is capability. That AI might be "too smart" or "too fast" or "take all the jobs." Sure, displacement is real. But that's not the crisis. The crisis is that we've built a civilization without a plan for what humans do when robots can do everything.

What they got right: intuiting that something fundamental shifted.

Here's my conviction: in the era of AI, the differentiator won't be technology—it will be humanity. Anyone can deploy a model. Anyone can scale a system. What's scarce is judgment, taste, genuine connection, and the ability to stare into the abyss without flinching.

I write about three things:

Human flourishing during AI advancement. Not utopian promises, not doomsday scenarios. The actual, unglamorous work of building systems, cultures, and incentives where people get more agency and autonomy, not less. This means thinking about distribution, power, incentives. It means economics—not in an MBA-speak way, but in the "how do resources actually flow" way.

Leadership and decision-making at scale. How do you make good calls when you're building something that matters? I've invested in 50+ companies, started from nothing, failed more than I've succeeded. Leadership isn't about charisma—it's about having a framework and the humility to update it.

Markets, macro trends, and where capital actually goes. Everyone's talking about AI disrupting industries. Fewer people understand why certain disruptions stick and others fizzle. It's not magic. It's usually follow-the-incentives reasoning plus a bit of contrarian thinking.

Travel and culture. Because you can't understand humans by staring at a spreadsheet. The best insights come from sitting in a café in Reykjavik or Buenos Aires and asking questions.

I don't hedge. I don't do corporate speak. I don't believe in "both sides" when one side is clearly wrong. If you're here for comfortable conventional wisdom, you came to the wrong place. If you're here because you want to actually think—about what's happening, why it matters, and what you might do about it—then stick around.

The future doesn't happen to you. You build it. Let's figure out how.