Great founders are getting harder to spot. And it's not entirely their fault.A few years ago, a 200-page business plan meant something. Not because length equals quality—but because creating something that comprehensive required either real mental capability or stealing someone else's work.

Now? ChatGPT can generate it in an afternoon.

This isn't a complaint about AI. It's an observation about signal degradation.

We've spent all of human history developing intuition for gauging talent through artifacts. Through pieces that we create. A sharp deck. An intuitive website. A polished pitch. But now, those artifacts actually tell us less about the person who submitted them.

And this is why oral exams are making a resurgence in academia, in a time where ChatGPT can cheat anyone’s way through any test. It’s why in-person interviews still matter. It’s why investors still insist on meeting founders face-to-face. You can learn more about someone's actual thinking in a 10-minute conversation than in a 50-page document you can't verify they wrote.

After over 200 founder interviews on my podcast, I've watched this shift happen in real time. The digital materials keep getting better. The variance in actual human mental capability stays the same.

If we're not careful, we’re entering an era where we build houses of cards on top of houses of cards—investing in people based on artifacts that may not reflect their real capacity.

The fix isn't banning AI. It's recalibrating how we evaluate human work and investment potential.

Digital output is now table stakes. Conversation and humanity are the new signals.

And as digital creators, we must go out of our way to show our work in a way that can’t possibly be faked.