The Secret to Success In 2026 Is Hiding in Plain Sight (LinkedIn, Lenny & Noam Just Proved It)

Dear Friend, Subscriber, and Category Pirate,

Thanks for reading. This edition of Category Pirates is free.

Enjoy.

Two completely different (profound) datasets just landed. And most people missed it.

One came from LinkedIn, tracking millions of real career moves over 2.5 years.

The other came from (the legendary) Lenny Rachitsky and Noam Segal, surveying 1,750 tech workers deep in the trenches of AI adoption.

• Different lenses

• Different audiences

• Same conclusion

And it’s the exact thing we’ve been yelling about for years. Now the data has caught up:

• The people winning with AI aren’t using it as a tool.

• They’re building it as a co-founder.

LinkedIn Shows Where the Market Is Moving

Here are the fastest-rising roles:

• Founders

• AI engineers

• Independent advisors

• AI strategists & consultants

Now here’s the signal hiding in plain sight:

“Founder” as a title is up 60% year over year.

And nearly 3× since 2022.

This is not a startup craze.

It’s a career escape pattern.

A mass opt-out of the status-quo career ladder.

A stampede toward creativity, innovation, and agency. People aren’t just changing jobs. They’re changing how they relate to work.

Lenny Shows Why This Is Happening

Now layer in the Lenny & Noam data, and suddenly the how becomes obvious. Lenny and Noam ran one of the largest independent AI productivity surveys we’ve seen:

1,750 respondents across PMs, engineers, designers, founders, and operators.

Topline results:

• 55% say AI exceeded expectations

• 70% say AI improved quality of work

• 50%+ say AI saves at least half a day per week

Already impressive.

But here’s the insight that matters most:

Founders are getting dramatically more value from AI than anyone else.

• 49% of founders save 6+ hours per week

• 45% say the quality of their work is much better

• 78% report a positive ROI (vs. 45% for designers)

That’s not because founders are smarter. It’s because when you think of yourself as a founder, you use AI differently.

(The founder mindset is fundamentally different from the employee mindset.)

The Pattern That Explains Everything

PMs mostly use AI to:

• Write PRDs

• Make decks

• Build prototypes

Designers mostly use AI to:

• Synthesize research

• Generate copy

• Explore concepts

Engineers mostly use AI to:

• Write code

• Offload testing, docs, and review

All useful.

But founders?

Founders use AI for:

• Decision making (32.9%)

• Product ideation

• Vision and strategy

Read that again.

Founders aren’t using AI for output.

• They’re using it to think.

• To create.

• To build.

Lenny Rachitsky & Noam Segal call this out directly: founders are treating AI as a thought partner and sounding board — not a feature factory.

That’s the secret.

Why We’ve Been So Loud About “AI Co-Founder” For So Long 🏴‍☠️

AI is not a tool.

It’s a co-founder.

And to be crystal clear — we are not talking about:

• Free ChatGPT

• Better Google prompts

• Generic AI everyone else uses

• Content-free-content vending machines

That stuff creates incremental productivity.

AI Founders (Creator Capitalists) do something very different.

They build custom AI that is:

• Trained on their thinking

• Fed their intellectual capital

• Tuned to their decisions, POVs, and patterns

Creator capitalists are not doing Business Intelligence from the ‘90s in an AI dress. They’re not borrowing intelligence.

They’re compounding their own.

(This is exactly why we’ve been building and writing about agentic leadership — long before the data caught up.)

Creator Capitalists: The Throughline Between Both Datasets

LinkedIn shows more people becoming:

• Founders

• Advisors

• Consultants

• Solo operators

Lenny shows who benefits most from AI:

• People who own outcomes

• People who frame problems

• People who make decisions

Put those together and the signal is unmistakable:

AI is turning people into Creator Capitalists.

Creator Capitalists:

• Don’t sell hours

• Don’t rent execution

• Don’t wait for permission

They use AI to:

• Turn thinking into assets

• Turn time into optionality

• Turn judgment into leverage

• Turn experience into intellectual capital

That’s why founders dominate the AI ROI charts.

They’ve already crossed the mental line from worker to owner.

AI just pours gas on it.🔥

(That’s why we want you to think of yourself as the founder of your career — with AI as your co-founder. Once you own your career, everything changes.)

Why You Should Build Your Own AI (Even If Your Company Won’t)

Here’s the uncomfortable truth most companies won’t say out loud:

Your employer may or may not invest in your leverage.

But you should.

Individually.

Regardless of your role.

Because the data is crystal clear:

• Generic AI = generic returns

• Custom AI = asymmetric advantage

The people getting outsized value are training AI on:

• Their notes

• Their writing

• Their decisions

• Their frameworks

• Their past work

They’re building an always-on partner that:

• Remembers everything

• Challenges assumptions

• Spots patterns

• Sharpens judgment

That’s not a tool.

That’s a co-founder for your career.

This Is the Real Career Divide Now

It’s no longer:

• Technical vs. non-technical

• Employed vs. unemployed

It’s this:

• Creator Capitalists vs. Execution Labor

Execution labor uses AI to go faster in existing markets.

Creator Capitalists use AI to design future markets.

Execution labor prompts once.

Creator Capitalists stay in conversation.

Execution labor rents value.

Creator Capitalists compound it.

LinkedIn shows what the market is paying for (and no-longer paying for). Lenny shows how the winners are working.

Same answer. Twice.

We Didn’t Predict This. We Saw It Early.

That’s what Category Designers do.

Through the category lens, the biggest shift in white-collar work history was hiding in plain sight. But Category Designers saw it.

This is why we’ve been writing / teaching:

• AI as a co-founder

• Building custom, paid AI

• Training it on you

• Designing your career so you become a category of one

For years.

Not because it was trendy.

But because it was inevitable.

Now the data has caught up.

As Kevin Weil put it:

“The AI model you’re using today is the worst one you’ll ever use.”

Which means the compounding hasn’t even started.

The only real question left is this:

Will your AI be trained on you?

Or will you keep using the same generic tools as everyone else?

Pirates already know the answer.

🏴‍☠️

Arrrrrrr,

Category Pirates

Eddie Yoon

Christopher Lochhead

P.S. - Want to jam with our Pirate Eddie AI bot?

If you’re one of our Founding Subscribers, you already have access to the Pirate AI Bot! It’s trained on everything we’ve ever written, said, or shared. So just ask it a question. Or give it a problem you’re stuck on. It’ll point you to the right mini-book, quote, or concept to get you moving again.

Not a Founding Subscriber yet?

Upgrade your subscription, and you’ll get instant access. The welcome email includes everything you need to log in and start jamming.

🏴‍☠️