What it feels like racing a foiling boat

On his Linkedin page, Omer Brand describes himself as a competitive athlete at heart, a former Olympic-level sailor and coach, and now an experienced entrepreneur who excels in turning ideas into reality. In this post, he compares fast boats to business:

Racing a high-performance foiling boat is one of the most demanding coordination challenges I’ve ever experienced. Here’s what sailing taught me about running high-performance teams in tech:

• You’re flying at 40+ knots. Everything’s moving fast.
• Conditions are changing.
• One mistake, one delay, and you’re losing the race.

That’s what it feels like racing a foiling boat. Building a startup feels exactly the same. Small crew. Limited time. High pressure. No room for dead weight. Everyone’s either helping you fly or slowing you down. Here’s what I learned about building great startup teams:

• Shared mindset over job titles. On a boat, everyone knows what’s happening around them without needing to say a word. Startups should work the same. No silos. Just flow.
• Autonomy or nothing. There’s no time for micromanagement at sea. You read the wind and act. In a startup, the best people move fast and make calls without waiting for permission.
• Latency kills. In racing, late input = lost speed. In startups, slow feedback = missed signals. Tight loops matter whether it’s sail trim or product-market fit.
• The crew is your agent network. Every sailor is like an AI agent: specialized, autonomous, and constantly adjusting to real-time input. The magic happens when they sync up and amplify each other. That’s the blueprint for high-performing teams and AI systems. Startups and boats both demand the same thing:
• Systems that move fast, learn fast, and adapt together.