TL;DR – "I'M NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THE ONE DOING THIS"
Jesse Kowalcic, a self-educated house painter from Cleveland with no formal credentials but deep intellectual infrastructure, makes a vulnerable and honest case for why he's building AgentSee: a cognitive R&D lab for human agency. His life serves as the "proof-of-concept" for systems rooted in recursive self-repair, emotional survival, and practical systems thinking forged outside institutional pathways.
"This isn't a startup pitch—it's a human alignment pitch."
⚙️ CORE INSIGHT
Jesse isn't just building AgentSee; he is AgentSee. His life experience, psychological architecture, and obsessive pursuit of cognitive clarity are the product and the platform. This represents a fundamental shift from traditional tech entrepreneurship to human-centered systems design.
📍 CONTEXT + STAKES
41 years old, underemployed by choice to pursue cognitive infrastructure work full-time
Racking up debt to pay for AI tools
Life and family on hold—needs financial runway ($5k/month) or aligned opportunity
"This essay is the Hoover Dam I'm trying to make into a drinking fountain."
BREAKING NEWS:
AgentSee's founder represents a new breed of systems thinker—one who has lived the problems they're solving. This "lived experience" approach could revolutionize how we think about human-AI alignment.
🧠 THE WORK SO FAR
He's built:
Narrative-Alignment Model – diagnostic tool for belief-to-action coherence
SWIFT Framework – nonlinear navigation tool for ADHD-like minds
Four Pillars KB – machine-readable identity/capability map
Thousands of hours of raw longitudinal cognitive journaling
POS & Janky – minimalist AI experiments designed to reveal interface constraints
His R&D process is "failure-forward": mapping what doesn't work to reveal the negative space of human-system alignment.
UNIQUE QUALIFICATIONS
High-ACE-score childhood → constant system debugging for survival
25 years painting homes of Cleveland's elite → stark contrast between thinking like the rich and being on the ladder
Left school at 6th grade → self-educated across disciplines (physics to systems thinking)
Rejected by the formal system → now building his own "ride"
🧨 WHY HIM?
His lived experience makes him uniquely equipped to:
Diagnose the brokenness in existing cognitive scaffolds
Design practical tools for human agency amid the AI explosion
Bridge emotional truth with systems design
"I'm not looking for a traditional investment. I'm looking for someone to invest in me as a person."
🚀 THE ASK
$5K/month lets him work full-time on AgentSee
Or: a research role or aligned opportunity
The work is ready; he just needs a lab not built on ladders
Have questions? Want to collaborate?
Leave your email and a quick note. I'll read every one.
EDITORIAL NOTE: This represents a fundamental challenge to traditional investment models. Instead of betting on a business plan, this is betting on a person and their unique capacity to solve problems that others can't even see.