I am very excited to go to YC Startup School on this glorious Sunday in California.

I had to knock on the door a few times, but they let me in.

https://x.com/willgdjones/status/2081220887391703376?s=46

I’m pretty sure the reason I wasn’t selected initially was that it focused on young founders, and I am now too old (lol). As I tell people, I am 24 with 10 years of experience :).

I read some threads on X talking about how people felt old in their late 20s, and that they haven’t got long to “make it”

https://x.com/melchen/status/2081178932343349274

What’s funny is that I really don’t feel old, and I have two kids and a full startup life cycle under my belt.

What I think is missed here is that life ebbs and flows. You go through phases of inspiration and perspiration. It’s never too late to truthfully make a change as long as you are always willing to adapt, reinvent yourself, and start from scratch again.

Even if I’m not looking to start a company right this second, I think there’s no better place on earth to feel inspired and optimistic about the future of technology. I’m happily building the next generation of games with some industry legends at the moment. (More on that at a later date.)

If I compare how I think about the world today with how I thought about it when I was 24, I’m still horrified by how naive, arrogant, and unprepared I was to be a founder/operator then. (Note that I’m not calling other 24-year-old founders arrogant or naive, just me)

I heard Jensen say on Day 1 that he’s envious of all the people in technology today because of what an amazing time this is, and I completely agree with that. Times with the greatest rate of change are always the times with the greatest opportunity. As Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish tells us from Game Of Thrones - “Chaos is a Ladder”.

The gap between what’s possible to build and what exists today and what people think is possible to exist has never been wider. That is exactly the gap that you want to build around and then sell on.

I am reflecting on all of this now, having just moved to San Francisco from the UK with my family and also reading these great articles by Julia Willemyns.

https://juliawillemyns.substack.com/p/are-you-afraid-of-the-luddites

https://juliawillemyns.substack.com/p/at-least-youre-likable

Something bothered me intensely about the majority of the UK’s approach to rapid technological progress, and I’m really worried that the UK is missing a generational opportunity to reverse its economic stagnation. I think the reason why it is perfectly captured by these articles is that the people who AI is going to disrupt the most are the white-collar class or the class that has, in many ways, made the UK successful and wealthy in recent memory: the lawyers, the accountants, the financial advisors, the consultants. They are culturally powerful, and they are afraid.

The focus was always on “safety” rather than on “possibility”. Don’t get me wrong, I know that safety is important, but focusing on “safety” without exploring the “possibility” is just, by definition, useless. If the UK is going to compete in this new world and compete with the US and China, and anyone really, we have to drive what is possible and be bold with our actions - not timid and trepidatious. Sometimes, exploring what is possible is not always safe or reliable to start with. But you only get to a new capability by making something possible first, and then making it reliable.

Ultimately, I moved to San Francisco to meet more people who are taking bold steps into the realms of “capability” and explore what is now “possible” with AI that wasn’t possible before, making it reliable, and then boldly selling the world on that new capability.

I’ll share what I learn from YC SUS later on!

I wrote this line by line, but everything was published and deployed by my Codex.