To prevent the death of European independence, we need fewer policies and regulations, and more ambition and intensity.

If you have been told to slow down, to be realistic, to stop being so hard on yourself, and something in you refused, this is for you. You are not lonely because no one shares your ideas. You are lonely because no one understands why you demand so much of yourself.

We do.

Most people will never fail. They will settle for a life good enough to stay in and never good enough to love, and one day they will look back knowing they had it in them and never went all in. That is the only thing we are afraid of. Live carefully and you die anyway. Go all in and you die anyway. Same ending. Different life.

And only you will ever know which life you lived. You can lie to everyone else about whether you emptied the tank. You cannot lie to yourself.

So where is the rest of you? It is always hiding in whatever you avoid. If marathons come easily to you, a marathon is not hard. Your taxes might be. Don’t tell us you ran an ultramarathon. Show us you did your taxes. Hard is the call you haven’t made, the decision you keep postponing because you are afraid. We will send you there again and again, until discomfort stops being something you endure and becomes something you go looking for. The version of you that makes excuses will not survive the year. What replaces it is who you actually are.

None of this happens alone. It will be intense, at times overwhelming, and you will wonder what you signed up for. Nobody will coddle you. We will keep asking for more and stay at your side the whole way, like the best teams in the world: brutal standards, and people who would do anything for each other. There is no leaderboard. Your only opponent is the part of you that wants to stop.

The people who belong here have ferocious drive and no ego. Often life has already asked a lot of them, and hardship did not simply happen to them. They happened to it. Above all, they have integrity, compassion, humility and love. The fiercest people we know are also the kindest.

People like that never stop at their own lives. Responsibility starts there and keeps growing, until the mission stops being something you do and becomes who you are. That is devotion, and the missions worth it are big: small modular reactors, frontier models, new ways to build homes and cities. We are unapologetically capitalist about it. When people pay for what you build, you know it matters.

Most people will read this and think it is too much. If something tightened in your chest instead, that is the part of you that refuses to settle.

Bring it. We will take every ounce.

Daniel MladenovFounder, Seneca