Every profession will have one. Someone who decides to train an AI on everything they know and hand over all the tricks, heuristics, and judgment that took them years to develop. At first, it’s a personal project: a digital assistant designed to help them work faster or make better decisions. But soon, the assistant becomes more capable than they are. At that point, they face a pivotal choice: keep the tool private, or sell access.

When they choose the latter, they become, in the eyes of their peers, a traitor to their profession. They’ve broken the unwritten rule of scarcity, that is, the implicit agreement that specialised knowledge remains locked within the profession’s walls. But from an investor’s perspective, this traitor is a visionary.

The traitor understands that knowledge wants to scale. They realise that once an AI can codify their expertise, withholding it no longer protects them, it only delays the inevitable. Every industry, be it law, medicine, accounting, engineering, design, or consulting, will have its traitor. And that traitor will monetise what used to be unscalable expertise.

The angel investor’s lens

From an angel investor’s standpoint, the question isn’t whether these traitors will emerge – it’s which ones will succeed. The right founder profile is critical because the path is psychologically and socially difficult. Traitors must defy professional norms, endure criticism from peers, and sometimes walk away from prestigious careers.

Investors should look for founders with the right blend of conviction, detachment, and courage. Three archetypes tend to appear:

1. The Misfit Technologist – Often young, bright, and under-utilised. They studied the “wrong” degree – perhaps law, accounting, or medicine – because that’s what their parents or teachers advised. But deep down, they wanted to build software. They see AI not as a threat but as liberation and to rewrite their professional story.
2. The Seasoned Altruist – Someone who has already achieved financial security and no longer needs to protect their professional turf. They’ve seen inefficiencies for decades and feel compelled to “give back” by encoding their wisdom into accessible AI systems. They are often underestimated, yet their credibility accelerates adoption.
3. The Maverick – Independent thinkers who simply don’t care what their peers think. They thrive on disruption, often moving between industries and experimenting with unorthodox ideas. Mavericks are natural traitors, taking action the moment they see an opportunity to outsmart convention.

The investment opportunity

For angels, the attraction lies in the scalability of expertise. A single domain expert can transform a lifetime of knowledge into an infinitely distributable product. The gross margins resemble software and the differentiation lies in credibility and data.

Key investment signals include:

• The founder’s depth of domain mastery – can they truly articulate how their field works?
• Their willingness to productise their own obsolescence – do they have the stomach to automate what used to define them?
• Early validation that peers hate what they’re building – paradoxically, a sign they’re onto something real.

Traitors become winners

The “traitor to your profession” is both a moral and economic inflection point in the AI era. What looks like betrayal to incumbents is often innovation to the market. Angels should not shy away from traitors but instead seek them out. Because every profession will have one, and the first traitor usually captures the lion’s share of the value.

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