The Perspective of Optimism in Startups and Innovation

Despite the high failure rate of startups, there are numerous technological and societal advancements to be optimistic about in the world today.

### Why YC is Optimistic About the Future
* 😔  Despite many startup failures, YC has a unique perspective on failure, as even successful startups take around **12 years to succeed**.
* 🌍  YC's optimism about the future comes from **zooming out and gaining perspective on the progress made in various areas since the '90s**.
* 💻  The availability of **information, communication, transportation, healthcare, and entertainment** has significantly improved.
* 🚀  YC believes we are on the cusp of various transformative innovations, such as **self-driving cars, renewable energy, and space travel**.
* 😔  People are often pessimistic due to the **lack of perspective**, **polarization**, **unrealistic expectations**, and **inconsistent pacing of innovation**.
* 👶  It's like cutting the crust off the world, as with the good, there are also **trade-offs**.
* 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦  YC's founders are excited for their kids to grow up in a world with even more opportunities, and they emphasize the importance of being **optimistic and actively working towards solving problems**.

at YC, we fund a lot of startups, and even though we try to do a very good job, most startups fail. Yeah, if you look at the numbers, we know a lot more about failing and failed startups, yes, than successful ones by magnitude. Yeah, yeah, that's just how the numbers work, right? And so we see failed startups every day, we live it, we breathe it. This is just the job that we have, is we're experts on failure. Well, and just so you don't think, Oh well, you know, they're going to be optimism because they're like rolling in the dough, the ones that work take like 12 years to work, right? So it's like even for the ones that do well, like you don't make money fast being an early stage startup investor. So why is a situation where it takes a long time to make money and a lot of startups are dying all around us every day, why are we optimistic? I think it's this. I think if you zoom all the way back, all the way out, it's weird.

to talk to young people and have them be optimistic about the future yes it's weird it is weird yes and I think it comes down to perspective Michael yes I think it's all about perspective where if all you do is read the news every day you get bombarded with negativity if you're just consuming the news and not zooming out to be like yeah you know things were better back 50 years ago or 100 years ago don't point to me I wasn't you know um and I I'm again I'm not sure that's true I think this a perspective thing so again like so walk with us here let's let's talk about perspective yes let's talk about the things that have improved since the 90s when we were like teenagers let's go through the list we we we we thought let go the list right so the '90s were supposed to be boom time America and if we think about what's better now than the 90s I think I would start with like

availability of information. I remember in the mid-90s getting the CD-ROM called Encarta, yep. And I remember my uncle, who's 20 years older than me, being like, Oh my God, the encyclopedias in your house versus having to go to the library, this is incredible. And you could just search it, it was on one disc, exactly, it was easy to search and like that. Now, God knows how much more information than that is like for free on the internet. Everything, it's textual information, is a search away, yes, and video, freaking YouTube itself, CRA. There's a website where anyone can record any video of like any length, yes, on any topic for free, and you can watch it for free forever. That is like mind-blowing to me, yes, how incredible this is. Again, if you zoom out, if you think like you're an alien and you just have no context on this stuff, yes, this is incredible, incredible, and none of this existed, well, and this isn't like we're not talking about 50 years ago, right, we're talking

about like 20-25 years ago. Yep, this didn't exist, right? All right, next. Communications, uh, I don't know about you, but we started with one phone line in the house. Yep, and that's it. So now, when people, like, you know, I open up the messaging app folder on my phone, and there's like 17 apps with video, audio, text. I can text people all over the world for free. I can call people anywhere in the world for free. Like, that was it's better. It's like a lot better. It used to cost money. We living in New Jersey, it used to cost to call New York, right next door. You got to talk fast when you call. It was long distance. So yeah, so Communications a little better. Transportation, freaking Uber, ride sharing, travel, crazy. Maps, do you remember printing out Map Quest, dude? Do you remember just having to buy Maps, physical maps, to drive around a city, and your dad would have a bunch of maps in the car for all the places you might want to drive to in the future? So uh

trans station's got a little better, yeah, a little better. Uh, what else has got better? Health care. I mean, people are living longer, they're living better lives. Yes, standard of care, infant mortality. Yes, life expectancy around the world. People making more money, being raised out of the poverty line. I mean, just look at all the stats, you can look it up, viewer. Um, actually, like zoom all the way up out and look at this stuff for yourself. Yes, it's pretty cool. The number of people living in extreme poverty is less, the number of kids living longer. All right, what else? So, we got entertainment. Yeah, I mean, think about there's like an infinite supply of things to look at all day. Infinite, infinite. Any movie you want to see, any television show ever created, any book ever created. The sum of all human creative content in the history of time is available at your fingertips for free. Yes, and the only thing limitated is your willingness to go find it. Yes, like it's, it's your appetite is the limiting factor, not you might have TOS, yeah, might.

have to watch, but there's no, it's post-scarcity on this stuff. You're the only limiting is your imagination of what you want to watch exactly. It's all there. Okay, so where we sound like Boomers here, but the point, the reason to enumerate this stuff is that in the moment when all this stuff was happening, it wasn't immediately obvious that the world was changing. It was just kind of normal like, Oh, this new thing came out. Oh, that's cool. And even at the time, some of this stuff was, people were against it or they're like, This doesn't seem so great. No. And but when you gain perspective of a looking back 20, 30 years later, it's way more obviously earth-shatteringly awesome. Yes, I think they were on the cusp of a bunch of new interesting stuff, right? Um, you know, hilariously, like I remember when Starlink was like an idea, yeah, and it was kind of a funny idea, an internet access anywhere going to satellites, and it was like theoretically it's possible, but it was, I just remember

it being like well first Elon has figure out how to make his Rockets not explode but once he does that he's just going to launch satellites around the earth inter I I remember that being like oh sure and then like I remember the day starlink launched I was like I guess the rockets work it it works yes like you can use it you can use it Cru perfect example if I just think about you know growing up about just a number of people that I knew that died in car accidents and the number of people that every day get seriously injured or die in car accidents I think we're going to look back and be like that was crazy barbaric that was like having surgeons that didn't wash their hands in that era is I think how look at some of this Transportation stuff yes right and we're right on the precipice it's not like everyone's even excited about self-driving like it's like oh I don't know about this whole self-driving car thing drunk drivers aren't that bad are

they yeah it's only tens of thousands of people who die a year in America. it's like whatever. I mean another one's renewable energy. I I had a friend who was working on a startup, and he said something to me that I thought was a lie. he was like oh yeah based on like where you live in America you can choose to just buy your energy from like a renewable source like hydroelectric or solar. I was just like it doesn't exist. he's like yeah it's here. and I'm like oh well it must be like 10x more expensive. he's like no like right now it's I think like 10% more expensive. and I was like what like that it's that's happening like we went from solar being the future in the 90s to just being the commonplace reality that no one thinks too much about. and and it and it feeling economical for a lot of people. it's like oh you live in a sunny area yeah you're going to save some money. it did not feel

that way in the 90s. Well, we're in a solar power building right now, like, and this is solar power powering this lighting. It's, there's solar panels on the roof, okay, whatever. Do we care? No, no, it's like it's happening right now. Everyone talks about rockets and going to space, the whole like when Rockets are reliable, you can go anywhere in the world in 45 minutes. Like we could commute to Tokyo, yep. Like when that happens, like it changes the world in so many ways. And that was like in the 90s, we were watching space shuttles, yeah, go up, and like half of the in that space shuttle basically like getting ejected into the freaking ocean. And whenever you did the math, it was like, oh, that cost us more than building a rocket from scratch and blowing it up. Like that's where we were in the 90s. And now, like we actually have a path to I can go anywhere in 45 minutes. Like it's pretty cool. And again, what this makes me think.

of I don't have this graph handy so I hope I'm not misquoting, but I remember the graph being references of the cost per pound to put something in space, and it looks like law where what's is that there's this looking graph on how cheap how much cheaper it is getting to put something into orbit. Yes, and how if you just believe in the Moors law continuing to happen here, the amount of cool stuff that will happen in space in 5, 10, 20 years is just mind-blowing. Yeah, so if all of this stuff's great, why are people so pessimistic? Well, I think it's hard to have perspective, man. Yes, I think when you're really caught up in the moment, everything gets polarized into political stuff or tribal warfare about who's on what team. I also think there's this weird expectations game, right? Like it's magical thinking to think that we get all the things we spent the first chunk of the video talking about and there's nothing bad. Yep, that's magical. That's like that's not being an adult.

there's going to be trade-offs. There's going to be trade-offs, right? Like, it's like, you know, a child doesn't acknowledge a trade-offs exist, right? A child can think Mag want only the perfect. You know, it has to all be good with no bad, with no bad. Yes, cut the crust off, exactly. Cut the crust off, right. And for a while, adults can of create that world. Then, after a while, adults explain to their kids like, that's, I can't cut the crust off the world. Or like, you need to cut your own crust off. I mean, if you want to do that, you can't, but I'm, I'm not doing that anymore. No world is crusts. And like, you know, technology is crusts, yeah, right? Technology, with the good, comes some bad, right? So that's a big one. I also think that, like, there's this weird thing where the pacing is inconsistent, right? Like, um, sometimes you get a lot of innovation in one part of the economy, economy, and then sometimes you get a lot of innovation in another.

part of the economy it's not reliable yep. And so, you know, and it's so easy. It's this. It's this de debate thing where you can say, Well, what about X problem? Like, no matter what good thing happens, yes, and they're not wrong. What about like, you're right, X is a problem. Like, that's totally fair, but if you want to tear down anything interesting that happens by saying, Well, X over here isn't solved yet, it's easy to just get trapped in the mud. So I'll say this right in reflection, uh, you know, we both have young kids, and I am super excited that my kids get to grow up now. I, I, I cannot wait for the day where my daughter and son say, like, Oh, 45 minutes to Tokyo, that's so slow. I can't, you know, in my day, this isn't so great. What's so great about that, Michael? It's really Rocky. It's really, it's a bumpy ride. I like. I am so excited about the world that they're going to join, and I'm

confident they're going to get even more over the next you know 80 years than we're getting which is which is really fun. And think about it we all you all get to create this future. If you're actually building things and you want to be a part of creating it, yeah it's much easier and more fruitful to be optimistic and think about all the things you can do. And think about what you personally can do and what you can work on, yes versus just being like burned it all down because of X. Well you know think about it if you really care about those problems, you have to be optimistic to try to solve them. And like some of the people who are like the biggest social critics or the biggest revolutionaries are the biggest change agents in our society were default optimistic, yep they believed it could work, they believed effort wasn't a waste of time. You have to believe enough to to invest yourself into something exactly. And so I'm willing to bet None Of Your Heroes were the cool snarky folks who

never did anything and just bitched about how the world was like. None of your Heroes were that, and so don't be one of those people. Like, you can choose to not be one of those people, all right? Great chat, great thanks.

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The Unique Perspective on Startup Failure and Optimism

Despite the high failure rate of startups, the long-term success and optimism of young entrepreneurs are emphasized.

The key to this optimism lies in having a perspective on the progress made, particularly in the availability of information and technology since the 90s.

The abundance of free and easily accessible information, including text and video content, on the internet is highlighted as a significant improvement driving this optimism.

Communications have significantly improved, with the ability to message and call people all over the world for free, a stark contrast to the past when it was costly, especially for long-distance calls.

Transportation has been revolutionized with the advent of ride-sharing services like Uber, making travel much more convenient compared to relying on printed maps for navigation.

The availability of entertainment has been transformed, with endless options for movies, TV shows, and books accessible for free, representing a significant shift towards a post-scarcity entertainment era.

Elon Musk's Vision for the Future: Rockets, Self-Driving Cars, and Renewable Energy

Elon Musk has successfully developed rockets and launched Starlink satellites, marking a significant achievement in space technology.

The transition to self-driving cars is being met with some skepticism despite the high number of annual deaths from car accidents.

Renewable energy, such as solar power, has rapidly evolved to the point of being a cost-effective and accessible option for many people, reflecting a major shift from its perception in the 90s.

Solar power is now being used for lighting, showing the advancement in technology.

The cost of putting objects into space has significantly decreased, leading to optimistic expectations for the future of space travel.

Despite the significant progress in the space industry, some people remain pessimistic due to political polarization and unrealistic expectations.

Embracing Trade-Offs and Inevitable Challenges in Life and Technology

Children need to learn about the existence of trade-offs and imperfections in the world.

The inconsistency in pacing of innovation across different sectors can lead to endless debate and challenges.

Despite the challenges, there is excitement about the future and the rapid advancement of technology.

The Importance of Optimism in Creating the Future

Being optimistic about the future is key to making a meaningful impact and driving change.

Many influential social critics and change agents were optimistic and believed in the power of their efforts.

Choosing to be optimistic and proactive is essential for making a real difference in the world.