If you haven’t read Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener, you probably should. Before writing this, I’d actually forgotten its subtitle, “a story of Wall Street,” because, to me, Bartleby is a story of the bell curve of natural professional temperaments. Some people are highly self-motivated, workaholic inventors. Others, like Bartleby, “prefer not to.”
The problem with Bartleby is the problem with society: how do we deal with the full spectrum of human ambition, in a culture that is both meritocratic and humane?
Enter Gen AI. We are on the cusp of a societal shift on par with the adoption of the commercial internet, which changed most of our human interactions, shrinking the world, fostering echo chambers, expanding access to knowledge and creating endless distractions from it. But AI is changing work, not only unseating Bartleby, but also lots of other workers, more productive and less insolent.
I say this without judgement. We’re all wired differently. Not everyone can be an “urn-breaker.” Initially, the promise of AI sparked debates about a universal basic income and the resurgence of Modern Monetary Theory. Those debates have taken a back seat to reshoring vs. free trade, but, even in traditional sectors, like manufacturing, AI will eventually take center stage.
I want to believe that we are prepared to invest in the kind of public education system necessary to innovate new jobs faster than old jobs go the way of the scrivener.
There will always be jobs. But some have yet to be invented.
Portfolio Updates
Burbank Secures GBP 5m in Series Seed Funding to Launch Card-Present Over Internet
Burbank Featured in BBC News: New Tech to Tackle Online Fraud
Denim and Carrier Assure Partner to Help Brokers Reduce Fraud
SimpleClosure Named One of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies 2025
Four Questions with Josh Wyss, Co-Founder & CEO of Inclined
Josh Wyss is Co-founder and CEO of Inclined, a financial technology company that aims to democratize a $150 billion market by helping consumers significantly enhance the value of their whole life insurance policies. Inclined’s innovative technology platform connects policy owners with financial institutions to maximize efficiency and deliver competitive rates. In addition, Financial Advisors can introduce the Inclined Line of Credit (iLOC) to clients as a fast and flexible way of accessing the liquidity they need.
R: What have you been up to lately?
J: To borrow an expression from our co-founder, CTO Mark Shaw, every day we are drilling straight through granite. It should feel hard, because no one has done it before. That’s why there is an opportunity. We have made dramatic strides in our go-to-market reach into the universe of whole life agents in the US. Mainly through continued non-glamorous effort, but we have also had some “eureka” breakthroughs that feel great as well. Separately, we have been spending a lot of time on shipping new product features, which is more and more enabled by these very unique and unprecedented data relationships we are nurturing at the whole life career headquarters folks.
R: What are you excited about?
J: I am excited that the counterparties that we deal with day-to-day are excited. This took a while; wasn't immediate. But it is so exciting that our bank partners, the C-suite of the whole life carriers, and the agents in the field are all now aligned on the realization that Inclined is very good for their business and their objectives. Seeing them get it, and get excited, is what makes me excited. It means we finally earned enough credibility (and/or got better at explaining what we do) that we have crossed a chasm here.
R: What do you need from the Foxe Capital universe?
J: We are just having so much fun innovating with the three large carriers we support so far (Northwestern Mutual, MassMutual, and Guardian) and we can't wait to light up other highly financially rated carriers in the future. So please reach out!
R: What's your walk-up song?
J: I am generally listening to what my daughters want to listen to in the car. So right now it seems like anything by Sabrina Carpenter, maybe Espresso.
Recent Ideas
Investing in…Burbank
Burbank’s groundbreaking solution for enabling card present transactions over the internet, CPoI, uses the ‘tap and pin’ method to drive secure and frictionless customer authentication experiences that dramatically reduce fraud, processing fees and chargebacks for merchants.
The Potential Bifurcation of the Venture Ecosystem
There’s a crazy dichotomy these days in the world of venture between the fact that funds are larger than ever yet its rapidly becoming cheaper to build businesses.
Foxe Capital in the News
Watch Ruth on Bloomberg Businessweek Daily 03/26/2025 (skip to 3:37:00)
European Stocks Steady After US Markets Plunge
Listen to Ruth on BBC Today 03/11/2025 (skip to 19:20)
See You Soon?
Insurtech Insights, New York, June 4-5 – catch Ruth on stage!
Get In Touch
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Melville's Moby Dick is also an inspiration: carbon neutral whale oil and sail ship transport could generate many jobs in the future.