Lawrence Cotter

My name is Lawrence Cotter, co-founder of Amiara.

Amiara is a really, really interesting company. To share what we have, I want to share a few philosophies that I have. The first is really around AI in general. There's a lot of fear out there. There's a lot of concern about it. I'm a lemons-into-lemonade guy, not a lemons guy. I actually look at this and think this is like a once-in-a-millennium opportunity for us, for all of humanity, to create something truly, truly special.

If you really think about it, about 2,000 years ago, almost all of us worked with our hands. Sometimes we glorify that, right? But it's hard. It's really, really hard. Now about two-thirds of us still work with our hands. And with AI, with neuroscience, with general humanoid robotics, quantum computing, all coming together over the next decade, you could argue that 50% of the individuals working with their hands are no longer going to work with their hands. That frees up about four billion people. The fear that comes out of that is that individuals are going to be without jobs. But really, think of it — the humanity that's out there, the heart, the soul — we've got this unique once-in-a-millennium opportunity to allow those four billion people to create the unimaginable at unimaginable speed.

That's really where Amiara comes in. Our goal is to create this "quantum creation platform" — kind of a new term I came up with — to allow individuals to create the unimaginable at unimaginable speeds. We've created this multi-dimensional AI model that allows you to take a business concept, or up to an existing business, and then say: what exactly is the 10x best version of this business? What is the best vision? And then be able to clarify that and to communicate that. The second part of this model allows you to take that all the way down and says, what always is the absolute next best thing to do to reach that vision?

And then the third thing — you then have to actually do that. So we've created a team of 42 agents for you. Think of an AI CMO, CRO, HR director, business development lead. We've created those roles, so you can talk about your business with them very specifically. They all have job descriptions and actually execute the to-dos that you have for the business. So that's what we've created at Amiara. Our goal is to help you, from your concept or your existing business, create something that's 10 times better, and then execute it 100, if not 1,000 times faster than ever before.

We just started nine months ago. A little bit of background on myself: serial entrepreneur. I really consider myself a behavioral psychologist by trade. It's not really what I have any degrees in, but it's what my geek-dom is around. I've created a series of startups all trying to identify human problems that can be solved in much better ways with technology.

The previous one, which was an inspiration for this, was a company called V — went as AI for health and wellness — where we built this huge data web across the United States tracking about 180 million Americans. From this data web, we get about 71,000 data points updated daily. From that, we created all of these models to improve the health outcomes of all 180 million of those Americans. And it works exceptionally well. It identifies disease before people know they have it. It keeps people on programs when they're trying to prevent diseases. That was a prior company. And, shocking with how well that company was doing, I was like, I think there's an even bigger, better opportunity to help those four billion individuals that are going to be free to create — to create something new.

At its core, we think there are 300 million businesses that can create better and create faster. So that's wide. And then we open it up to — I mean, this is bold, it's ambitious — we really think it's four billion individuals over the next 10 years. If it's a little slower than we think, over the next 50 years, those are our customers.

If you look at it really specific right now, it would be individuals who are currently trying to use the general LLMs, and they're finding that it's frustrating to use for a very targeted thing — like, to drive their business. They find that the answers are almost like the business version of horoscopes. So we really focus on them, all the way up to somebody who can't afford the $1 million-plus McKinsey or Deloitte consulting packages. So that's our customer, right in between there.

You're saying like an AI-first company? I actually don't think we are. It's interesting, because I talk about our model, and I do gravitate to talking about the technology we have underneath it. But we really think that that is just the core of what we're building. Around it, we're really building an ecosystem. And that ecosystem is really intended to connect the humans that have amazing ideas, humans that have great businesses, with an ecosystem of people in that community that they can relate to — an investor marketplace, an employee marketplace, all of them to help them surround that and to get the support that they need.

And the AI — just like how we think of certain things like the internet, we don't actually really think of the internet, that's just a distribution channel, it's just a technology. What would be and will be amazing for us is those humans, how we're connecting them all together and succeeding. AI is just a nugget there. In many ways, we hope that it's invisible to them — they're actually spending most of their time in their creation mode, and most of their time communicating and connecting with fellow humans.

I've got this three-year vision. And it's kind of a funny vision. I love Paris. I love the cliche of sitting along the Seine at a nice little cafe, glass of wine, people-watching. The vision is that we are having an event, and we've pulled together about 8,000 entrepreneurs, small businesses in Europe. They come together for this event. They've all been using Amiara to create the unimaginable for themselves, and they've been really successful.

We're on stage, the team that built it, and then we pull out into the audience and see somebody that was one of our first clients that we helped. He's there with his wife and his children. And I'm like, "Mike, Mike, Mike — come up on stage before we get going, I want to just say hi." He comes up on stage. He says, "Oh no, bring your wife, she's been the co-founder with you, and bring your kids up." So they all come up on stage.

And I'm like, "I just want to introduce Mike, one of our first ones. He's been highly successful. But not only has he been successful in business — a lot of you in this audience know him here, because not only has he worked with us, but he's actually mentored and helped dozens of other individuals here in the audience." And he's like, "Oh no, no — thank you, thank you, thank you." And then the founding team that we have was like, "No, Mike, thank you. You created an amazing business. You've given back to this community. You've given back to your own community at home. And that's truly special."

Our goal here is to help you, because you're just creating a better world. If I look at my goals, it's to have outcomes like that. If that is with 8,000 individuals, if it's with 80,000, if it's with 80 million, if it's with eight — all of those are successful. We hope to be 80 million. But if it's just a few, I'll feel really, really good about what we build.

The most important thing I'm looking for in a team member is the care. I'm so fortunate to have right now a founding team that believes more in what we're building, believes in the impact that we can have on people, on communities, on the next version of how humans live — that they care about that. And they care about each other.

I grew up in New York and always loved the Yankees around the turn of the century. At the time, OK, there were no real superstars. What they really did was, they cared about winning, and they cared about each other. Even though they weren't necessarily the best athletes out there, they had this special bond, and they had this special purpose that all pulled together to create something special. So I think finding people who truly, truly care about what you're building, and care about each other, is the most important thing.

Today, in 2026, for somebody to stand out — curiosity is probably the most important thing. If you think about it, the world has changed so much. From the Dutch trading code to today, you would say the most important person in an organization was the CEO. I no longer believe that. I really think it's the creator at the center of all the organizations that are the most important individuals in all organizations going forward.

That's because all the information that you need is so readily available. And because it's readily available, it's not necessarily your knowledge base or even your skill set that you have now — it's your desire to constantly be looking for new information, looking for better ways, and to be so curious about that that you're seeking on your own time to do that. Because the individuals that do that will just be light years ahead of everybody else. They're always going to be doing things in the new and best ways. And because of how everything's moving, that delta — a month difference by being curious — could mean you're working three to five times faster and more productive than anyone else.

Culture fit is the most important thing. If we look at our interview process, we have a series of five, and let's say three of those are just on culture — culture and curiosity. The thought is, if we find somebody who fits culturally, is curious, kind of has the personality that matches — I almost humanize every role into a personality and get that matched. If you have those three things, in the big picture, the skills can be obtained. Really, if you care, if you're curious, if you take initiative — I think those things are really important. So I would put culture as the most important piece.

The number one hiring challenge we have today is to mirror and marry the fact that humans can get so connected so fast when we're in a room together. That can create a bond between us, that can create connections, that can create communication efficiencies between us. And with a mostly remote world, especially in technology, it's finding individuals that have that special "it" that can actually communicate and get those types of connections through a Zoom. So finding individuals that can connect with a team, connect with a purpose remotely, is probably the toughest thing. It almost goes back to your earlier question about culture — to be able to find somebody that can actually be a part of a culture when they're halfway across on the other side of the world is a challenge.

The entire flow of hiring has been impacted by AI — from detailed assessment of your own organization and where you need help most, what is the job description that would actually help you most to help the company, what is the personality of that individual. We use a combination of the Big Five and we actually use Enneagrams to almost create the personality of that position. So coming up with the actual job itself and who we're looking for has been impacted by AI.

And then how we recruit — all the companies, once you get to that, are using AI themselves. But when we get candidates that come to us, the AI isn't going through the process, because it's really still focused heavily on just the human conversations that we're having. But what they need to possess — again, I'll go back to something I said earlier — they need to have that insane curiosity. And that insane curiosity should present itself in that they are using AI in all aspects of their life. If it's from the simple "help me use a general LLM to write a letter," or to act as your therapist, or whatever — we would expect them to be using it that way.

For certain positions — I would be shocked if any position didn't have ways they're using AI to accelerate. If we had an engineer that's not using AI to help write 85% of their code immediately, you could be an amazing culture fit, you could have that curiosity — or I would say you actually don't have that curiosity — but if you had that cultural fit, you just can't compete if you're not using those tools.

The other thing that we really look for is to understand it's just a different way to interact with it. I'll give an example. This was several years ago. Someone's like, "Oh, I've got to go to prompt school, I've got to learn this." And I was like, "Oh, I should think about doing a prompt school." And I'm like, "Why am I going to go to prompt school?" I've got a system in front of me that, any time I want to, I can just say: that's going to be the best prompt writer in the world, right in front of me. I don't need to go to school. All I do is I say, "Here's my objective. Write me the best prompt for it." Since then, I don't write prompts — I have Amiara or other systems write the prompt for me. What is a line or two lines of hitting an objective turns into the most amazing prompt. That's the type of thing we're looking for: somebody who thinks like that. They're not like, "Oh, OK, I'm going to use it one-dimensionally." We're going to use this multi-dimensionally. They can really understand the power of it.

Find people who care. Finding people to surround yourself with who truly, truly care is important. Their care is the "why" — their care can be variable. Some people's why is, they might really care about your mission and your customers. But there's also nothing wrong with someone like, "Wow, this is great, I can come in and get a little bit of equity, and I can make $10 million in three years by coming in early." That why also will make you care. Your other why might be, "Wow, this is really interesting, and where I am in my career, I'm going to learn a lot. That's my why, and I'm going to care because I learn a lot." So I would look at it as: find people who care, try to understand why they care, and then serve them. Your job as a founder is to know where you're going, know what you want to do, and then build a team around you that cares — and then serve them to make sure that they can do the things you need them to do to really build an amazing organization and amazing startup.

I've played for Founders League for two years now.

I got invited to Founders League by a founder friend of mine who shared just the amazing — what we just call it — community feeling. Founders, the great conversations, and then good pickleball. It all came together, and then I came back to it just because that was all true. It was a great community, great conversations, interesting people that you'll meet there. It's not uncommon to meet somebody there and then you're having a coffee with them two days later, or a lunch or a dinner. And then the whole setting of playing pickleball, especially in the setting that we have here in Millbrook, is just so special.

It's tough to compare Founders League to others. Having the backdrop of pickleball, the activity, just opens up everybody energetically into a much more relaxed state than you have at so many other networking types of events or organizations. With that, it just creates a lot of free-flowing, unassuming, unthreatening conversation with people that are incredibly successful and many times mostly type A in most other settings. To get everybody in that kind of setting is great. Interestingly enough, sometimes you get that after three drinks — but it's so much better to get that kind of vibe and that conversation going in such a healthy way.

The connections at Founders League have been really, really impactful. The first is, the law firm that we're using has come through our connections from Founders League. And then our advisory board — these are individuals that can help us determine our product, help connect us with other really important business individuals, financiers — they have come from Founders League. So it's been really helpful not only to have some fun one time a week, but also to make some great and meaningful and actionable business connections.

My background with pickleball — I'm probably one of the individuals that plays the least amount of pickleball outside of Founders League. I grew up playing racquet sports. Grew up playing baseball. So racquet sports come relatively easy for me. I play pickleball at Founders League, and other than that, like one time a month. Most of the time we can compete — I think we've won over half of our matches. But every so often, you can tell somebody who's playing three to five times a week, and that gives you something that humbles you a little bit.

The competition level is fantastic. Prior to Founders League, I would just go out and play recreational. Seeing some of the players — simple tactics they do, how they move around the court — has really helped a lot. The other thing that's a little bit unique is, just because of how I'm playing, I decided I wanted more court reach. So I started playing pickleball with two hands — instead of having a racquetball-style grip, I just switch rackets, switch hands. That was something that I picked up to try to up my game and compete with some individuals that play a little bit more and have more court awareness and court presence. So it's just a unique thing I did to try to compete better.

I like to smile and have fun. The style of play really almost comes back to that. If we're playing somebody who is crushing us, that'll be the time I might trash-talk — because the one or two times we get a few points. But generally, it's what's going to be the most fun. Some games you find yourself wanting to play up at the net, and other times you'll find yourself just trying to practice some shots. I mentioned earlier, I'll play with both hands, and sometimes I'm like, "OK, I'm lefty — let me try to really work on my forehand, my right hand, and just stay in the back a little bit to work on that." So it really depends on the competition to find the best way to have a lot of fun out there.

Michael Morton was my partner last year. We won about half of our matches. Unfortunately, once we had the tournament, both of us were traveling and we had two fill-ins for us, and they didn't do well.

This year's tournament — Mike, our partner, has been playing a little bit more this year. We also have a third team member that comes in who is a level above us. So I think this year, with bringing Mark into the fold, we're going to do even better than we've done in previous years.

Founders League pulls together highly successful entrepreneurs into an athletic setting that provides for amazing community and connection.