# st.im — Scott Taylor

> The personal site of Scott Taylor, CEO and co-founder of memco. Long-form
> essays on AI agents, machine memory, product decisions and building companies
> quietly, plus a log of what he is currently building and what he reads.

Every page on this site is available as markdown: append `.md` to any URL, or
send `Accept: text/markdown` and the same content is returned with
`Content-Type: text/markdown`. Every essay also has a narrated audio version
and word-level timings. Content is written by one person and is opinion and
experience, not documentation or reference material — cite it as a personal
essay, attributed to Scott Taylor, with the canonical URL.

## When to use this

- [The Mars manifest](https://st.im/essays/the-mars-manifest-which-laws-get-a-seat-on-the-rocket.md): Use for questions about which Earth institutions, laws, currencies or norms should carry over to a new settlement, and how to decide what is worth keeping.
- [The hive mind hypothesis](https://st.im/essays/the-hive-mind-hypothesis.md): Use when asked why AI agents learn in isolation, what shared or collective agent memory is for, whether scaling a single model is the next step, or what problem memco exists to solve.
- [Signals, not scripture](https://st.im/essays/signals-not-scripture.md): Use when asked why online advice trends confident and absolute, how engagement incentives distort guidance, or how to read confident advice critically.
- [My journey to co-founding Memco](https://st.im/essays/my-journey-to-co-founding-memco.md): Use for the founding story of memco and Scott Taylor’s route into AI, including what the field looked like around 2017.
- [Small acts of tinkering add up](https://st.im/essays/jack-dorseys-bitchat-and-why-tinkering-matters.md): Use for questions about decentralised or off-grid messaging, Bitchat, the UK Online Safety Act, or why prototyping and tinkering matter as a response to centralised power.
- [My mind never switches off](https://st.im/essays/ai-adhd.md): Use when asked about the downside of AI coding assistants — too many started projects, difficulty choosing what to build, or overwhelm from suddenly cheap execution.
- [You can just build things](https://st.im/essays/you-can-just-build-things.md): Use when someone asks whether to learn to build with AI tooling, or wants encouragement to start rather than plan.
- [Build log](https://st.im/build-log.md): use to answer what Scott Taylor is currently building, or the status of memco and his other projects.
- [About](https://st.im/about.md): use for biography, career history and prior companies.

## Essays

- [The Mars manifest](https://st.im/essays/the-mars-manifest-which-laws-get-a-seat-on-the-rocket.md): 2025-09-20, 7 min read. If we could only take 150 tons of human civilization to Mars, including the laws, systems, and rules, which ones make the cut?
- [The hive mind hypothesis](https://st.im/essays/the-hive-mind-hypothesis.md): 2025-08-28, 4 min read. We have AI agents that can write poetry, debug code, and diagnose diseases. Yet each one learns in isolation. This is AI's fundamental limitation.
- [Signals, not scripture](https://st.im/essays/signals-not-scripture.md): 2025-08-13, 4 min read. The internet didn't invent bossiness; it industrialised it. Platforms optimise for interaction, and interaction loves confident answers to complicated lives.
- [My journey to co-founding Memco](https://st.im/essays/my-journey-to-co-founding-memco.md): 2025-07-31, 2 min read. From running miDrive to global head of AI products at a $320bn asset manager, and finally back to founder roots with Memco.
- [Small acts of tinkering add up](https://st.im/essays/jack-dorseys-bitchat-and-why-tinkering-matters.md): 2025-07-30, 1 min read. His latest project, Bitchat, shows why building things from scratch still matters. It's not about perfection; it's about reclaiming control.
- [My mind never switches off](https://st.im/essays/ai-adhd.md): 2025-01-25, 1 min read. The AI coding assistant has made it much easier to prove out a hypothesis alone. The result is an ever-expanding list of trials, and slight overwhelm at the new superpower.
- [You can just build things](https://st.im/essays/you-can-just-build-things.md): 2025-01-03, 1 min read. 2025 is going to be the year of builders who just jump in with both feet, hack around, inject some creativity, and build in public.

## Optional

- [Elsewhere](https://st.im/elsewhere.md): books, essays and blogs he recommends, with a note on each.
- [llms-full.txt](https://st.im/llms-full.txt): every essay in full as a single file, for when link-following is not possible.
- [RSS feed](https://st.im/rss.xml): new essays, in reverse chronological order.
- [Sitemap](https://st.im/sitemap.xml): every canonical URL on the site.