What Would the Founders Build Today?

They wouldn’t be tweeting. They wouldn’t be filing for 501(c)(3) status. They wouldn’t be waiting on a committee to approve the next step.

They would be building.

That’s what the Founders actually were. Not just statesmen. Builders.

Benjamin Franklin didn’t just sign the Declaration of Independence. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, and the Franklin stove. He founded America’s first public library, its first fire department, and the University of Pennsylvania. He was a printer, a publisher, a scientist, a diplomat — and he did it all without a staff of thousands.

Jefferson designed Monticello, wrote the Declaration, founded the University of Virginia, and catalogued thousands of books that seeded the Library of Congress. Washington built one of the most productive farms in the country while simultaneously commanding an army and then governing a nation.

These were people who didn’t wait for permission. They saw a gap and they closed it. They saw a tool that didn’t exist and they built it.

That’s the American tradition.

Think about the arc.

Franklin tamed electricity. Edison turned it into light. The Wright Brothers turned physics into flight. A generation of engineers put a man on the moon with less computing power than today’s smartphone.

And then came the internet. Suddenly, anyone with a laptop and a good idea could reach the world.

Each of these moments had something in common. They didn’t just create new products. They democratized something. Franklin democratized safety and knowledge. Edison democratized light. The internet democratized information.

Every 50 to 75 years, something comes along that changes who gets to build — and what they can build.

We’re living in that moment again.

If Franklin were alive today, he wouldn’t be amazed by the iPhone. He’d be amazed by AI agent fleets.

Think about what Franklin was, at his core: someone who could operate simultaneously across a dozen domains. Printer. Inventor. Diplomat. Civic organizer. Scientist. He was, in essence, a one-man fleet — a person who could deploy his intelligence across multiple problems at once.

Now imagine if he had actual agents. Specialized. Always on. Trained on the domains he cared most about.

He could have mapped the Gulf Stream and published the findings and lobbied Parliament about trade policy and organized the Philadelphia volunteer fire department — all in the same week.

That’s not fantasy. That’s what AI agent fleets make possible right now, in 2025, for anyone willing to learn to use them.

Here’s what I believe about America’s founding ideal: it was never really about geography or government. It was about the radical proposition that every individual matters. That the farmer’s son and the tradesman’s apprentice deserve the same shot as the king’s cousin.

Franklin was the son of a candle maker. He had two years of formal schooling. Two years.

And yet he built more in one lifetime than most institutions build in a century.

The tragedy of the last few decades is that we drifted from that idea. We built systems — in business, in government, in education — that concentrated capability at the top. The tools were expensive. The expertise was gatekept. The resources flowed to the already-resourced.

AI fleets change that equation.

A first-generation founder in rural Utah. A nonprofit director in South Chicago. A pastor trying to serve his congregation better. A teacher trying to reach 30 different kids with 30 different learning needs.

All of them can now deploy a fleet of specialized AI agents that work for them, learn for them, execute for them — around the clock.

That’s not a product feature. That’s the American promise, finally delivered.

On this 250th birthday, I don’t want to just celebrate what America was. I want to celebrate what it can still become.

The Founders weren’t looking backward. They were building forward — toward something that had never existed before.

That’s what we’re doing at Soar.

We believe every person deserves their own AI agents. Tools they build, train, and carry with them. Not owned by a corporation. Not harvesting their data. Working for them — the way technology was always supposed to work.

Franklin once said he never patented his inventions because, as he put it, we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others and should be glad of an opportunity to give back.

He wanted his work to uplift everyone.

So do we.

Happy 250th, America. Let’s build.

Paul Allen is the co-founder of Ancestry.com and CEO of Soar, an AI Studio building agent fleets that uplift individuals, organizations, and communities. Create a personalized AI fleet for your company today.