The name comes from Constantin Brâncuși, one of the greatest artists of all time. But I didn't start with him. I arrived at the name from another angle, while I was trying to solve one of the biggest dilemmas of my life. You can't imagine how happy I was when I realized the metaphor I was searching for was one of his works of art. Keep reading.
My whole life I thought a founder had to choose. You could go big and lose your freedom, or stay small and keep it.
I've had bad experiences with greedy investors, and you hear so many stories of founders who lost their companies to them, so I was always wary of raising money. Not all investors are like that, and I've had the chance to work with some amazing ones. But it was always on my mind.
The other option is to stay small, bootstrap, and run something modest. But I always thought that if you can do much more and still choose that, you're limiting yourself.
Today I realized you can think big without losing your independence. AI-native companies can do both. The founder is the architect and the creator, and agents do the building.
So my whole dilemma was how to keep my freedom, and I went looking for a symbol of it. Free as a bird: in many cultures, the bird is the symbol of freedom.
And the sky is the limit for thinking big. But in today's world, the sky is no longer the limit. Space is.
So the name means exactly what it says: a bird in space. Imagine my surprise when I realized it was exactly the name of a sculpture Brâncuși made about 100 years ago.
Go big and stay free.
When I think of Brâncuși, I feel like I'm standing on the shoulders of a giant. I thought a lot about whether my work would honor his, or just borrow his name. Because I respect him so much, I'll make sure everything I do adds to the homage.
The communists in Romania kept him out of schools, so we didn't know how big he was. I discovered him as an adult, while I was looking for some kind of emotional support as a founder who had left a small, former communist country to make it in a big world. His story has inspired me ever since.
He was a founder in so many ways. He left home with nothing, and he always thought big. He was like us.
And I think we should be more like him. Founders today should think like artists if they want to have something to say. When agents do the building, what's left is the part that was always the artist's: deciding what deserves to exist, and taking away everything that isn't essential. Brâncuși spent his life doing exactly that.
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