Read time: 3 min
Spending time in the US again after years in Europe has been strangely disorienting.
I lived six years in the US.
But over the last months, I’ve been back in the US more often.
And something hit me again. Hard.
The US is still optimizing for the wrong things.
For years, Berlin was my base.
Not a perfect city. Not even close.
Then I land in the US again.
And suddenly I’m surrounded by extreme personal optimization.
$300 monthly gym memberships.
Everyone trying to fix themselves.
Individually.
Meanwhile, the systems around them feel crumbling.
In Berlin, few people talked about optimization.
People just lived.
You walk everywhere because the city allows it.
Life isn’t optimized.
And that distinction matters more than we admit.
Back in the US, I keep seeing brilliant founders building products to patch over systemic failures.
Mental health apps to survive impossible work rhythms.
The irony is obvious.
The US has some of the best health and wellness technology in the world.
Can’t commute without friction.
So we sell solutions to cope.
What Berlin reminded me of, and what Europe keeps showing in different forms, is this:
Wellbeing scales best when it is baked into the system.
Not when it’s sold as a subscription.
In many parts of Europe, wellbeing is boring.
It doesn’t require discipline.
It just happens because the environment allows it.
This is something I think about constantly as an investor.
Especially in climate, energy, health, and infrastructure.
We love building tools that help individuals adapt.
Clean energy that stabilizes grids instead of carbon offsets that ease guilt.
One approach treats symptoms.
Coming back to the US, I see ambition everywhere.
But also exhaustion.
And it makes me wonder if the next wave of truly meaningful companies won’t be the ones that help people optimize themselves.
But the ones that quietly redesign the conditions around them.
The most powerful founders I know are starting to think this way.
That’s where impact compounds.
The question isn’t how we help people live better.
It’s what kind of world makes living better the default.
Yoann
PS: Bryan Johnson. Billionaire. Obsessed with optimizing everything. Body. Time. Life. Years chasing meaning. Love came last.
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