"Why Startups Matter: From Feudalism to the Positive-Sum Game" at CAMentreprenuers Berlin launch

Описание: Jens Lapinski at CAMentreprenuers Berlin launch 2025 explaining why he believes that companies are one of humankind's greatest inventions, through which human endeavour ceases to be a zero sum game.

Angel Investor Jens Lapinski delivers a speech on the philosophy of entrepreneurship. He argues that historically, wealth was a "null-sum game" based on land ownership. The invention of the company changed humanity by creating an additive economy where the "pie gets larger." A deep dive into why founders and investors are the drivers of human progress.

Founders and early-stage investors are in the business of making the pie bigger for everyone, not just claiming a larger slice for themselves. That is the central idea of this talk: companies are a magical human invention that lets us expand wealth, opportunity, and progress in a way that was impossible in earlier eras.

The two most important questions
Years ago, working late in his first startup, Jens Lapinski’s older colleague George asked him: “Do you know what the two most important questions in life are?”
George’s answer was simple: “Who am I? And why am I here?” These, he explained, are the questions you wrestle with for years if you study philosophy, and they had a lasting impact on Jens.

In a room full of founders and startup investors, the first question is easy to answer: this is who you are. You build and you fund new companies. The more interesting question is the second: why are you here, and why does what you do really matter?

From land and power to companies and progress
A few hundred years ago, wealth and influence came almost entirely from land. If you wanted to be powerful, you needed to be a lord, control territory, and, if you wanted more, you went to war to take someone else’s. One person’s gain was another person’s loss; it was a zero-sum game built on a finite resource.

About 250 years ago, something extraordinary happened: humanity invented the company. A company is a legal and mental construct, not a physical thing, but it lets us pool people, capital, assets, and ideas. Unlike land, companies are additive. You can create more of them, they build on each other, and together they grow the overall pie rather than just reallocating it.

All of the transformational progress of the last two and a half centuries—industrialization, technology, modern living standards—would have been impossible without companies. When seen this way, founders are the people who make the pie larger, and early-stage investors are the people who enable that process.

Why founders and investors matter
Everyone in the room, whether driven by the desire to get rich, to change the world, or simply to do something impressive, contributes to making the pie bigger for society. Your work pushes humanity forward, creating more opportunity and wealth than existed before.

This framing also explains why systems that try to abolish companies and private enterprise tend to revert to something closer to a feudal setup, just with a different coat of paint. Power becomes centralized in a small ruling group, and without the additive engine of companies, societies become poorer and stagnate.

Angel Invest’s role in the ecosystem
From Jens’s perspective, running an investment firm that can back roughly one hundred startups a year is a privilege. The focus is on super-exciting technology companies and on truly helping founders, mainly through networks and accumulated knowledge, not just money.

Over time, this has led to investments in a few hundred companies, with some now taking off rapidly—especially those benefitting from recent advances in AI. The acceleration in certain areas is astonishing, and it underlines how powerful the company as a construct still is in driving new waves of progress.

Fulfilling your destiny by growing the pie
What matters most is not a polished CV or a prestigious education, but the impact of actually building and backing companies. That is where individual destiny and collective progress intersect.

Without founders, there would be no need for investors like Jens; there would be nothing to do. By pursuing your own path—starting companies, taking risks, writing early checks—you are already helping the world simply by doing what you do. The invitation is to keep going: make the pie larger, find and fulfill your own destiny, and in the process, advance humanity.

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