Why Founders Need to Live in the Future

The best founders don’t just predict the future—they create it. By rejecting today’s limits and thinking years ahead, they shape reality itself. Here's how they do it.

In 1999, while most of Silicon Valley was wrapped up in the frenzy of building flashy websites and e-commerce platforms, Marc Benioff was sitting in a small office with an idea that seemed ludicrous at the time. He envisioned a world where companies stored their data on remote servers instead of their own machines. The idea of what we now call *cloud computing* sounded impractical—if not outright absurd—to most. Why would anyone trust their data to a third-party server when they could just store it locally?

But Benioff wasn’t living in 1999. Mentally, he was already in 2019, inhabiting a world where cloud-based systems would dominate and data storage would no longer be constrained by physical hardware. His belief in this future didn’t just allow him to predict a trend; it enabled him to *create* it. Today, Salesforce, the company he founded, is synonymous with cloud computing, and the vision that seemed disconnected from reality has become so ingrained in our lives that we hardly remember a time when people doubted it.

This is the essence of living in the future as a founder. The exceptional founders aren’t just keeping pace with trends—they’re pulling the future into the present. The future isn’t something they predict; it’s something they build. This ability to live mentally ahead of their time, to see and create what others cannot yet imagine, is what defines the most transformative entrepreneurs. It’s a skill that Mike Maples Jr., in his book *Pattern Breakers*, calls “backcasting.”

From Forecasting to Backcasting: Designing the Future

Most people think about the future in terms of forecasting—they look at current trends and try to guess where they’re headed. Founders who truly live in the future, however, engage in something far more powerful: backcasting. Instead of passively predicting what might happen, they imagine the ideal future they want to create and work backward to determine the steps necessary to make it a reality.

Take the example of Elon Musk. When Musk founded SpaceX, he didn’t just ask, “Where is space travel going?” He asked, “What does space travel *need* to be?” His vision wasn’t to slightly improve the status quo; it was to make space travel affordable and accessible on a massive scale, which required backcasting from a future where humans are a multi-planetary species. He mapped out a path from that bold vision and then took the first steps, no matter how disconnected they seemed from current reality. In doing so, Musk wasn’t predicting the future—he was *building* it.

Maples Jr. captures this philosophy in *Pattern Breakers*. Founders who backcast think about the future as something they can actively shape. They start with a vision of what the world could be, and then reverse-engineer the actions that can bring it to life. In this way, living in the future isn't a passive mindset; it’s an active strategy for creating breakthroughs.

Breaking Free from Incrementalism

The founders who live in the future are also defined by their rejection of incrementalism. They are not content to make small, safe improvements. Instead, they aim for audacious leaps. Maples Jr. refers to these visionary leaders as *Pattern Breakers*—those who don’t merely tweak existing systems but entirely reinvent them.

Consider the leap from feature phones to the iPhone. In the early 2000s, most mobile phone companies were focused on making marginal improvements—better screens, more buttons, slightly faster processors. But Steve Jobs wasn’t interested in making a slightly better phone. He envisioned a future where a phone wasn’t just a communication device—it was a pocket-sized computer, a tool for navigating both physical and digital worlds. By focusing on this radical future, Jobs didn’t just beat his competitors by improving the current model; he rendered the existing model obsolete.

The boldness of founders like Jobs comes from their willingness to inhabit a future that seems impossible by today’s standards. They don’t look at the current limitations of technology and assume they will always be there. Instead, they ask, *What if these limitations vanished?* What if computing power became infinite? What if human biology could be rewritten? What if transportation barriers collapsed? By living in this imagined future, these founders make choices that seem irrational in the present but turn out to be visionary.

The Power of Counter-Intuition

Living in the future also requires mastering the art of counter-intuition. The most groundbreaking ideas often seem nonsensical when viewed through the lens of today’s common sense. But visionary founders have a knack for defying conventional wisdom. Maples Jr. stresses this point in *Pattern Breakers*, noting that the founders who truly live in the future are often those who challenge the assumptions everyone else takes for granted.

Take the Wright Brothers. At a time when most scientists believed human flight was impossible, the Wright Brothers didn’t let today’s physics limit tomorrow’s possibilities. Instead of asking why flight was impossible, they asked what changes needed to be made to make it possible. Their ability to reject the limitations of the present and envision a different reality led to one of the most important technological breakthroughs in history.

Maples Jr. encourages founders to embrace these counter-intuitive moments. Often, the ideas that seem craziest today are the most obvious in hindsight.

Pattern Recognition and Creating Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

Another hallmark of founders who live in the future is their ability to recognize patterns before they fully emerge. These individuals are skilled at spotting nascent trends—trends that others might dismiss as too early or too irrelevant. Maples Jr. calls this “pattern recognition in the unknown.” Founders who can detect these early signals and act on them before others do are able to seize opportunities that others miss.

But it’s not enough to simply see the future; visionary founders must also convince others to believe in it. The most successful founders create self-fulfilling prophecies. They paint such a compelling picture of the future that others—employees, investors, customers—begin to believe in it as well, pouring their resources and energy into bringing it to life. This is how Steve Jobs convinced millions to embrace the iPhone before it even existed. It’s how Elon Musk garnered enough investment to make SpaceX a reality.

In the same way, founders like Benioff made the future of cloud computing so convincing that the world followed.

Conclusion: Acting with the Conviction of Inevitability

Founders who live in the future act with the conviction that their vision is inevitable. This conviction drives them to work relentlessly, to make decisions with boldness, and to bring about a future that may seem disconnected from today’s reality. By living in the future, they’re not just predicting what comes next—they’re creating it.

In a world that often rewards caution, these future-oriented founders embrace the risk of seeming disconnected from the present. They pull tomorrow’s innovation into today’s world, and in doing so, they shape the very future we will all eventually inhabit.