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How to Spend Your 20s in the AI Era

Y Combinator • 38:56 minutes • Published 2025-07-08 • YouTube

📚 Chapter Summaries (14)

🤖 AI-Generated Summary:

🎥 How to Spend Your 20s in the AI Era

⏱️ Duration: 38:56
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📚 Video Chapters (14 chapters):

Overview

This video is a live-recorded panel discussion focused on navigating careers,
education, and entrepreneurship in the rapidly evolving world shaped by
artificial intelligence (AI). Through 14 structured chapters, the speakers guide
viewers from existential questions about tech’s societal contributions and job
stability, through the new paradigms of risk, skill-building, and startup
strategy, to actionable decision points like dropping out of college or quitting
a job. Each chapter builds on the last, encouraging a mindset of agency,
substance over credentials, and adaptive learning to thrive in a landscape
transformed by AI.

Chapter-by-Chapter Deep Dive

(00:00)

Core Concepts & Main Points:
The discussion opens by challenging the audience to focus on real, substantive
contributions to society rather than superficial "simulacra" or empty
credentials, referencing scandals like SBF and Theranos as cautionary tales. The
panel introduces the anxiety many feel about AI’s impact on jobs and career
paths, especially among students who once saw computer science as a safe bet.

Key Insights:
- There’s growing uncertainty about traditional career safety due to AI.
- The narrative around stable tech jobs is shifting.
- The importance of authenticity and real value creation in tech.

Actionable Advice:
- Focus on building things of true utility, not just chasing status or credentials.

Connection to Video Theme:
Sets the tone of challenging assumptions about safety and success in tech,
highlighting the need for authenticity and adaptability.

The Inverted Career Risk Paradigm (04:18)

Core Concepts & Main Points:
Discusses how AI has flipped the traditional career risk model. Previously,
following instructions well and obtaining credentials (like college degrees) was
the low-risk, stable path. Now, AI outperforms humans at routine tasks,
diminishing the value of such credentials.

Key Insights:
- Credential signaling (showing you can follow instructions) is becoming obsolete.
- Companies have historically valued reliability, but AI is now better at it.

Actionable Advice:
- Reevaluate what you’re seeking from education and career—focus on what differentiates humans from AI.

Connection to Video Theme:
Marks the transition from traditional career planning to a new paradigm where
adaptability and agency are more valuable than ever.

AI's Impact on Education and Skills (05:16)

Core Concepts & Main Points:
Explores how educational curricula, especially in computer science, are often
outdated and don’t allow students to use modern tools (like AI code assistants).
The panel emphasizes the importance of agency—learning through independent
projects rather than formal coursework.

Key Insights:
- Many schools restrict use of tools that are essential in the workforce.
- Students gain more relevant skills from side projects than from classes.

Actionable Advice:
- Take initiative to learn and build outside formal education.
- Embrace new tools and technologies despite academic restrictions.

Connection to Video Theme:
Underscores the gap between academic training and real-world skill requirements,
advocating for proactive, self-driven learning.

Agency vs. Credential Maxing (07:08)

Core Concepts & Main Points:
Questions the logic of racing to accumulate wealth or credentials before AI
changes everything. Critiques the culture of "credential maxing" and warns
against making decisions based on fear.

Key Insights:
- The value of "human money" may fundamentally change if AI reaches superhuman capabilities.
- Focusing on credentials for their own sake is not productive.

Actionable Advice:
- Pursue work that excites you, not out of fear or FOMO.
- Avoid superficial goalposts—seek meaningful impact.

Connection to Video Theme:
Promotes intrinsic motivation and genuine enthusiasm over fear-based
decision-making.

Motivation: Fear or Excitement (08:28)

Core Concepts & Main Points:
Contrasts fear-driven decision-making with excitement-driven action, especially
regarding the rapid growth of AI startups. Notably, the bar for startup
achievement has risen dramatically in just a few years.

Key Insights:
- AI startups now achieve in 1–2 years what used to take many years.
- The pace and scale of opportunity are unprecedented.

Actionable Advice:
- Let excitement about what’s possible drive your decisions, not fear of missing out.

Connection to Video Theme:
Encourages a proactive, optimistic perspective in the face of rapid change.

The Accelerated Growth of AI Startups (09:43)

Core Concepts & Main Points:
Highlights how small teams can now generate immense impact and revenue quickly,
replacing the need for external validation (like raising VC rounds) with real
business outcomes.

Key Insights:
- Modern AI startups can reach $10M+ in revenue with very small teams.
- External credentials (e.g., raising Series A) matter less than real traction.

Actionable Advice:
- Focus on building something people need and will pay for, rather than chasing validation from investors or media.

Connection to Video Theme:
Reinforces the theme of substance over image, and the new possibilities
available to agile teams.

Real Success over Fake Credentials (10:50)

Core Concepts & Main Points:
Reiterates the point that "fake" credentials (media coverage, VC funding) are
less meaningful than real business success. AI startups, especially in B2B SaaS,
are now the fastest-growing in tech history.

Key Insights:
- Hypergrowth is now happening in domains that were previously slow-growing.
- True product-market fit and revenue trump external "blessings."

Actionable Advice:
- Measure success by tangible outcomes, not by external perceptions.

Connection to Video Theme:
Further cements the importance of genuine achievement and value creation.

Domain Expertise and Technical Expertise (12:55)

Core Concepts & Main Points:
Explains the essential mix of domain and technical expertise needed to build
successful products. Technical skill with AI is now a bigger differentiator, and
college students are often ahead in this area.

Key Insights:
- Pre-AI, domain expertise was often more important; now, technical edge is crucial.
- Students can become technical leaders by mastering new tools and models.

Actionable Advice:
- Immerse yourself in both the technical and practical sides of your target industry.
- Don’t be intimidated by lack of industry experience—technical skill can compensate.

Connection to Video Theme:
Emphasizes the democratization of startup opportunity through technical mastery.

Gaining Domain Expertise as a Student (15:05)

Core Concepts & Main Points:
Describes practical ways students can gain domain expertise quickly—by "going
undercover," observing real users, and building real solutions. AI makes it
easier for newcomers to be taken seriously, as they can offer "magic" to
industries hungry for innovation.

Key Insights:
- College students can become experts in new domains within months.
- Industries are now more receptive to fresh ideas from students, especially with AI.

Actionable Advice:
- Proactively engage with target users (e.g., dentists) and learn their needs.
- Pair technical skill with on-the-ground learning for rapid expertise.

Connection to Video Theme:
Shows how agency and initiative unlock new opportunities, even for those without
traditional experience.

Breaking the Student Mindset (18:51)

Core Concepts & Main Points:
Warns against treating startups or careers as another "test" with boxes to
check. Emphasizes that there are no set rules—founders must define their own
goals and paths.

Key Insights:
- Traditional student mentality (following instructions, seeking approval) is a liability in startups.
- There are no adults or authority figures to set the rules; founders must take ownership.

Actionable Advice:
- Shift from a compliance mindset to one of ownership and agency.
- Don’t measure success by external checklists—set your own standards.

Connection to Video Theme:
Challenges viewers to embrace true independence and creativity in their careers.

The Dangers of Entrepreneurship Programs (20:39)

Core Concepts & Main Points:
Critiques certain academic entrepreneurship programs for teaching "fake it till
you make it" and credentialism, leading students to prioritize image or process
over real substance.

Key Insights:
- Some programs may foster dishonesty or superficiality.
- True entrepreneurship cannot be reduced to a series of academic exercises.

Actionable Advice:
- Beware of programs that emphasize credentials or process over real value creation.
- Learn from real founders, not just professors or administrators.

Connection to Video Theme:
Warns against institutionalized versions of entrepreneurship that miss its
essence.

Social Media Strategy for Startups (22:52)

Core Concepts & Main Points:
Debates the role of social media in early-stage startups. While social media can
be a distraction or a "simulacrum," it’s also a powerful tool for telling your
own story, connecting with users, and shaping your brand.

Key Insights:
- Substance is more important than online hype, but narrative control matters.
- Working backwards from what you want to showcase can drive focused product development.

Actionable Advice:
- Use social media to authentically communicate your progress, not just to chase vanity metrics.
- Align product development with the story you want to tell (e.g., two-week sprints culminating in a demo video).

Connection to Video Theme:
Bridges the gap between real achievement and visibility, advocating for
authentic self-promotion.

The College Dropout Question (27:30)

Core Concepts & Main Points:
Addresses whether students should drop out to work on startups, advising that
the decision should be based on trust, excitement, and readiness—not FOMO or
fear.

Key Insights:
- Evaluate potential opportunities rigorously (as an investor would).
- Only leave college if you’re genuinely ready and excited, not just reacting to peer pressure.

Actionable Advice:
- Spreadsheet pros and cons; seek truly exceptional opportunities.
- Be a "heat-seeking missile" for energy and potential, not mediocrity.

Connection to Video Theme:
Provides a framework for making consequential career decisions rooted in
self-awareness.

When to Quit Your Job (32:33)

Core Concepts & Main Points:
Discusses when and how to leave a stable job to pursue a startup, stressing the
importance of financial runway and finding the right co-founder.

Key Insights:
- Plan for 6–9 months of living expenses before quitting.
- The biggest constraint is often timing and commitment with a co-founder.

Actionable Advice:
- Don’t go it alone on your first startup—find capable partners.
- Move quickly when alignment and opportunity converge, as these moments are rare.

Connection to Video Theme:
Concludes with practical, risk-aware guidance for transitioning from employment
to entrepreneurship.

Cross-Chapter Synthesis

Recurring Themes:
- Agency Over Credentials: From the start, the video prioritizes individual initiative and authenticity over following established paths or collecting credentials (Chapters 1, 4, 6, 10).
- Real Value Creation: Success is measured by tangible impact and business outcomes, not external validation or media attention (Chapters 1, 7, 8, 9, 12).
- Adapting to AI: The need to build new skill sets and mindsets for a world where AI can do routine work better than humans (Chapters 2, 3, 8).
- Rapid Learning and Experimentation: Encouragement to learn by doing, iterate quickly, and immerse oneself directly in target domains (Chapters 3, 9, 10).
- Intrinsic Motivation: Making decisions based on excitement and genuine interest, not fear or FOMO (Chapters 5, 11, 13).

These themes interlock to build a holistic approach to navigating careers and
entrepreneurship in the AI era.

Progressive Learning Path

  1. Challenge Old Assumptions: The video starts by questioning the traditional markers of career safety and value (Chapters 1–2).
  2. Understand the New Reality: Explains how AI changes the game, making old credential-based models less relevant (Chapters 3–4).
  3. Embrace Agency and Substance: Shifts focus to proactive skill-building, genuine achievement, and intrinsic motivation (Chapters 5–7).
  4. Master Technical and Domain Skills: Offers a blueprint for acquiring
    practical expertise and leveraging it in startups (Chapters 8–9).
  5. Break Free from Limiting Mindsets: Advises shedding the
    student/test-taker mentality in favor of entrepreneurial ownership (Chapters
    10–11).
  6. Communicate Authentically: Navigates the role of social media and
    narrative in building a startup (Chapter 12).
  7. Make Informed Life Decisions: Provides frameworks for deciding on
    college, jobs, and startup opportunities based on readiness and self-awareness
    (Chapters 13–14).

Key Takeaways & Insights

  • Credentialism is Obsolete: AI now excels at tasks once used to signal employability; human value lies elsewhere (Chapters 2–3).
  • Agency is Essential: Success in the AI era comes from initiative, independence, and building real things (Chapters 3, 4, 9, 10).
  • Learning by Doing: Rapid, self-driven learning (e.g., side projects, "going undercover") outpaces formal education (Chapters 3, 9).
  • Realism Over Hype: Focus on substance—genuine business results, not external validation or social media "aura" (Chapters 7, 12).
  • Technical Mastery is a Differentiator: Students with AI skills can leapfrog traditional barriers, even without industry experience (Chapters 8–9).
  • Intrinsic Motivation Wins: Decisions should be driven by excitement and vision, not fear or herd mentality (Chapters 5, 13).
  • Deliberate Risk Management: Plan financially and seek strong collaborators before making big leaps (Chapters 14).

Actionable Strategies by Chapter

  • Chapter 1: Focus on building real value, not just appearances.
  • Chapter 3: Proactively work on independent projects using the latest tools, regardless of academic restrictions.
  • Chapter 4: Pursue opportunities out of excitement, not fear or FOMO.
  • Chapter 6: Prioritize real business outcomes (revenue, traction) over external validation.
  • Chapter 8: Combine domain research (talking to users) with technical building to gain expertise rapidly.
  • Chapter 10: Shed the "student" mentality—define your own goals and standards.
  • Chapter 11: Be wary of entrepreneurship programs that teach process over substance.
  • Chapter 12: Use social media to authentically showcase progress; work backwards from the story you want to tell.
  • Chapter 13: Make major decisions (dropping out, moving) based on self-awareness, opportunity quality, and readiness.
  • Chapter 14: Build a financial runway and find a co-founder before quitting your job.

Warnings & Common Mistakes

  • Chasing Credentials: Don’t make raising VC money or collecting degrees your main goal (Chapters 2, 7, 10).
  • Fear-Based Decisions: Avoid making career moves out of panic or FOMO (Chapters 4, 5, 13).
  • Superficial Entrepreneurship: Beware of programs or advice that prioritize image or process over real progress (Chapter 11).
  • Student Mindset: Treating startups as another "test" or checklist will hold you back (Chapter 10).
  • Going Solo Prematurely: Don’t try to start your first company alone—find capable partners (Chapter 14).

Resources & Next Steps

  • Independent Learning: Seek out real-world projects, side hustles, and internships in your area of interest (Chapters 3, 8, 9).
  • Networking: Surround yourself with "superlative" people and mentors (Chapter 13).
  • Financial Planning: Save 6–9 months of living expenses before making entrepreneurial leaps (Chapter 14).
  • Authentic Storytelling: Practice sharing your journey and progress via simple demos or videos (Chapter 12).
  • Evaluating Opportunities: Use investor-style analysis (spreadsheets, objective criteria) for major career decisions (Chapter 13).

This summary is structured for easy navigation back to source chapters and is
designed to provide both high-level insights and specific, actionable strategies
for navigating the AI-driven future of careers and entrepreneurship.

📝 Transcript Chapters (14 chapters):

📝 Transcript (1076 entries):

## [00:00] Think about the area under the curve of utility that you could contribute to society and everything else is similacrim. It is not real. When you think about SBF, when you think about therronos, when you think about the things that truly disgrace us as people who create technology, when you peel back a little bit, you realize there's nothing. It was a lie. I don't want that for us. people outside of this room, the world at large looks at tech and they hate us sometimes because those are the people who represent us. And I say, "Not for me. They don't represent us." [Applause] [Music] Welcome to another episode of the Light Cone. This time we're doing it live. We're not used to doing it in front of a studio audience. So, we thought we would uh start off with a controversial topic. This is something that uh a bunch of people who are at this conference uh have been I don't know just talking about coming to us to talk about. Uh is this the last window to get rich. Are you worried about this. Are you guys worried about this. Is this the end of capitalism. What's what's happening. Be like no money going to stop exist with EGI. they they won't they won't admit to it but in private conversations this is one of the topics that certainly we've been debating. Yeah. Well, you know, why is this coming up. Actually, seems like at least when we speak to people who are applying to IC who are kind of like members of the audience, there's a real sense of uncertainty created by AI right now, right. Like the thing is like the sense of will the jobs that we thought would be there be available and if we're not um if they're not like kind of what do we do. And if we're not sort of if we don't have real ownership in something that's like valuable and growing like what will we be left with. That seems to be the thing that comes up a lot. I had dinner with some undergrads who are here last night and they were saying that this is one of the things that people are talking about a lot on college campuses is like, "Hey, the AI's gotten really good at programming now." Um, what's going to happen to all the programming jobs. Like it used to be the case that if you were a CS major, there is a very clear path to like a very stable like upper middle class background where you get like a good stable job as a as a programmer. Um but like are those jobs still going to be here in 10 years. Like Yeah. Yeah. Like my my parents were really proud when I uh you know graduating I you know got my degree and then I got my job at Microsoft and I was a level 59 PM uh you know lowest of the low but I had health insurance and my parents were really really proud of me. And you know, one of the fears, frankly, like that we're hearing uh and it's sort of, you know, coming out in the numbers is that will there actually be jobs. You I think it's a tricky thing right now with the advent of intelligence. You know, some of the simplest things that people rely on entry level people right out of college for, uh they're not hiring as many of them anymore. And you know the craziest stat I think this came out of uh uh the New York Fed in February of this year. Um computer science majors uh you know obviously this is not the people in this room. This is just like out of like you know a normal distribution of all computer science majors 6.1% in unemployment in February of this year. Art history in contrast was only 3.0%. Wait, you're saying that the unemployment rate of art history majors is lower than the unemployment rate of CS majors. Unbelievably, but that's what the stat indic. We're talking about, you know, the the median, which you know, you guys are so so many standard deviations above. Don't worry. That's concerning, right. Yeah. Yeah. But like but like this this role of like like level 59, you know, engineer at Microsoft used to be this like super stable job. If you do that job, all the adults in your life will be like good job. Like you make the you made the safe choice, the prudent choice. But like one of the things I've been I've been noodling a lot. It's like is that actually the safe choice. Like is it possible that the world has become inverted and like the career path that seemed to be like the lowest risk, most. ## The Inverted Career Risk Paradigm [04:18] safe path might not be anymore. Yeah, I think like one thing that's going to be interesting with this audience is that there's one theory there's um Brian Kaplan has this theory on education. I think it's Brian Kaplan at least. It's like where um it's basically all about it's credentiing but it's actually a very specific thing that's being credentialed. It's like what colleges are credentiing to employers is that um these people graduate our program which means that they can like show up to a place on time and like perform a series of instructions and you know not do too many drugs and like kind of like make it through which is like the kind of people you want to hire like they'll turn up they'll do the job and if if you're a Microsoft Yeah. Yeah. like fang like I think like any company at scale starts like that's actually what they are hiring is like you went to a good college which means that you can like do things reliably and follow instructions well it's pretty clear now in the AI world that like the AI is very good at following instructions and it's probably. ## AI's Impact on Education and Skills [05:16] going to be hard for humans to compete with the AI on just like following instructions reliably in which case people here need to think about what are they going to get out of their college experience that goes beyond just kind of showing up, passing the test, following the instructions really, really well. Like it's going to require how do you know to do things yourself and how do you have like agency and independence. Um cuz that's actually the stuff that's going to matter in like I think a post AI world. And I think the thing that happened is uh Dar and I went on this college tour as well and what's happening is that a lot of the CS curriculum is actually quite outdated. Like how many of you in the audience if you're still in in in college do your courses even allow use of a cursor. Yeah. How how many like forbid you to use cursor and like vibe coding tools in your CS classes. Oh yeah. Way more hands. Yeah. Yeah. And this is the future and those are the kinds of skills that are now they're quite literally prohibiting the students from learning the tools that they are going to need in the future. It's crazy. It's like Google when the internet first came out um a lot of teachers would say you're not allowed to use Google totally which is unfathomable today and I think to Har's point a lot of the most crack students as we were meeting them and all these we had we had some some events that were hosted they had this um the sense of talking on the side and working on a lot of side projects to your point harsh of having a lot of agency you learn a lot more in the process of building a lot of projects on the side rather than at school. How many of you had learned way more on independent projects than at school. Yeah. All right. We picked the right people. Sweet. What do you guys think is the answer to Gary's question. Is this the last window. ## Agency vs. Credential Maxing [07:08] to get rich. Being intellectually honest. One of our sort of colleagues, Paul Buhight, pointed this out where it's there's probably a flaw in the logic potentially. like if this is actually the last window to make money and get rich, then you're basically implying that, you know, like the we're going to get some definition of AGI or ASI or whatever you want to call it. Um that's like a necessary condition for that to be true. Like in which case we're probably going to have like bigger like there's going to be a lot more going on than just figuring out like how to make this like human money. I think that's a concept that Paul talks a lot about is that in a world where the machines can do everything that's better than humans like what value will they even be in human money in which case why does it matter that you're going to race to accumulate like the human money now the game itself might change the you know you sort of you grow up you go to college you graduate you go work you get a job you buy a house you have a mortgage all this stuff and then um you know one of the weirder things that uh I see people critique San Francisco about is somehow this belief that San Francisco itself is about like credential maxing which um I don't I mean I the the part of San Francisco I want to spend time with is like not really about that but I can see the critique in general I don't think people do their best work out of fear like you do it out of like more positive motivations cuz you're excited about. ## Motivation: Fear or Excitement [08:28] stuff and so I don't think my advice to anyone here would be you should drop out of college and work on an AI startup because it's going to be your last chance to make money before I don't know like the event horizon hits us. Um I do think something that's interesting to note is just like the how quickly like AI startups can grow is definitely something we've talked about but if you think about um something I've been thinking about recently like I all of us actually when we were in college like um we would you'd always have speakers come back like startup founders who were like a year or two out of college come back and speak and you hear from them and I kind of remember that the milestone to hit when you were like a year or two out of college having worked on your startup was like raising a series A round of funding and we'd have like the Dropbox founder come back and say like yeah I raised like a series A and it's like really really cool and then it sort of became okay well actually like maybe a couple years out of college you could raise like a series B or a series C. If you fast forward today, it's like you've got the cursor founder a couple of years out of college coming back with a 10 billion dollar company. Like it's like the the the pace order magnitude. Yeah. It's like the orders of magnitude difference, right. So I actually think a far more exciting reason to think about. ## The Accelerated Growth of AI Startups [09:43] um you know should I start a company or should I join like one of these fast growing companies is like the time like how much you can get done a year or two like out of college is orders of magnitudes higher than it was even a few years ago. And I think that's like for a certain type of person a very like exciting motivating factor. I like that a lot hard that I think that's why Sam said at the beginning of the of the event yesterday, this is the best time in history to start a company. Yeah. Well, the interesting thing about credential maxing andor what's happening now is that raising a series A is a credential that kind of gets bestowed by a fancy VC uh you know driving a Ferrari down Sand Hill Road or something, right. like that's something that's external to outcomes and often it's you know really like the shooting of a a starting line gun as opposed to like something to celebrate in and of itself. The really big difference today is that the very best companies that we get to see day-to-day, they're like, I don't know, five people, 10 people. Uh I think all you know, each of us on stage and all of the YC partners are sort of collecting uh incredible startups that. ## Real Success over Fake Credentials [10:50] we get to work with that went from zero to 10 million, 12 million a year revenue. Like that's net revenue like it just goes in the bank. So you basically get the equivalent of an entire series A and instead of this fake credential thing where some fancy person on Twitter with lots of followers, you know, blesses you and suddenly like all these people, you know, TechCrunch says like the new hottest founder and you know what, like those are all external things that are not actually connected to real business or having an impact on anyone. It's fake, right. It's the fake credential. And then the cool thing now is that that is actually very directly being replaced by people making things that you know people not only really need but they're willing to pay a lot of money for. This is like a very good point sort of instead of uh taking the leap out of fear that this is the only time taking it from a from a place of approaching and really going after something where this is really an exciting time to be a builder. We've seen crazy growth unlike anything only possible with right now with AI like all these companies that we work with zero to 12 million in 12 months. The cursor story where they went zero to one in one year the next one to 100. This is like unprecedented in tech history for B2B SAS companies. It didn't used to be the case that B2B SAS companies were the ones that had hyperrowth. Like there were some like consumer social companies that got hyperrowth but like B2B SAS used to be this like you know plotting slow growing like kind of thing. Now there's this weird inversion. It's the B2B SAS companies that are the like the hyperrowth one. I think what we're saying is a lot of times is uh founders who are at living in the future at the cutting edge who are winning here because you have to sort of build the taste to build something good and you don't get taught some of those things in school. I know that like on that front like something very specifically we're seeing is that to build any products you you always need some combination of like domain expertise which is really just. ## Domain Expertise and Technical Expertise [12:55] like understanding your customer really well and understanding the space you're building in and understanding the market really well and then technical expertise to actually build the product and it feels like preAI thing shifted where um sort of the technical expertise wasn't that important because it was most of the software was like web software and it became fairly straightforward to build web software and actually all the value was in how much like domain expertise do you have. Like do you have relationships with the customers you're going after. Um do you have some edge on how to sell to them because everyone you're selling to is already got like 10 roughly equivalent products being sold to them. Uh, and that actually made it quite hard, I think, for college students to be able to like go and compete for like you can't like compete on compete with Salesforce for like a CRM or go build like the best appointment booking software for healthcare practices. Like all of these things were just very saturated. And now I think what we're seeing is with AI, there's this promise of hey, like this is more than software. Like this can do like the work of people. It's like magic. But like it's actually quite hard to do that reliably. And so there's been this flip of where the technical expertise is now actually really like the missing piece for a lot of these things. Um, and we consistently see at least in YC that college students are actually at the forefront of this stuff. Like actually understanding how to use the models and how to squeeze the performance consistently out of the models is something that even like you know PhDs and people are really experienced don't get. I think maybe that's why Elon had that sort of look yesterday when he was talking about researchers versus engineers. It's like it's actually in the engineering and it's like working on the projects and like building real things is where you get the expertise. Yeah. I had a lot of college students ask me over the last two days like hey I don't have domain expertise in any particular area cuz like I haven't worked in industry that much like what idea should I work on and like how do I basically like how do how do I get enough domain expertise to like do something interesting. All right. Well, what advice would you have for folks in that position, Harge, based on on that insight. I think Gary's got like a great point on this. Um, it's basically like become like a forward deployed engineer, right. Yeah. Just I. ## Gaining Domain Expertise as a Student [15:05] mean go undercover, I guess, like go go and figure out what people actually need and um yeah, there are just too many examples of billion-dollar uh startups that we got to see. I mean, I always think about Flexport. you know, here's this guy who literally became one of the top importers of medical hot tubs. Like, I don't think anyone wakes up, you know, and graduates and decides like, hey, I really need to become one of the foremost, you know, import exporters of uh of medical hot tubs. But, you know, he did it. He they they did they also um I think were one of the first e the biggest ebike importer. But then you know basically being in weird parts in the economy um caused them to understand just things that that uh the the other person you know the sort of thousand 10,000 other people who want to start startups like they didn't have that knowledge and so sort of your ability your you know if you're here like your inherent ability already is like one part of the ven diagram and then the other part is just something weird. It's literally just like where does your interest come from. I'm like I'm really taken by to what degree both open AAI and SpaceX for instance were uh you know the genesis came from like interest and a hunch and just like not really any commercial intent and yet you know coming out the other side uh that was enough to attract the smartest people in the world attract capital and then really create you know the most enduring businesses in the world. Yeah. And the other thing that I've seen that's pretty cool is just I've just seen a lot of college students go from having like no domain expertise in an area to being like total experts in like a month or two at YC. And I think people maybe don't give themselves enough credit for how quickly you can become an expert in something if you're just smart and you learn fast and you just make like a concerted effort. I think the door is more open now than ever. Like you kind of go back to Yeah. in a world where like um any domain let's make like you know if you're trying to build software for dentists is a random example pre AI it was just like people were being pitched with so many different software products that they weren't actually that receptive to like some college students promising some software and wanted to come like learn and like work in the office and understand like how it works like got like 20 software vendors all like um telling me the same thing but now because like AI has captured the m like the imagination of everybody everyone like wants to know what's possible and are consistently underwhelmed by what like the established software companies can offer them, but they're open to like college students just coming in and like well because the college students are selling them pure magic. So I had three founders in the last batch actually that are building quite literally like AI agents for dentists. None of them like I think their only experience with dentists is they went to a dentist and but it was exactly what you said Harj like they're literally selling these dentists like magic in a bottle and so like of course the dentists will spend their time because if it works it's like just incredible for their business which kind of just comes back to the agency thing cuz it's like the thing like in order to build these products in order to go out and like build like the future big companies you kind of just have to have the agency to be like ah yeah like I'm actually going to go do the like undercover agent or um fully deployed engineer and I'm just going to go like camp out in like someone's office and just see how they do their jobs and learn how to do it and learn how to like build it with AI. What about some um pitfalls like things that would prevent people from exercising their agency or exposing themselves to you know the real economy. I think one of the thing that keeps coming back to my mind is having a lot of these conversations with uh recent grads or. ## Breaking the Student Mindset [18:51] college students. I think there's this arc of um a lot of you trying to figure out what to do with your life and through most of your life you've been conditioned to kind of just pass test, study for the exam, do the homework and it's sort of like all these uh very constrained boxes that you have to check and then you treat startups or your next jobs sort of like another test or exam that a lot of the rules are predetermined and you just have to go check the boxes. But that's the complete wrong mental model for it. Because the problem is that when you go after building and tackling a big problem, it is a open wide space. There's no rules. You get to create it. I mean the good thing about startups is plus and minuses. You have agency to decide what you're going to go after. Set your goals instead of like some authority figure to like oh you need to do this this and that. And we get asked questions like, "Oh, what should I look like in order to raise money?" That is such a student question. Sort of like there's some sort of bar like by some higher power. Guess what. There's no adults in the room. Is you. You're in control and you get to design those rules and you can go as fast as possible. You don't have to have like, oh, we have to do this, this, and this and check the marks and get there. Is really you design it. You're in control. I think there are two very dangerous uh forms of like credentialism that you create for yourself that we see that actually like we'd really like to warn you guys about. Uh one is I mean I think we already talked about like making raising money from investors like somehow the the biggest goal I mean including us by the way. It's like, you know, that we're just like people to help you and we think we can help you a lot, but like once you turn that into. ## The Dangers of Entrepreneurship Programs [20:39] like sort of uh the idol that you have to achieve, then that's just missing the whole point. And I, you know, I think that that's quite dangerous. Um, the other thing that we we're kind of concerned about is there are like entrepreneurship programs at some of your campuses. Uh, some of them might take you to wild exotic places for retreats. We're not going to name them, but like in full transparency, I'm very worried about them because what we're coming we're coming to understand is they are teaching you to lie. And that is at a moment when literally all of software is changing and that software is the most empowering thing in the world. Why do you have to lie. I understand in a world of like contracting capability, in a world where there's less money, where there's, you know, fewer and fewer jobs, I kind of get it. It's very zero sum. We're at the most open like sort of abundanceoriented like mindset thing that is happening right now. Like literally everyone here is hyper hypermpowered. You don't have to play by those old rules anymore. You don't have to lie to investors. You don't have to like fake it till you make it. Like you know I worry that some of these programs are just literally trying to teach people to become more uh you know SPFs and therronoses and that's like you know that's a waste of time. like and you're gonna go to jail. That's fine. Um also a lot of these entrepreneurship programs they do what Diana said which is like entrepreneurship programs especially ones that are not started not run by founders you know all of us were were were startup founders they they basically teach entrepreneurship like it was a course like like it was just a series of tests to pass a series of check boxes to to check. Um, anytime you try to bottle up entrepreneurship and like teach it as a college course, that's kind of what you end up with is like basically like a a sort of like cheap faximile of entrepreneurship where like they teach you to like, you know, follow a particular method or a particular practice and that's just not what startups are actually like. I just think about that Jay-Z line is like everybody want to tell you how to do it, they never did it. True. A riff on that I'm curious to get people's opinions on. Uh, maybe especially Gary actually. Um, something that is clearly different I. ## Social Media Strategy for Startups [22:52] feel about the age we live in today versus say 10 years ago is just social media and using social media as a way to um, like amplify your message and your brand. This is actually something came up at dinner last night. is how much in the early stages when you're building a product like should you focus in on kind of like building the product and going one by one to get users all of the kind of like traditional startup advice versus trying to cultivate sort of like a following or a brand um or attention like online and like you know 10 years ago spend thousands of dollars on a video. Yeah. Yeah. just like higher production launch videos and like lots of following like lots of followers on Twitter or X and um I certainly I think it's more confusing now because that wasn't even an option before and you definitely see people succeeding at the getting the online like attention and people talking about like the company what do they call it aura farming is that we got lost maybe that's the the phrase yeah it is like aura farming I guess yeah I'm curious what you think Gary all I care about is what's real and what you can, you know, touch and see and feel and, you know, think about the area under the curve of utility that you could contribute to society. And you can always just look at that as ground truth and everything else is similacra. It is not real. It is like media. It is fake. It is a credential. It is a thing that represents something. And yet like if you look deeper into it, it's nothing. Like there's nothing. When you think about SPF, when you think about Theronos, when you think about the things that truly disgrace us as people who create technology, when you when you peel back a little bit, you realize there's nothing. This was just simulacum. It was a lie. I don't want that for us. Like, you know, people outside of this room, the world at large looks at tech and they hate us sometimes because those are the people who represent us. And I say, "Not for me. They don't represent us. So, I think that's a no on social media. I mean, I think social media is really great. I mean, I'm clearly extremely addicted to it and it's done some really great things for me, some terrible things, too. But, um, I, you know, I think that, you know, you do have to tell your story. Like, I think one of the more important things that is the gift is that you can tell your own story. like in fact that you have to like the second you rely on someone else to tell your story it's going to be great great great and then when you don't have that voice like someone's going to take that you know there's the world wants to you know the only thing it loves more than like you know a uh a story of like of becoming is one of unbecoming and uh if you don't have that voice and you can't go direct um you know they're going to do that to you and so better to start right like you know I I think working backwards the thing was most helpful for me, you know, obviously for my startup, but we try to encourage all of our startups to do this is you can sort of work backwards from the outcome that you want. Like uh I actually think Apple does this really really well. Like they don't commit to doing a feature until they have, you know, a product manager who says this is who it's for and this is the the problem it's going to solve, right. And you can actually turn that into going direct. So, you know, let's say you have a one week or twoe sprint. It's all too easy to just say, look, like here's my bug list and here's my backlog and I'm going to fix these 10 bugs. But a much more powerful version of this is let's work backwards from what I want to put on X. I'm going to make a very simple Loom video showing off a feed of strength, a thing that I really want to share that I know our team can do. And then working backwards from that, the next two weeks, that's all we're going to do. Like you could storyboard it. It's like it's going to do this, right. you can work like basically at that point media and PM and design can be all the same thing you know it's connected to users it's connected to communication it's connected to what your product will do for people and then you build it and you can just basically rinse and repeat like that if you can do two week sprints of working backwards from a really powerful not flashy uh loom video of what you did in the last two weeks you can do this all for each other and we can create a culture that is not about lash but about substance. We got a question over here. I'm a big fan of Gary and Jared. So Jared actually inspired me for my for my startup, but I. ## The College Dropout Question [27:30] just wanted some advice because I'm kind of going through a dilemma right now. So I've been working on a startup for the past month and I'm I'm going to my third year of uni um for context. But um so yesterday at one of the afterp parties which I'm not going to disclose the name cuz you guys are probably going to apply to it but um uh I was pretty much pitched my idea to one of the founders and he basically said like you know drop out of school and come work for me u move to San Francisco. So, um I'm really stuck between like what do I want to do. Like what's the right choice. Like do I continue university and then go to uh San Francisco and then you know grind the startup life or do I drop out now cuz I'm already halfway done. Like you know I'm not like almost finished with college or anything. I'm already halfway there. So do I drop out and just work and then just move on from there. I mean I think the most important thing is do you trust them and is it actually a good startup. So, which is uh kind of a hard question to answer like like this, but like what you know, if it's one of ours, it must be a good startup, right. Is it a YC startup. Yeah. Oh, you should probably do it. No, I mean more seriously, I mean I don't know. How would you like when you think about like where someone should go. Like what would you say. Good answer. I'd add one one third criteria, Gary. Uh I I dropped out of college to do Y Combinator and do a startup. I think in addition to the two ones that Gary said, the third one for you to consider is like do you really like being in college, which is like obvious, but like actually Yeah. Okay. Like like I I think I think like like Har was saying earlier when college students are thinking about dropping out and they're making it in a fear they're making a fear-based decision. They have FOMO about startups happening in San Francisco. Maybe their friend dropped out and they're like worried that they're going to miss out. I don't know that those are the best decisions. Like some of those people actually do end up regretting it versus like when I dropped out of college. I don't out of college because I was bored of college. Like I'd done three years of college. I felt like I had gotten out of it what I wanted from the experience. And I was just a lot more excited to like build real technology for real people. And I felt that regardless of whether the startup that I was working on succeeded or not, I wouldn't regret leaving college because I was just kind of ready to move on to the next stage of my life. So I think if you can if you if you can honestly feel that way then maybe it does make sense for you to drop out. I think if you feel you're done exploring living alternative life paths what I mean by that like you tried an internship working at a big tech company you tried an internship at a startup. You tried another internship to start a company or you tried another one doing research. If you feel you fulfill the chessboard and the land of what your life could be and you explore everything, I think it's fine. But if you still have a bit of a inkling, it's like, oh, maybe I want to try what doing re research is like, I think maybe not yet. But if you're super sure you want to have a career in tech or startups, then maybe it's fine. To to Jar's point, he's like you already did that life alternate life path. I feel like I got lucky and then because I ended up at Palunteer and these things that ended up being super successful but in the moment like you know I could have just got you know Palanteer could have been a bad startup actually and uh I didn't even think about it. So like thinking back on what I should have been thinking of when I was you know 22 23 it's actually really important to try to be at the most dominant places actually. I mean the power law for startups is so intense that if you're going to go work at a startup I do actually think you should try to go work at at a really good startup really good startup totally like objectively you should make literally a spreadsheet you should you know go down and like evaluate it the way uh an investor would and then the difference is the investor has a portfolio and you just have one life and likewise when you start a startup you should not try to start a startup just to be the median startup the median startup is dead like you actually if If you're going to do it, you need to be like the, you know, you need to work at superlative places with superlative people. And then that's the only way that like good things happen. And you I I got lucky. I feel like I, you know, later in my life, I became much more of a heat-seeking missile. Like, you know, I think that that's why I was drawn to YC itself is like this is a place that has an energy that I've never experienced even at Stanford or even at Palunteer that I just wanted to be here. And I became much more of a heat seeker seeking missile for like uh like that type of like this is going to be huge. But um I wish you know at 22 I lucked out you know like my friends went to college with he they started a company with Peter Teal. So that was just very lucky. That's Diana's thing is uh you know she likes to fund lucky startups. So just get lucky. And I think you get a lot more lucky by being in San Francisco. Yeah. And working around really smart people. Um, I want to ask Gary, you talked about like that level 59 job at Microsoft and like your parents are proud, you have health insurance. Um, and at some point you have to decide,. ## When to Quit Your Job [32:33] okay, I'm done with this. I want to go start a company. And like you work at something, uh, maybe at night, you know, after work, you can't really like go out on LinkedIn and advertise it cuz like your boss would see it. But at what point do you say, I have enough here. I can really go quit my job, you know, start spending down my savings and go go do something. You're much more responsible than I am. like I had, you know, $50,000 in credit card debt and I had the nicest apartment in Queen Anne and I bought a brand new Honda and it was very stupid and so I had to go get a job and like you know I I couldn't start a startup. I like you know waited I had I needed my friends to pull me out of that situation. So I mean I think you want I don't know at least six maybe nine months minimum of like just you know being able to live on ramen in the cheapest possible way. Uh and then at that point like the money in your bank is like just capital that you think of. And so that's probably what I would want. And then the other thing is uh I would try to bring on I would want to work with the smartest possible people. Like I know this is a big internet debate. It's like do you need a co-founder. Honestly like if it's your first startup I I wouldn't I would never start like my second or third startup. Sure I could do it like alone. I you know have connections. I know who to hire like all this stuff. If it were my first, I would not try to do it alone because there's just too much going on. There's like the the gradient of things that you need to learn is too wide and you need to go you need to go together. Yeah. And in my experience for people who are your age who have like already graduated college or working at some company, that's the biggest limiting factor in practice for them actually doing a company is like they and their co-founder both need to be willing to quit their jobs and go in on a startup at the same time. It's it's just like a timing problem and like co-founders are hard to find and it's hard to make that timing line up. So my advice would be like if you h if you and your co- if that does line up for you and you and your co-founder are both in a point in your life where you're like able to quit your jobs and go all in, you should probably just do it because it literally might not ever happen again. It's actually that hard to do. Hey guys. Well, thank first of all thank you for for the event. My voice is a bit cracked because of talking too much over the over the past few days. Um, we're actually talking to the CEO of Straa uh yesterday at one of the afterparties and he mentioned uh that they started being a very niche startup. Um, and I've taken a look at all the Y cominator startups over the years and it looks like uh they're getting increasingly niche. Uh, so I was just wondering like what do you think like what's your take on on on being super niche at the beginning and then expanding and how do you know like how niche you have to be um in the beginning. being niche at the start has actually always been like the recipe to succeed. Like even in the YC world kind like the current biggest company by market cap is Airbnb. Um and Airbnb was like the definition of niche when it started. Like it was literally airbeds in people's living rooms, right. During conferences. Yeah. During conferences. So like I'm not sure it can get more niche than that. Democratic conferences. Yeah. Democratic conferences. Yeah. like um and obviously it turns out that that expanded into just being this like monster company that's taking over all of travel. Um but there's even less obvious examples of this where people don't realize that things that seem huge now were niche at the beginning. Stripe actually in a sense obviously it's payments of course as a big market but actually when they first started it was like um an API for developers and the only thing that differentiated it from Brainree was that you could take payments instantly. Um, and people actually didn't think that that was much of a wedge. It was like, oh, okay, sure, if I'm working on a weekend project, I'll care a lot about that. But like big businesses aren't going to care about that. They're fine to wait two weeks to get like their merchant account. And so, it's always been the case that niches have been the right way to start actually and to dominate a niche and find ways to like expand into like adjacent markets and grow into a big company, I think, is like the recipe. And Brian Chesy quotes a lot of some of the best advice he got from PG during the batch was to really hone in to find 10 people that love your product much better than I don't know 100 randos. And a lot of companies start like that. You want to find those maximalist users that really obsess with you and you iterate on those. I mean Coinbase was also very niche. Yeah, Coinbase was classic niche because um crypto itself was small and fringe and even within that they were building for what people thought was a non-existent market essentially. It was just like regular people who wanted a nice user interface to like buy and hold Bitcoin and it was oxyon regular people. Exactly. It was like based Yeah. The conventional wisdom was is just people who want to use it to like launder money and buy drugs and it's like okay no there's like other um use cases for it. Um, but with AI more than ever, by the way, like I think that niche is the way to go because no one really knows how big the markets are. And it does seem like things that seem like they were niche before AI, you can get people to pay you a lot lot more money for because they're not just buying software, they're buying like work from you. And so find the niche you're really interested in, optimize for your like passion and interest in it. And just pull on that thread. This is like actually a really powerful moment because literally you have 130, you know, I think of uh 03 as basically about 130 IQ. Maybe 03 Pro can be even smarter than that. Um when I really think about that, it's like, oh yeah, like a lot of the people who I've ever hired in my lifetime are like, yeah, 03 is smarter than that person now. So, and then you can basically take that and um you know connect it to the proprietary data systems of almost any niche. And the more weird and unlikely for someone like someone in this room to know about it, the more likely that will be a durable enough moat that you can get a foot, you know, you can basically get you can wedge you yourself in there and then basically all you need is a wedge and then you just basically expand that wedge until you have the pie. Thank you guys so much for coming out. Awesome stuff. 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