Transcription
If all of your norms are the way to get rich is to just make short-term bets, you actually may know know more people in your real life that made money from short-term bets than long-term bets. Yes.
Look at the 20 software companies that you respect the most. Tell me which one of those blew up super fast. Which one was like they made it in a year? None. And I'm like, what is that? What does that mean?
All right. This is Dalton plus Michael and we're going to talk about some advice for young people now that we are in this AI era. Yeah, this is the AI era, right? Yeah, we're we're in the AI. It's hard to name the era when you're in it. We're in it. Yeah, we're in it.
I'm going to set this up, Jan. I'm going to give you the controversial first thing to bounce off of. Super intelligent is imminent. We might be entering the, you know, end of days. How much of the pre-a advice even applies anymore? You know, I'm a young person. Like, are we not in a break glass in case of emergency zone where I need to ignore everything and just like go nuts, start my company, do whatever I'm going to do like like like you know, it's like time is of the essence.
I mean, look, in some ways, time is of the essence in that if you're paying attention to what's going on and you're learning the tools and you're in the right place at the right time, it's a really good move. Um, and so there is a there actually is an argument that being strategic about what you spend time on, who you spend time on, what you learn is smart, especially in the beginning of an era, right? you get a lot of extra juice if you're early on a skill set in the beginning of an era, right? So, that's that is totally true and you should think about that and we can talk about that in a second.
In addition though, I think there's something about doomsday culture. I don't know what you want to call it, but there's something about kind of pseudo religious stuff that gets people going that they just happen to be alive in the time that the world is going to end and that if they do a good thing then they'll be rewarded for it and then everyone else is in trouble. Yeah, this rhymes with some things in humans past. Yeah. Yeah. Sounds familiar, right?
Um and certainly, you know, to let me try to steal man a little bit. Certainly, I've talked to people that believe that they have a short window to try to make their way in the world and make money before AGI happens and that it'll be much harder in a post AGI world for them to be set up. I'm trying to steal man that argument, but I've heard people make it. Yes. Can you make that a strong Can you make a better version of that or is that did I make the best version?
I mean, I do think there's this kind of argument that if AGI exists, does the startup world still exist? I think it's just start I think it's everything. Like I I've spoken to try to steal man. I've spoken to folks that are like drop out of college. They're not teaching you anything that's useful. Every minute you spend doing that stuff is like downside. I suppose it before where college was teaching you everything you needed to know. I don't know. I I'm not going to touch that one. Um but basically break the glass. Um, you know, do do whatever you can do because there's something about this moment that anything not spent on some sort of AGI pill type life trajectory is a bad call.
To further that amongst startup founders, what I've seen is the if my thing is not scaling to 100 million in revenue within a year, it's a bad idea. I need to pivot away from it because like cursor and lovable or what you know whatever the startup of the moment is is taking off and I'm I'm not on the right rocket ship. You know it's such a good point.
This is the fundamental tension in all the advice that we've ever given over all the years is that you have to simultaneously be impatient and ambitious and have feel like you have a hair on fire thing to be ambitious. And at the same time, in your same brain, hold the idea that doing great work takes a long time. Isn't that so hard? And like, and again, how many times have we talked to people that are frustrated that they're like, "Aren't you aren't you kind of contradicting yourself, Dalton? Aren't you?" Yes. It's like, "Yes, that is that is exactly right." Yes. You you have to be insanely impatient to do great work and to push the world that wants to move slow to move fast. Yes. And you have to set yourself up to not freak out and quit. Doing good work takes time. Solving hard problems takes time. Yeah. And learning a skill takes time. Yeah.
It was really funny. I was talking to this founder. He B2B company. And you know his kind of stated goal is a little pound tree like he wants to go into your company, understand their data using AI and help them solve their biggest problem. And he said this thing to me that like kind of blew my mind. He's like, "Yeah, we got in there, learned about their biggest problem, we learned what was causing it. That seemed too hard to solve." So, we spent four months searching for other problems that'd be easier to solve. And it was like, and then I'm like, "And did you find it?" Like, not nothing that important. And it's like, I almost think about it like um the way I describe it, and maybe I've done this in previous videos, is an SAT math problem. Like, people have been taught that when the SAT math problem gets too hard, they're probably doing it wrong. And so it's like, oh, you don't really need algebra for most SAT problems. Like, you're probably not thinking about the problem the right way. And I think people apply that to startups where it's like, oh, if something is too hard, that means I'm doing something wrong. I should be searching for an easy. Yeah. And it's like, what's the Peter Teal quote? There was something like he's like, everything that is valuable is hard, but not everything that is hard is valuable. The first part of that, like everything that is valuable is hard.
Well, it's funny you brought up Palunteer and I'm not saying I'm the world's biggest expert on it, but man, I knew some early employees that went nowhere. Like, they basically had to just toil in obscurity for many years and now it's like a meme stock and I think young people all know about it because of the stock price, but I think they started that company in like 2002. It's been like 23 or 24 years and I think for the first 10 maybe even 15 years it was kind of belittled. That's just the consulting company. Like that's the gov tech. Like that's not cool. And talk about folks who've on hard problems for a long time.
This duality that you're talking about is important. My advice to people when they encountering this is like I don't sit well with this duality. I don't sit well with like I've got to move fast and it's going to take a long time in parallel. So I just like to make it a serial problem. When I was young starting a company, it feels like an emergency. We got to nuclear fast. I'm ignoring it's going to take time. Yeah. Now that I'm in the company, oh crap. Okay. You know, now that I'm committed, the thing's going d Now I kind of move on to this other belief. Oh crap. Okay. Like we're not going to be able to solve any of the hard problems super fast. You got to get to that second point. Well, it's like you got to keep showing up.
U was talking to someone about our videos. This is meta. Yeah. But basically, how many videos we made, man? I think we made 60 or so so far. Yeah. No one does that. Like a lot of people start YouTube channels and they make one or two but didn't blow up. It didn't blow up. That didn't go viral. And but like to actually build something that matters to people, you have to like keep doing it. And so so to tie this into advice for for AGI and all that good stuff, I mean it is great to be impatient. It's great to want to drop everything to learn the tools. Yes. But you have to combine that. Yes. With a willingness to sit with something and to really to do great work. It's gonna take a while. And so whether that's school, whether that's job stuff, whether that's startup stuff.
I was reading uh something by uh this guy recently. I think he called it the casinoification of modern capitalism and how many young folks are used to the way they implicitly are trained to believe that the way you build wealth is from sports gambling. It's a huge part of being young, crypto, stock gambling, zero dated options, like all this stuff is all kind of casino stuff. And so if ever if all of your norms are the way to get rich is to just make short-term bets and you know people that made money from short-term bets kind of what we're saying is not going to land for you. You actually may know know more people in your real life that made money from short-term bets than longterm bets. Real money for most people is sports betting winning money. You know, I was talking to a founder about this and the quote unquote anecdote I tried to give him to this feeling in his head was just like, look at the 20 software companies that you respect the most. And just like tell me which one of those blew up super fast. Like which which which one was like they made it in a year. He's like none. And I'm like what does that what does that mean? Like come on.
Because I to me this also happens in startups so much where it's like oh well they raised a series A in two months and I'm like when did series A become the end point like when when did that become the like victory like run through the line get the gold medal point like it never like raising a series A means you have a 90% chance of death I think it's a little higher there we go great at least 90% chance of death could be higher depending on which investor gives you serious it I round to 100%. I think I think we're going to do better than that. But I think we're going to do better than that. But anyways, and the thing that triggers this for me was a conversation I had with some very smart technical founders coming out of Stanford maybe three or four years ago and they said this line to me that I will never forget. We were taught that all consumer startups suck and that it's only possible to build a B2B company. any Stanford administration listening, um maybe they're misquing you, but anyways, um it was so interesting because it's almost like they wanted to be given the rules to win the game. Like they were so seeking like please give me a framework. If I do A, B, C, and D, I win. And this kind of nuggets slot slotted right like regardless of what I'm interested in slot A is it has to be a B2B SAS company and slot B is this and slot C is this and then like if I do that I win.
It's such a good point because so many people think that there's an answer there's a secret and that we have it. People like us have it. Yeah. Um, I think if you watch our videos, you'll we we tell you what we know, but I don't think there's like a clip you could take out of one of the videos where like, "Oh, they said the secret." And it's funny because I'm sure you get these emails, too, but there's a lot of people that are like, "The advice that you give in 15 minutes will change everything." Can you imagine actually believing that talking to us for 15 minutes would help whatever someone's problems are. Well, I'll say especially after all these videos. Yeah. I mean, what are we going to say? the likelihood in 15 minutes they're going to say more than but but the point is I think people think that there's like an optimal path or set of directions. Yes. Like this is a video game and there's like a cheat guide. Here's how you get to the here's how you get through the maze and that if someone just tells you how to get through the maze, it's like really trivial. Yeah. And it just bears repeating over and over again. The people that made it through the maze gritted through it and it wasn't that someone gave them a really easy hack.
I love seeing in this video game frame. There's the cheat code in the video game, right? Like, oh, you get more lives, you get to warp to the end, and then there's the guide book that's just like, here's exactly how to do every step. I think neither of them apply in startups. Yeah. Like, and I think when people search for them, is specifically that guide book. I think the cheat book is, you know, we talked about that with crypto and stuff. I think that guide book that's what I'm kind of starting to call the MBAification of of of startup founders where it's kind of like MBAs were originally created to train middle managers. Yep. And if you're bringing a middle manager into a company, there is a guide book. There's a guide book on how to get in. There's a guide book on what to do. There's a guide book on how to get promoted. Like it's like they teaching you the fundamentals of finance. Yep. Teaching you the fundamentals of uh management. Like it's it was like General Motors, right? It was basically these really big companies needed a to hire middle managers. Yes. And so these were training these were trade schools. These were trade schools for middle managers and they would fund the business school like they would donate money to start this thing up. And I think that like that has been transposed on this startup thing which was always a extremely high-risk irregular plans need to change all the times luckbased like it it was I can't think of anything more opposite than being a middle manager at GM.
And what frustrates me is that everyone knows there's no guidebook to being Michael Jordan, right? like everyone knows like you know you can do everything he did and you know just like but yet people cause themselves to believe no if I just follow this set of rigid best practices successful company comes out the back and it's like no I understood this being a belief of MBA folks of right if you go to business school for two years it'll infect you this is now young technical founders are are being taught this stuff It's so frustrating because it's kind of like these rules and best practices won't save you. Like you're still going to have to do something extremely hard and be lucky and it's going to be at the limit of your abilities. There's no guide book for that.
As a quick aside, I remember the story this band in England made a guide book on how to write a number one single. Okay? And they sold it as a book and that a one band actually did it and tried it and it worked. Okay? And the song they made was Chumba Womba tub thumping. And it was like a satirical book, but they did it literally where they're like, "Here's how you write a number one single." And I guess Chumba Womba followed the book and wrote a number one hit single. And by the way, I'm sure they made a lot of money on that book after that single.
But I think that like maybe you know to close for the advice to young people I always tell founders like make sure that you're having fun because to your point about you're going to have to stick with it for a long time. I have not seen people be able to stick with hard challenges for a long time when they're not having fun. And when they are having fun I've seen them do crazy stuff. Yeah. Like literally crazy.
How many times have we seen people do good work that they're proud of fast? It's almost like being able to take pride in your work and being proud of your body work involves putting many years into it. Yes. And that you almost want to normalize that or we want to tell you got to tell people yeah this is what's normal is uh sustained periods of long work to do something good and not hitting a lottery ticket. And I think even in this age of or era of AI, you have time to do great work like we are in the very beginning of it.
So with that, thanks Dalton. Thank you.
[Music]