Transcription
When you hear the word startup, your monkey brain probably starts thinking of a bunch of randomly associated ideas like Silicon Valley, Zuck the Lizard, venture capital funding, or maybe even a bunch of ketamine micro-dosing geeks who went from eating their lunch in the computer labs at school to masters of the universe 7 years later because of a stupid piece of software.
Whatever it is you're thinking, you're going to need to wipe the board clean because we're currently in the middle of a massive revolution. The way startups are being built, flipped on its head by AI. The way they're being funded, flipped on its ass by changing economic conditions. The team members you need to succeed, consider them dead because your new team probably speaks in zeros and ones. The world of startups is going through the equivalent of the industrial revolution. And if you don't know how the landscape's changing and what it's morphing into, you're going to be left behind.
But in order to grasp where we're headed, we need a quick briefing on where we've come from so we can see how the next decade is going to be so drastically different. Let's dive in.
For the last decade or so, startups have been obsessed with growth. We've lived in a world of cheap money and endless optimism. Interest rates were near zero, so venture capital was abundant, and investors were willing to fund just about anything that promised rapid growth with a large total addressable market. It was a world where profitability didn't mean [ __ ]. The logic was simple. If you could capture users fast enough, you could figure out how to make money later. And this culture dominated Silicon Valley.
The problem is if you're a founder and you raise money, you kind of need to go big or bust, right? That's kind of you. It's hard to stay in between. You can't like make $10 million a year. You kind of need to make $100 million a year. You kind of need to become a unicorn. For many startups, this created a binary outcome. You either became a unicorn or you were considered a failure. There was no middle ground for sustainable, moderate, even profitable growth, which is how we ended up with dog [ __ ] companies raising tens or hundreds of millions before finding real customers. In other words, the story mattered more than the substance.
Look, what I hate most about VC stuff is when you see people burn money. You, you probably hate this as well. A company with no users raises $50 million, $100 million, and you're like, what is this product? Like, it doesn't have any traction. And it's just hype. You've all seen these startups, and they just disappear.
But around 2022, everything started to change. Interest rates rose, venture capital tightened, and the free money era started coming to an end. This meant startups were facing harsh realities: high burn rates, shrinking valuations, and investors demanding real profitability. And so, for the first time in over a decade, startups were forced to think like traditional businesses again. How do we make money? How do we stay alive? And what value are we truly creating?
Now is the moment for the sober founder. Embrace the age of austerity. The age of excess is over.
And that's where we are today. Standing at the edge of a major shift in how startups are being built and funded. Combine the changing economic conditions with the overpowering effects of AI, and you've got founders building products at the same speed your 12-year-old cousin builds a Fortnite base. We're entering a completely different world when it comes to building companies. If you have a laptop, an internet connection, and the desire to build something of value, you need to understand the new playbook.
The prime time for startups is when there's a platform change. Big companies, big incumbents, have a very hard time reacting. Startups 10 or 15 years ago needed a team of engineers, millions in funding, and time to figure [ __ ] out. Nowadays, we have solopreneurs building real functional products in a weekend. With an abundance of AI tools now at our disposal, the change in the startup model isn't just about speed. It's about leverage. A single founder can now do what once took 10 to 20 people. A team of two or three can build a product that would have taken hundreds only a decade ago. Or, as former Google exec Mogad dot puts it: "is me sened another technical engineer and a lot of AI's, okay? That startup would have been 350 developers in the past."
This is what guys like Peter Levels have been preaching for years: lean, independent, profitable. But you have to understand 2013-14 when I entered kind of the startup world, there was barely any indie. There was no indie hacking, there was no bootstrapping, almost except Patrick McKenzie. You know who you know well. You would, you would find investors, you would raise money, you would grow fast, you'd hire a lot of people, you got a big office. Remote didn't exist, right? Remote work. So, um, compared to that, like what's possible now?
AI is doing for startups what the internet did for media. It's removing friction. You don't need work experience. You don't need VC funding. And you definitely don't need to live in Silicon Valley. What's happening right now is a rebalancing of power. In the Zero era, money decided who got to build and which products got launched. But in the AI era, the builder has the leverage.
Listen to what Mark Andreessen has to say about the era we're currently in.
"I've heard you describe it before as like, we could be on the precipice of literally a golden age, right? For for America and and for the and for the world. Um, what, what are some ways that startups today, like in 2025, could be thinking about capitalizing just on on this moment, right?"
"Yeah. So, look, I think for at least the next four years, I think it's, you know, basically blue skies. And so I think that, you know, now, now's definitely the time to build. Um, you know, you know, we, as I said earlier, like our whole theory of all this is that the the prime time for startups is when there's a platform change. Um, and I'm not, by the way, this is not saying that every startup should be an AI startup or whatever, but like there is this incredible new tool. Um, you know, that can be used. Um, and it's just again, it's just sort of general fact that big, big companies, big incumbents have a very hard time reacting uh to these platform changes. Sometimes they, they, they pull it off, but a lot of times they, they really struggle. And so it's sort of the best possible opportunity uh for a startup is going up against an incumbent is when there's this this kind of shift happening."
This overall shift means we need to stop thinking about startups in terms of scale and start thinking about them in terms of efficiency. Let me expand on that real quick, guys. Give me 60 seconds, and I'll save you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars when you want to buy your next website domain for the startup you're going to build. And you're going to do that with aonline domain, who are the sponsor of today's video. I'm going to make this super simple because I feel like the value speaks for itself. One, you cannot buy domains anymore unless you're stupid rich and spend a dumb amount of money on it. Which means you have to pick a stupid name for your website or company. Or even worse, you need to use a stupid domain name extension like .xyz or .club. Which then brings us over to point three. Even if you did find your desired domain name, you're paying minimum like $40 a year for it, if not way more. But not if you go with the domain name extension .online. Online, where you can get your domain name for only 99¢ for the first year. I've literally already bought threeononline domains for a couple of projects me and my team are working on, but it's genuinely because I think it's the perfect domain name extension for almost any business in the modern era. And obviously, the world feels the same because it's currently the second largest new domain name extension in the world. Don't overpay for a stupid domain name. Get the one you want and get it for super cheap. Go visit get.online online or click the link in the description and make sure you use the code MAKE MONEY so that you can get it for only 99¢. Massive thanks to these guys for supporting the channel. Now, let's get back to the video.
The old startup game was about chasing scale, hiring fast, and raising money even faster. The new game is about leverage, doing more with less. Here's a five-piece framework to help reshape the way you think about startups.
First, you've got to think lean. You might have already read The Lean Startup and think you know what I'm getting at, and you are. But now think even leaner. Forget the 15, 10, even 5-person team. Can you build this yourself with enough dedication and focus? Worst case, do you need maybe one or two other founders to help? Instagram was built around 15 years ago with a team of 13 people. No AI, no coding tools. Everyone's just been given steroids with regards to their productivity capabilities. So go use it. And you use it by treating your work like a scientist. You experiment. Ship fast. Test early and kill bad ideas ruthlessly. Paul Graham famously said, "If you're not embarrassed by your first version, you launched too late." Admittedly, this is probably some advice I could be taking. I've been working on Career Compass for a while now. I have a vision of how I want it to look and feel, and above all, I want it to deliver on the promises I'm making, but I really should be shipping ASAP, getting it into your guys' hands, and working together with you to improve the product over time. If you want to be one of the first users on the platform, click the link in the description to sign up to early access.
Part two of the framework is obvious: start leveraging AI. If you're not working with AI tools on a daily basis, you're leaving leverage on the table. Figure out how to combine your human creativity and idea generation with AI's ability to execute. You focus on direction and product vision, and let the machines handle the grunt work.
The third piece of the framework is focus on profit early. This might sound boringly obvious, but it's low-key revolutionary in 2025. Last decade, profitability was optional. This decade, it's part of what will become your moat. If your business can fund itself early, also known as bootstrapping, you don't need permission from investors. Again, Paul Graham used to talk about "default alive" startups: the companies that could sustain themselves without needing another round of funding. They were almost as rare as unicorns. Now, it's just common sense. Silicon Valley rent? Piss off. 30 engineers on the payroll? Get the hell out of here. It's you, maybe a co-founder, some monthly subscriptions to AI models, and you're in business. So, there's no reason why you can't be focusing on profit early.
Now, this is easier said than done unless you incorporate part four of the framework, which is community. Old startups chased investors. New startups chase users.
"I tweeted like, I think 125,000 times over 10 years. So, it's like 40 tweets a day."
You know what that got him? Nomad List got to 700K in ARR. Remote OK has gotten to $3.4 million in revenue. Photo AI got to 600K in ARR. And these are all just you. Like, these are not startups that you have started. These are just Peter Level's productions. Seven figures in annual recurring revenue with literally zero employees.
Founders today build in public. Take this guy, Edmund Yong, for example. Literally just mini-vlogs showing and talking about what he's building. It's free marketing, and not only that, it's product feedback and support loops. It was literally the reason I started this entire channel in the first place. I had the idea for Career Compass. I wanted to validate it. So, I thought, what if I made videos explaining different careers for people so they'd better understand what they entail? It just so happens I got a little sidetracked going down the finance niche because you guys seemed to enjoy it. But mistakes and failure are part of the journey, right? But anyways, that was the game plan: build a community within a niche, aim to solve a specific problem for the community, and build the solution with their support and feedback along the way.
And the fifth piece of the puzzle is realizing small is the new big. This one's more of a mental shift. We've romanticized unicorns and billionaires and uber-successful startups for too long. It's part of what makes the game so difficult. You're forced to go big or go home. You're stuck playing with other people's money, and they need returns. So they shove growth tactics down your throat until you want to die, or you start doing shady [ __ ] like stealing from customers, lying about product capabilities, or pretending you're a genius AI builder when you're just a team of hundreds of Indians. Bootstrap, stay profitable, stay alive, and scale when it actually matters.
So, to quickly sum everything up: don't limit yourself to the old framework of building a startup. If you have a laptop and an internet connection, you have what you need to get started. Learn how to use AI tools in an intelligent manner and make progress with them in a way never before possible. Stay lean, leverage the tools around you, build with a community, solve real problems, make profit. Every major platform shift provides the fertile ground for startups to grow. We're in the AI era, and if you don't take advantage, you might have to stay a peasant relying on universal basic income in the years to come.
That's all for this video. Hope you enjoyed. Please sign up to early access for Career Compass if you're looking for career paths that are personalized to your own psychology. I'll be launching in a few weeks, so stay tuned. And please remember to like, comment, and subscribe. I'll see you in the next one.