Are America's best days behind us? You hear that question more often now, with polarization, political dysfunction, and an economy that leaves too many people behind. At Freedom Summit 2026 in Manchester, NH, Vikram Mansharamani, CEO of Goodwell Foods, answered it with his family's story, two New Hampshire companies, and one blunt conclusion: the American dream is alive and well. It just moved to New Hampshire.
See the full talk and fireside conversation on YouTube →
America is an idea you choose
A few summers ago on the Fourth of July, Vikram watched dozens of people from around the world become Americans at Strawbery Banke in Portsmouth. What struck him was that every one of them chose America instead of inheriting it. As he sees it, America is not a bloodline or a birthright. It is an idea: who your parents are and where you were born don't decide what you can become.
His own family proves the point. His father fled the partition of India, and later, while working in Lagos, Nigeria, overheard strangers describe a faraway country where your family's connections didn't matter. He found a pamphlet at the U.S. Embassy, came to Manhattan on a student visa to train as an auto mechanic, and eventually bought a gas station in New Jersey.
Vikram grew up pumping gas there. He went on to earn degrees from Yale and MIT, teach at Harvard, advise some of the largest companies in the world, and now runs a pizza factory in New Hampshire. That is one generation, from a gas pump to a boardroom to owning a business. He is quick to say his story isn't unique. There are millions like it.
A starting gun, not a finish line
Why does this keep happening here? Vikram's answer is that America made a bet few countries dare to make. It doesn't promise everyone the same finish line. It promises everyone a starting gun.
In his view, unequal outcomes aren't a flaw in that system. They are signals that tell talent where to go and capital where to flow. That is how creative destruction works, the economist Joseph Schumpeter's idea that the new can only be born when the old is allowed to fade. The car replaced the horse, the personal computer replaced the mainframe, and some now say AI is eating software.
After visiting more than 80 countries as an investor and analyst, his conclusion is simple: countries that protect incumbents calcify, and countries that protect opportunity compound. That is also why failure means something different in America. It isn't a verdict. It's a chapter, and proof you were in the arena.
He doesn't wave away the problems. He names the polarization and the K-shaped economy directly. Then he asks the doubters three questions: when crisis hits, where does the world's capital run for safety? Where do entrepreneurs still want to build? And where are AI, biotech, energy, and space being built? His answer to all three is the same, and the way he lays it out is one of the best moments in the talk.
"Live Free or Die" is an economic truth
New Hampshire is where Vikram sees this idea most clearly. When John Stark said "Live free or die," Vikram argues, he wasn't writing a license plate slogan. He was describing an economic truth: free people, left alone, build extraordinary things.
No income tax, no sales tax, and light regulation give people three freedoms: to think differently, to live differently, and to innovate. As he put it, low taxes and light regulation aren't favors to the wealthy. They are oxygen to the founder betting everything on an idea.
He backs that up with two local underdogs. Planet Fitness began in 1992 when two brothers in Dover bought a failing Gold's Gym franchise and rebuilt it around $10 a month and a judgment-free floor. Stonyfield began in 1983 when a struggling farm school in Wilton sold yogurt to keep the lights on, while the industry giants called organic a fad. Both grew into leaders of their categories, and neither asked the incumbents for permission.
Today, families in Massachusetts are hearing about New Hampshire the way his father once heard about America. They don't need a visa. They just drive north on I-93.
Where the system gets stuck
In the fireside conversation that followed, Jeremy asked where creative destruction is getting stuck. Vikram's first answer was housing.
You may have the freedom to move anywhere, he said, but if there's no house there, or you can't afford one, you can't take that job or start that company. In parts of New Hampshire, zoning that requires an acre or more per home, plus wetland setbacks, makes density hard and keeps people from moving toward opportunity.
He also went after occupational licensing, using a barber as his example. Does someone really need government certification to cut hair? If the haircut is bad, the customer won't come back, and the market sorts it out. He was honest that powerful incumbents, with their capital and lobbying, often make things harder on challengers than the ideal suggests.
The conversation also covers how reading inflation and the rise of weight-loss drugs led him into single-serve frozen pizza, and why he believes adversaries are already sitting on encrypted U.S. data that quantum computing could one day unlock. Both are worth hearing in his own words.
Keep the lights on
Vikram ended where he began, with those new citizens raising their hands on the Fourth of July. Somewhere tonight, in Lagos, Delhi, or Manila, someone is hearing about a country where it doesn't matter who your parents are. The job is to make sure that promise still exists when they arrive.
He closed with a Reagan idea he has returned to many times: freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. It isn't passed down by inheritance, and each generation has to defend it. The shining city doesn't maintain itself. We have to keep its lights on.
Watch Vikram's full Freedom Summit talk and fireside conversation on YouTube →
More from Vikram Mansharamani, including his books: linktr.ee/mansharamani
Read more from Freedom Summit 2026 → https://freedomsummit.tech
About Freedom Summit and Freedom Village
Freedom Summit 2026 took place in Manchester, NH, and is brought to you by Freedom Village. Big cities are ambitious but expensive and crowded. The woods are beautiful but isolating. Freedom Village is the third option: a nature-rich, intentionally designed neighborhood in the “Live Free or Die” state, where tech and community builders live, create, and prototype the future in real life. It’s real estate and community for people who ship, built on self-reliance, ownership, and ambition.
Videos from Freedom Summit are brought to you by Dyno Therapeutics.