In 1096, Peter the Hermit preached the First Crusade in a town square in Amiens. His sermons, rooted in a vision of cosmic order and a sense of Christian moral duty, mobilized thousands. It was a moment when institutions - the Church, the Crown, and the nascent universities - aligned to direct human energy toward a singular, if bloody, cause. In 2025, moral visionaries no longer stand in pulpits or under cathedral domes. Increasingly, they sit in the corner offices of AI startups, longevity labs, and crypto foundations. Instead of scripture, they write whitepapers. Instead of cathedrals, they build platforms.

To suggest that startups are today’s moral institutions might seem far-fetched / out of touch. I’m more than willing to take the Twitter dunks. But consider the influence: decisions made at OpenAI or Neuralink arguably shape more of our ethical terrain than a decade's worth of deliberations in academic bioethics journals. Startup founders allocate capital, set visions, and make high-leverage bets on what kind of future will be technologically possible and socially acceptable. In doing so, they are not merely building products; they are making normative choices about what deserves to exist.

The Twilight of Traditional Institutions

For the last (x)-hundred years, moral authority radiated from identifiable + visible sources. Universities served as custodians of critical inquiry and values transmission. Churches framed existential meaning and communal ethics. Governments codified social contracts. But these institutions have - for reasons that deserve / demand their own essay - lost their monopoly on moral persuasion.

In the 20th century, elite academic institutions = the incubators of moral and intellectual leadership. They shaped the scientists and economists, philosophers, ethicists, and public intellectuals who shaped the common man. The postwar era produced figures like John Rawls, whose "A Theory of Justice" provided a moral framework for liberal democracies & Peter Singer, whose utilitarianism reshaped debates about animal rights and global poverty.

But the output of elite philosophy departments now struggles to leave the lecture hall. This isn’t always due to lack of relevance. Sometimes it's because the machinery of academic publishing rewards insular debate, or because ideological homogeneity stifles radical, disruptive insight. And in a world moving at the pace of software updates and gene editing protocols, moral discourse that takes five years to peer-review loses ground.

Religious institutions face their own crisis. In the United States, church membership / belief in institutional religion have declined precipitously. The Pew Research Center reports that the share of Americans identifying as Christian has dropped below 65%, and among younger cohorts the figure is far lower. Local religious communities still provide moral scaffolding for millions, but their influence on the commanding heights of cultural and technological development is minimal.

Governments, for their part, have become reactive rather than visionary. Regulatory bodies rarely lead moral discourse. They follow, awkwardly, in the wake of private sector disruption.

Startups as Ethical Engines

In this vacuum, tech / startups have transcended an economic role to encompass a near-normative one. When Sam Altman launches Worldcoin to establish a global identity protocol via biometric scanning, he is articulating a worldview about privacy, identity, and the structure of global equity. When Elon Musk directs Neuralink to create brain-computer interfaces, he is effectively challenging metaphysical assumptions about the mind and selfhood. The claims are ontological, not just commercial.

Startups are philosophical engines that smuggle normative assumptions into codebases, protocols, and product design. The decision to build a decentralized internet is a declaration about sovereignty, trust, and the architecture of truth. One doesn’t have to agree with the moral thrust of crypto libertarianism to see that it functions as a coherent ethical system. Its protocols enforce its values.

As monasteries preserved and transmitted ethical frameworks through ritual and scripture, so startups encode theirs in algorithms, APIs, and user interfaces. One-click defaults are moral nudges. Recommendation engines shape desire. And because these digital cathedrals scale faster than any brick-and-mortar institution, their impact is global, instantaneous, and deeply personal.

The Rise of the Founder-Philosopher

This is the context.

The argument: in 2025, tech founders resemble moral philosophers, more than entrepreneurs - except they operate with venture funding instead of tenure, and their proofs take the form of products, not treatises.

Like Plato in the Academy or Aquinas at the Sorbonne, today’s founders (intellectually competent founders) ask and answer fundamental questions: What is a good life? What kind of future is worth building? Who deserves access to power, to health, to knowledge?

Unlike traditional philosophers, founders answer these questions under conditions of extreme pressure and speed. Venture timelines rarely allow for leisurely Socratic dialogue. Instead, there are sprint cycles, investor updates, and exponential growth curves. The cost of moral failure is not abstract theoretical embarrassment. It is reputational collapse, regulatory scrutiny, or worse, irreversible societal harm.

Marc Andreessen’s infamous Techno-Optimist Manifesto reads more like an encyclical than an op-ed. It paints a Manichaean vision of civilization, with technological acceleration as salvation. Whether you find it compelling or unhinged, it is undeniably a moral claim. The same goes for Vitalik Buterin, publishing blog posts on governance, identity, and credible neutrality that straddle the boundary between technical whitepaper and ethical manifesto.

These figures are criticized for lacking the rigor or humility of traditional moral theorists. There is an argument to be made. But their influence is not in question. When millions of people change behavior based on the design decisions of a few founders, the ethical load carried by those decisions deserves at least a passing thought.

The Perils of Unconstrained Authority

Moral authority without constraint risks becoming tyranny. Traditional institutions had checks. Churches had councils and schisms. Universities had peer review and tenure boards. Governments had constitutions and opposition parties. And they all still wound up under various thumbs.

Startups concentrate epistemic and moral authority in a single charismatic individual. The founder-CEO combines the power of a monarch with the cultic appeal of a prophet. The result is a moral bottleneck. We saw what happened when Facebook's algorithmic decisions, originally justified by abstract values like "connection," led to real-world polarization and violence. And we’re seeing it again with AI labs that balance existential risk against profit and prestige.

The moral hazard is compounded by a culture that rewards disruption more than deliberation. I can sympathize with the urgency of e/acc while still recognizing the fragility.

But traditional institutions are in no position to reclaim moral authority. Few universities would touch AGI safety with the urgency it demands. Government panels convene months or years after technologies deploy. The startup may be a flawed vessel, but at present, it is the only one afloat.

The 21st century's most important moral deliberations are occurring in product design meetings, protocol updates, and capital allocation memos. The people making those decisions may not think of themselves as moral authorities. That doesn’t change the fact that they are.

And perhaps they shouldn't aspire to be. There is wisdom in humility, in acknowledging the limits of any single vision. But there is also danger in pretending that moral neutrality is possible in a world where every algorithm, every default setting, and every startup pivot tilts the world in one direction or another.

Peter the Hermit summoned thousands with words of God and kingdom.

Today, someone with a compelling API and a $100 million seed round can summon the future.

The question is: what kind?