The Four Horsemen of the AI Revolution
By Partner Bill Foster
This edition of the Barnabas Brief is adapted from Bill’s original LinkedIn post you can find here.
Business leaders: the AI revolution isn’t just about efficiency gains. It’s about what you may be quietly losing—the very instincts that built your company.
Don’t get me wrong…AI is incredible. The efficiency gains, the cost savings, the operational breakthroughs. I’m not anti-AI. I’m anti-slash-and-burn.
Because while everyone’s celebrating quarterly savings, there’s a quieter cost no one is measuring. Every human you replace with agentic AI was a potential carrier of your founder’s instinct, your company’s DNA, the grit in the war room.
AI will execute flawlessly (if you're okay with em-dashes and the constant re-framing technique of writing). It will praise you relentlessly for your brilliant ideas. It will move faster than you ever thought possible. But it will never absorb your culture or emulate your leadership. It will never make the intuitive leap that turns a difficult decision into a breakthrough, or bring founder-level ownership to its deliverables. It can’t carry your passion for impact in its code like people do.
This image obviously made in less than 60 seconds by Chat GPT to accompany this topic
This is what I call the Four Horsemen of the Founder’s Paradox—forces quietly eroding the soul of your company:
The Efficiency Horseman (AI Acceleration) – Trading humanity for speed while diluting founder instincts.
The Distance Horseman (Remote/Hybrid Reality) – Intuition and trust don’t transfer through screens.
The Bidding War Horseman (Talent Economics) – Buying résumés instead of belief.
The Scale Horseman (Growth Without Soul) – Expanding headcount without embedding culture.
Here’s my prediction: the companies that tame the Four Horsemen will own the next decade (and beyond). Because they’ll be the only companies left with a soul worth scaling.
The rest will become cautionary tales of how to optimize your way into irrelevance. AI will make you more efficient. The question is whether you’ll still recognize your company when the digital dust settles.
Gut instinct and grit were your original operating system. Don’t let the Four Horsemen turn them into relics of your startup days. The companies that will win the next decade are not those that simply adopt AI faster, hire more aggressively, or scale more quickly. They will be the ones who insist on building with both speed and soul—who treat culture as non-negotiable, instincts as assets, and people as irreplaceable. Because at the end of the day, efficiency may fuel your growth, but only soul makes it sustainable.
How are you protecting your company’s soul while preparing it for the future?
About The Author: Bill Foster
Some years ago, Bill Foster found himself at a crossroads between his corporate job and his desire to pursue something more passionate. So, with equal parts excitement, fear and faith, he clicked the “YES” button and embarked on a photography, filmmaking and creative media journey that has taken him to some very interesting places and introduced him to some very interesting people.
The common thread through everything Bill does has been the unrelenting desire to do something meaningful in the world and to help others. Through his company, Portlight Creative Inc., Bill has realized his passion by using media to help organizations communicate their purpose, mission, impact and vision through their stories.
Bill believes powerfully told stories through short, documentary-style marketing films can change the world because the shortest distance between two people is often the well-crafted story that creates an emotional connection between people. His mission is to use stories to help businesses and organizations connect meaningfully with their audiences.