Brock Granite here.

The bean counters up in Finance—great guys, very disrupted—told me that if we want to secure the next round of funding, we need to "pivot." They told me "Brock, nobody wants blockchain-enabled avocado toast subscriptions anymore. They want A.I. They want Machine Learning. They want to disrupt the paradigm."

I told them the only thing I'm disrupting is the compensation package of anyone who uses the word "paradigm" within striking distance of my electric scooter.

But it got me thinking. What's the hardest part about being a genius? The thinking. It's exhausting. It burns glucose. It makes your hair fall out. Trust me.

That's why I bought a little garage startup out of Silicon Valley for a pre-seed deck and a case of oat milk. Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Apparent Intelligence.

The concept is simple. We don't make you smarter. That takes book-learning and time, and quite frankly, you don't have the runway for it. Instead, Apparent Intelligence uses a proprietary mixture of retinal projectors, subdermal bone conduction, and aggressive confidence algorithms to make it seem like you know what the hell you're talking about.

"Seeing is Believing!"

That's their slogan. And now it's our slogan. Because we bought it. And also because the trademark office is currently on fire.

Here's how it works: We jam a micro-processor directly into your visual cortex. You walk into a meeting. Your boss asks about the quarterly figures. You don't know the figures. You don't even know what a quarter is.

BAM.

The Apparent Intelligence chip highlights your boss's forehead and projects a bullet-pointed list of buzzwords that mean absolutely nothing but sound fantastic. Terms like "Synergistic blockchain verticality," "Gamified omnichannel liquidity," and "Disruptive bagel optimization."

You shout these words! The chip stimulates your vocal cords to ensure you say them with the unearned arrogance of a twenty-year-old billionaire wearing a hoodie at a board meeting!

Your boss? Impressed. Your coworkers? Intimidated. You? You're technically chemically lobotomized for the duration of the presentation, but you just secured a promotion. That is the Apparent Intelligence promise!

We also found out that the "Seeing is Believing" protocol has a slight hiccup where if you believe you can fly, the chip turns off the part of your brain that recognizes gravity. DO NOT JUMP OUT OF WINDOWS. The ground does not care about your market cap. The ground has a very strict user policy, and the terms of service are instant death.

So, line up. We need volunteers to test the Alpha Build. Compensation is experience, exposure, and a voucher for a free MRI if your head starts making a dialing sound.

Apparent Intelligence. Fake it 'til you make it, or until the thermal paste melts your frontal lobe.

We're done here.