The Sycophantism of Tech: When Hype Drowns Substance

We complain about sycophantic large-language models, but the irony is that we, as an industry, have become sycophantic ourselves, comfortable with trends, obsessed with hype, and increasingly detached from substance.

I see very few companies today that hold a strong, principled opinion about technology, about how it should shape the way we build and operate businesses at scale. Instead, what dominates is a kind of thoughtless momentum. Especially among new founders, there’s this impulse to chase whatever’s trending. MCP gets launched, and the industry rushes to slap it on anything remotely viable, regardless of whether it makes sense or whether the application is null and void. And to be blunt, MCP itself isn’t well-suited for most real-world scenarios beyond hobbyist tinkering.

Honestly, I’m disappointed.

There used to be a visible line between those who built technology with the right incentives, open source contributors, more mature companies solving real-world problems, and those caught up in hype cycles. But now the line is blurred. And it feels like we’re in a market where the ability for a fad to explode is 100 times what it was five years ago.

Why? Because the reach of a few voices is now exponentially amplified. We’ve created channels that allow hype to spread like wildfire. And we, both as a society and an industry, consume this media with alarming passivity, rarely stopping to think critically or to question.

What I see is a consolidation of influence. Large companies and VC funds have managed to monopolize the main platforms we use to share and discuss technology. Twitter (or X), LinkedIn, they’ve become echo chambers. And the result is a community that’s increasingly unwilling to question whether anything actually works. Whether these agents and lab models are genuinely useful for complex, real-world problems, or if it’s just smoke and mirrors, marketed to oblivion.

This doesn’t mean we need to be cynical. But we do need to be realistic.

Very few voices are speaking the truth about AI: that despite our excitement, despite the optimism, we haven’t yet unlocked true, meaningful efficiency gains. And the issue isn’t the tech, it’s how we’re using it.

I’ll go out on a limb and say this: the first company to discover real operational transformation through AI won’t do it with a massive, overhyped model. They’ll do it with something small. Focused. Elegant.

For my part, I’ve never really felt like I fit in the tech bubble. I moved to San Francisco over a decade ago with one purpose: to build value. To build software that enables people. I didn’t come for the politics, the VC narratives, or the noise. I came to solve problems that matter.

But those problems are increasingly ignored, pushed aside in favor of self-reinforcing, perverse incentives that reward hype over utility. So I find myself withdrawing from the loud spaces, Mainstream X, LinkedIn, and seeking out the quiet, dissenting voices. The ones called “party poopers,” “weirdos,” or, as OpenAI once labeled them, “haters.”

I’m not interested in sycophantism.

I’m interested in building.

If you are also interested in building and don’t care about hype, please DM me. I’m looking forward to meeting you and putting our minds together.