if you just look at the rate of change and the rate of new models coming out and new techniques, yes, it doesn't seem like we've hit the scaling wall. And again, if you believe that, which I happen to believe, and you just project forwards, this stuff is going to get better and better. [Music] Yeah, hello, this is Dalton plus Michael, and today we're going to talk about AI. It's officially blowing our minds. Um, AI is working. What have you seen? Yeah, if you were watching this video, you probably also agree that AI is working. You have the knowledge, but are you leveraging this knowledge like if you are living in the future yourself? What should you be doing differently knowing what's coming right? How can you prepare for the future? What's interesting is that we've seen stuff like this happen before. Um, you know, we lived through the first um static web pages. We lived through the dynamic web apps. We lived through smartphones happening. We lived through Bitcoin happening. Knowing that this is not a fad but a

trend early is maybe one of the most strategic things you can know. So like if you're watching this video, you have a gold mine, literal gold mine, um, of insight on how the world's going to change. And if you sit on information, you're not going to be able to take advantage of it. If you change something right now or more than one thing right now, um, you might look back 10 years from now and say, Oh wow, like my life worked out, like that was really, really great. So um, let's go through some of the things you should do just to kind of give you some mental context. We can look back in time a little bit and we could say, Imagine that you were using the first web browsers and you were using the first websites and you like, 'Oh, this is a thing.' Imagine most people didn't have the web. No, there were some folks that were very early on that stuff and they had a lot of extra leverage, a lot of leverage, right? Imagine you were one of the first users of Gmail and you

were like, Oh my God, like a really responsive dynamic web app that's just like instantly, like, Oh crap, imagine you one of the first users of iPhone, yep. Imagine you were one of the people who saw Bitcoin come out its first year, yep. Like, these are the kinds of, like, there were ways at the time with the benefit of hindsight to leverage that information, yes, to profoundly improve your lives or impact your lives, right? You were early, and you were like, Oh, this seems like a good thing, and you acted on it. It can completely change your life, so you are early. Let's talk about what you should do, yep, right? So first, if you were ever interested in starting a company, I can't really imagine a better time, yep. Um, I would argue that, like, most of the best companies were created after this kind of tech sea change, yep. Seeing the SE change and then dreaming what we could do with it. So, like, if you are ever inclined to start a company and people

are saying to you, Oh, this AI thing is overhyped, or like, Oh, there's too many. It's like, No, again, you can look to history. You needed there to be enough users and the tech to get good enough for internet startups, yes, to really take off. If you started an internet startup in '94, '95, that would have been too early, I think, yes, but it's much better doing it later. Same with all these other platform shifts, is there's now enough of an install base, there's now the models are actually good enough, the tools are good enough, the INF is good enough, yeah, it still is like a good time, yeah. You can build applications that were unimaginable, and like, you know, we won't go into too many details, but like, we literally seen YC companies be transformed in the last 6 months, like businesses that weren't working, like started working, started working, and margins that were underwater are now suddenly positive. Customers that were Loop War are now like, You're selling me

magic. I would like to buy more of that, so um, don't let the haters like, like, it's like, like, imagine the haters that were like, Don't buy Bitcoin, it's a fad, it's like going to go to zero. It's like, like, N, you know, like, those were expensive, that was expensive advice to follow exactly. I remember having a friend being like, Blackberry will never lose to iPhones, like, Oh, like, you know, like, dud, like, don't listen to those people. Um, let's say, uh, and you know, of course, we should throw in a plug, right? YC applications are open, you know, they're four batches a year, so um, we can certainly help if you're interested. Um, let's say you don't want to start a company, probably should be con considering where you want to work, knowing this knowledge. I would think really hard about where you choose to work um, you want to work somewhere that is adopting these tools, yes, and is going to benefit from the adoption of the tools, and where you could be surrounded

by people that are um very smart at adopting AI tools that you can learn from versus the folks that are just hoping this all goes away or that the AI good luck with that there a lot of people that are hop the internet would go away yeah yeah a lot easier for business if eCommerce didn't exist a lot of newspapers that was the plan you know um anyway you also want to work somewhere where you could be mentored by the folks that are really excellent right if you're just imagining this is going to be very important skills in the future and for how we live our lives um working in a place where the tools are great and the people using the tools are also great and can teach you about them that is really smart right again imagine it's 2001 and you could work at a place like Google or another internet native company that was on The Cutting Edge of yes building internet software versus some insurance company or something you know even if it's a programming job there's very difference

on how much you could learn and upskill yourself between those types of jobs, and I would argue that you know startups are adopting these tools faster than big companies. So, there's a really interesting question of like, are you going to get more experience being a first 10 or first 20 employee at a startup that's using AI versus working at that big company where using AI is a political decision and a PR decision and a bureaucratic nightmare? Like, be careful because like the learning that's happening in startups right now is far outstripping what's happening in most large companies. Of course, there are exceptions, but in most, let's talk about skills, right? I remember there was this always this funny joke within the first year of the App Store coming out where some big company was hiring iOS developers, and they were like, Oh, you need to have five years of experience building iOS apps, and everyone was like, Came out a year ago. Like, but what's really cool at this moment is that like if you start

learning today. You're almost at Ground Zero, yep, and like there's so much leverage, right? High School, College, post-colle, um, you know, you pointed this out when we were talking before, um, dropping everything to become an iOS Developer in 2009-2010 was a strong career smart idea. Like, if you saw the iPhone come out, you're like, Oh, this is cool. I'm going to go to like boot camp and teach myself to code and become an iOS programmer. Yeah, that was a really good career move. Or if you were a web developer inside of a company and they were spinning up a new iOS team, Jo, like being SM, that was a very smart move. Or just building an app on the side, like a lot of people built side projects, yes, and that's how they learned to become iOS developers, and they benefited in tremendous ways. And I argue at any stage, like I said, pre-ol College, post-colle, you can upskill yourself. Like, I think another thing that's really cool is, again, this is meta, you're probably

watching this on YouTube, there are amazing YouTube videos explaining how all the stuff worked. In prior major platform shifts, you had to read books or know people or go to the right school or something like that. You can go watch people building in public, building models, explaining how Transformers work, you name it. There's a lot of stuff that's open source, and so if you are technical or aspiring to be technical, which you should be, go watch the videos and learn how all of this stuff works from scratch. It will profoundly help you for the rest of your life. I can't think of a downside to knowing how all this stuff works. No downside, seriously. And I think what's so funny is like all of the trends, tech trends that we mentioned or break those we mentioned before, all of them happen in public. This isn't happening in some back room, you know, have access to Y. The issue is people being skeptical. It's not that it's not available for you to learn, so no, I think that's incredibly

preent yeah there's no gatekeepers to learn this stuff. That's what I'm trying to say. The only gatekeeper is ambivalence, yes, or cynicism, or hearing negativity and buying into it. And negative people don't tend to get lucky, nope. You know, they don't tend to have really great stuff happen to them on accident. So, you know, maybe lean into positivity on this one. Yes, we're giving you the hint. I would say next, become a user, right? Like many of these products are available. And, you know, I remember previous waves of technology where people were like, Oh, well, it's not ready yet. Oh, I'll wait. Like, oh, I don't need to switch. And I think this is different. You should be actively looking for better products. Like, I mean, we remember when Google came out and it was fundamentally a better web search product. And, like, there were a whole bunch of people like, Oh, web search, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, No, people had access to Google, got more done. And so, if you've been

waiting sign up and and it's worth the money. Yep, like it's worth paying money for. I mean, I when I was um a Founder working on consumer stuff, I would download every consumer app that came out literally and I would study every onboarding flow and I would study everything about the service. I would study the viral loops and just constantly be trying to challenge myself to make sure I knew more than anyone else about what the new products were. Yeah, and so and what they could do. Yeah, and so there's again I don't know why you wouldn't be looking at every AI coding tool that comes out or every workflow tool that comes out and signing up and trying to earnestly use them and try to try to use them to get your job done, not just to research them as startups. Yeah, um be a real user, be a real user and you're going to learn again you will be living in the future. Yeah, and and I would say this like there is a bit of a learning curve like I remember teaching my dad how to use

Google, and it was counterintuitive that every question he had for me on the phone. All I would do is type that question in Google and produce an answer like that wasn't, you know, that wasn't intuitive to him. There are some learning CS, like, you know, I was having this hilarious back and forth with an Elm agent, and I was realizing I am using this incredibly different than I use Google. Like, the things that I type, how I respond to answers, like, all of it is different, and I got to be comfortable just kind of going, It's a small learning curve with it's a learning curve. And then maybe last but not least, don't do nothing. Like, I think that's the, like, maybe the meta point of this entire video. Change something, yeah, in response to this, yeah, you know, something that other people don't know. Yes, capitalize on that knowledge. Don't sit on it. Like, it's the knowledge isn't going to have any interest. You got to do something with the knowledge, and man, the earlier you do it, the more leverage you're going to.

have now a lot of people talk about the idea that maybe in this world being technical, being a programmer, isn't strategic. What do you think about that? Yeah, I mean, this is an opinion we all don't know, but um, I think all of the tools getting better means that some aspects of being a programmer, um, like memorizing all the APIs, is maybe okay. That part is less valuable, but I would argue knowing how all of this stuff works is going to be just more and more of a premium in modern society. Yes, 'cause someone has to fix this stuff when it breaks, and someone has to understand, yes, what the heck the AI is doing. Like, to the extent um, all of your technical knowledge atrophies, and you have no idea how all of this stuff works, it's just like a magic box. No, that is not a great place to be, and so in my opinion, really understanding how this stuff works at a low level will um, increase the value of you being a technical person. Yes, massive, because no

one else will know how to debug it when things go wrong. Yes, and just because you start using cursor to program does not mean that people that have never programmed before are going to be programming just as well as you. And so again, I know there's different opinions. Maybe some people, I've heard people predicting the death of programming as a career for many, many, many years, our whole lives before we were born. Again, maybe I'm wrong. I just, I wouldn't make that bet. I would bet on being extremely technical, just having a premium that will increase over time with the proliferation of these tools. And that has been, again, backwards looking. That has always been the case. Yeah, and if you're not technical, I can't imagine. I mean, it's always been strategic to work with someone who is a programmer. It's still incredibly strategic. Never has it been more important to have a technical co-founder. If you're not technical, last point here, right? We are seeing YC companies doing amazing things with the

current models. We're kind of giving you a straightforward observation, not a prediction, but there is this question: Is there another step-change improvement coming? And, you know, let's push the issue of AGI aside. I think there's a big gap between step-change improvement and an AI, but like, what is your prediction? How likely do you think it is that we have another step-change that'll be here in the next year or two years? It seems like we are not near the wall, no. And if you just look at the rate of change and the rate of new models coming out and new techniques, yes, um, it doesn't seem like we've hit the scaling wall. And again, if you believe that, which I happen to believe, and you just project forwards, this stuff is going to get better and better. Yeah, and it already is getting, it already works. Yeah, so yeah, hold on to your hat. Um, yeah, I think this is one of those moments. We've seen it with internet adoption or smartphone adoption, where it's like when the

products get good. They go through this s-curve where they start getting good. And I think that smart founders would assume that these products or the tools they have access to will get better over time. And I hate describing where that limit is. I think it's irrelevant really where that limit is, but like it's just an argument for why it's even more strategic to get involved today because like you're riding on a wave. And almost everyone we know, those who are successful, found the right wave and rode it. And this is a good one. All right, great chat. Sounds good. Thanks. [Music]

The AI Future Has Arrived: Here's What You Should Do About It

Videos to help you build a successful startup. Subscribe for startup advice, founder stories, and a look inside Y Combinator.

What is Y Combinator?
We invest $500,000 in every startup and work intensively with the founders for three months. For the life of their company, founders have access to the most powerful community in the world, essential advice, later-stage funding and programs, recruiting resources, and exclusive deals. 

Visit ycombinator.com to learn more.

Video Team:
Zach Both - Video and Content Lead
Ryan Loughlin - Senior Producer



The AI Future Has Arrived: Here's What You Should Do About It

The AI Future Has Arrived: Here's What You Should Do About It

Scripts