AI has the answers.
Do you have the questions?
The right ones.
Join our newsletter to tease your mind with essays, questions, and paradoxes touching on culture, technology and philosophy.
Start herethepresence pulse™
Expertise took years to build. Now a good enough answer is a prompt away.
AI learned the craft and imitates it well. What it cannot do is want an outcome, refuse a poor option, or know when to stop. That part was always ours. And we're quietly giving it away.
Answers are free
They used to be scarce. Now they are instant, and most of us reach for one before we think a problem through.
Confidence is cheap
The answers sound certain even when they are wrong, and it is getting harder to tell.
Questions are unwelcome
Nobody has much patience for a question that does not resolve quickly.
To establish new pathways for asking the right questions, and build a culture of connected, unburdened living.
Here is how we can help you:
1. Question the obvious.
Occasional notes and essays on culture, technology and philosophy, and updates on upcoming events and workshops.
Read the newsletter2. Read and listen.
Reality Check: In Pursuit of the Right Questions. Nine principles to see past the illusions of control, in print and audio.
Get the book3. Become an ecosystem.
A platform for authors, leaders and innovators to ask, share and build together. By invitation only.
Answers are how the mind feels safe.
But certainty has a cost. Questions loosen its grip. Paradoxes expose its limits.
Read the philosophyThe Theater
Where you are. The environment, culture and circumstances shaping what you see.
The Timeline
Where you've been. The experiences, education and assumptions shaping what you expect.
The Thinker
Who you think you are. The language, biases and identity shaping the story you tell yourself.
The Newsletterwhere the dismantling begins
A conversation starter exposing dilemmas that do not have easy answers, ranging from personal explorations to business ventures.
— Questions like: What remains ours in the age of AI? What happens when there is not even a “you” in control?
thepresence pulse™
Occasional notes and essays on culture, technology and philosophy to question the obvious.You are not one story. So why live one path?
AI is dissolving the boundaries between disciplines. Perhaps our identities should follow.
Explore parallel paths. Become an ecosystem.
Which one are you not? Open a card.
Authors & Thought Leaders
Writing it down means being held to it. Someone has probably said it before, and the page does not let you hedge. That is exactly why it is worth doing.
Leaders & Organizations
Leading means your blind spots show up in other people's work, where you cannot miss them. It trades being right for being responsible.
Innovators & Creators
Making something from nothing means starting as a beginner again, with no one to hand it to. Most of us have not done that in years, and that is the point.
Reality Checkin pursuit of the right questions
Nine principles for questioning the assumptions that quietly shape what you see, what you believe and what you choose.
— through the lenses of context, time, and the observer's journey.
theorigin book
Where it all began, raw stories about the human condition.Some questions are too big to answer alone.
Step into a space free of judgment, fueled by curiosity, where you expose your questions, find your collaborators, and build something tangible.
Expose
Comment, criticize and speak your mind in anonymous chat rooms. Post your own questions and dilemmas.
Collaborate
Find the co-founders and collaborators you need for your next big idea. Evaluate and understand the relationship before committing.
Build
A product, a book, a workshop, an essay or a one-time asset. The outcome is tangible, distributable, and a building block.
The Platformwhere the collaboration begins
A space where questions become collaborations — and collaborations become things that exist in the world.
— Templates, tools and facilitation help move ideas from conversation to something tangible.
thestage
A space for collective ingenuity. By invitation only.Past and Upcoming Pursuits
Questions are only interesting if we do something with them.
Carlo Mahfouz
Founder, author of Reality Check
How I got here…
I spent fifteen years in product development and organizational transformation, watching the pursuit of answers lead good people away from the questions that mattered. And when COVID hit that reality was on full display for everyone.
Asking the right questions became my goal. And my path here was anything but linear. I was programming before I left school and building 3D characters and games before my degree was done. I pushed for the cloud when it was unthinkable.
I took the introverted engineer within, obsessed with control, onto stages: advising C-suite leaders and founders, facilitating panels, and delivering keynotes.
Over the past six years, I spent more time in planes than cars. Countless hotel rooms and Airbnbs across Europe, Asia and the Americas, sometimes in and out of a country in less than 24 hours.
Home became many places, and one box could no longer fit me. Drawing and poetry were always a safe refuge, until in my thirties I met skiing, playing the guitar and opera singing. Two of which saved my life before I knew it.
I founded Reality Check Institute so you can have the space to experience this same freedom. Challenge yourself here, then build and thrive with others.
The world doesn't need another answer.
Ask the question that changes the conversation.