How Impatient Should Founders Be In The Pre-AGI Era?

Dalton Caldwell 0:00 If all of your norms are the way to get rich is to just make short-term bets, you actually may know, know more people in your real life that made money from short-term bets-

Michael Seibel 0:08 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 0:08 ... than long-term bets.

Michael Seibel 0:09 Yes. Look at the 20 software companies that you respect the most. Tell me which one of those blew up super fast. Which one was like, they made it in a year?

Dalton Caldwell 0:18 None.

Michael Seibel 0:18 And like, what does that, what does that mean? [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 0:21 [laughs] Why?

Michael Seibel 0:24 [upbeat music]

Michael Seibel 0:25 All right. This is Dalton + Michael, and we're gonna talk about some advice for young people now that we're in this AI era.

Dalton Caldwell 0:33 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 0:34 This is the AI era, right?

Dalton Caldwell 0:35 Yeah. We're, we're in the AI era.

Michael Seibel 0:36 In the AI-

Dalton Caldwell 0:36 It's hard to be in the era when you're in it.

Michael Seibel 0:38 I think-

Dalton Caldwell 0:39 But we're in it

Michael Seibel 0:39 ... we might be.

Dalton Caldwell 0:40 Yeah. We're in it.

Michael Seibel 0:40 I'm gonna set this up, Dalton. I'm gonna give you the controversial first thing to bounce off of. Super intelligent is imminent. We might be entering the, you know, end of days. How much of the pre-A advice even applies anymore? N- you know, I'm a young person. Like, are we not in a break glass in case of emergency zone where I need to ignore everything and just like go nuts, start my company, do whatever I'm gonna do, like-

Dalton Caldwell 1:06 Yeah

Michael Seibel 1:06 ... like, like you know, it's like time is of the essence.

Dalton Caldwell 1:09 I mean, look, in some ways time is of the essence in that if you're paying attention to what's going on, and you're learning the tools, and you're in the right place at the right time-

Michael Seibel 1:20 Mm-hmm

Dalton Caldwell 1:21 ... it's a really good move. Um, and so there is a, there actually is an argument that being strategic about what you spend time on, who you spend time on, what you learn-

Michael Seibel 1:31 Yeah

Dalton Caldwell 1:31 ... is smart.

Michael Seibel 1:32 Especially in the beginning of an era.

Dalton Caldwell 1:34 Right?

Michael Seibel 1:34 You get a lot of extra juice if you're early on a skill set in the beginning of an era, right?

Dalton Caldwell 1:40 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 1:40 So that's, that is totally true, and you should think about that, and we can talk about that in a second.

Dalton Caldwell 1:45 In addition, though, I think there's something about doomsday culture, I don't know what you wanna call it, but there's something about kinda pseudo-religious stuff that gets people going that they just happen to be alive in the time that the world is going to end, and that if they do a good thing, then they'll be rewarded for it, and then everyone else is in trouble.

Michael Seibel 2:05 Yeah. This rhymes with some things in humans' past.

Dalton Caldwell 2:08 Yeah. Yeah. Sounds familiar, right?

Michael Seibel 2:09 [laughs] Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 2:09 Um, and certainly, you know, to... Let me try to steelman a little bit. Certainly, I've talked to people that believe that they have a short window to try to make their way in the world and make money before AGI happens, and it'll be much harder in a post-AGI world for them to be set up. I'm trying to steelman that argument, but I've heard people make it.

Michael Seibel 2:29 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 2:29 Can you make that as strong... Can you make a better version of that, or is that, did I make the best version?

Michael Seibel 2:33 I mean, I do think there's this kind of argument that if AGI exists, sh- does the startup world still exist?

Dalton Caldwell 2:40 I don't think it's just startups. I think it's everything. Like, I, you know, I've spoken... To try to steelman, I've spoken to folks that are like, "Drop out of college. They're not teaching you anything that's useful."

Michael Seibel 2:48 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 2:49 "Every minute you spend doing that stuff is, like, downside."

Michael Seibel 2:53 Mm-hmm. As opposed to before, where college was teaching you everything you needed to know.

Dalton Caldwell 2:56 I don't know, man. I, I, I'm not gonna touch that one. Um-

Michael Seibel 2:58 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 3:00 But basically, break the glass. Um, you know, do, do whatever you can do because there's something about this moment that anything not spent on some sort of AGI-pilled type-

Michael Seibel 3:14 Yeah

Dalton Caldwell 3:14 ... life trajectory is a bad call.

Michael Seibel 3:16 To further that, amongst startup founders what I've seen is the, if my thing is not scaling to 100 million in revenue within a year, it's a bad idea. I need to pivot away from it because, like, Cursor and, wow, Lovable or whatever, you know, whatever the startup of the moment is, is taking off, and I'm, I'm not on the right rocket ship.

Dalton Caldwell 3:37 You know, it's such a good point. This is the fundamental tension in all the advice that we've ever given in all the years, is that you have to simultaneously be impatient and ambitious and have, feel like you have a hair on fire thing to be ambitious.

Michael Seibel 3:53 Mm-hmm.

Dalton Caldwell 3:54 And at the same time, in your same brain, hold the idea that doing great work takes a long time. Isn't that so hard? And like-

Michael Seibel 4:01 It's hard. [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 4:02 And, and again, how many times have we talked to people that are frustrated that they're like, "Aren't you, aren't you kind of contradicting yourself, Dalton? Aren't you-

Michael Seibel 4:08 Yes. [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 4:09 [laughs] And it's like, yes. That is-

Michael Seibel 4:12 [laughs] Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 4:13 That is exactly right.

Michael Seibel 4:14 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 4:15 You, you have to be insanely impatient to do great work-

Michael Seibel 4:20 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 4:20 ... and to push the world that wants to move slow to move fast.

Michael Seibel 4:23 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 4:23 And you have to set yourself up to not freak out and quit.

Michael Seibel 4:28 Doing good work takes time. Solving hard problems takes time.

Dalton Caldwell 4:32 Yeah, and learning a skill takes time.

Michael Seibel 4:35 Yeah. It was really funny. I was talking to this founder. He, in B2B company, and, you know, his kinda stated goal is a little Palantiry. Like, he wants to go into a company, understand their data using AI and help them solve their biggest problem. And he said this thing to me that, like, kinda blew my mind. He's like, "Yeah, we got in there. Learned about their biggest problem. We learned what was causing it. That seemed too hard to solve, so we spent four months searching for other problems that'd be easier to solve. [laughs] " And it's like... [laughs] And then I'm like, "Well, uh, did you find any?" Like, "Not, no, nothing that important." And it's like, I almost think about it like, um, the way I describe it, and maybe I've done this in previous videos, is an SAT math problem. Like, people have been taught that when the SAT math problem gets too hard, they're probably doing it wrong.

Dalton Caldwell 5:19 Mm-hmm.

Michael Seibel 5:20 And so it's like, oh, you don't really need algebra for most SAT problems. Like, you're probably not thinking about the problem the right way. And I think people apply that to startups where it's like, oh, if something is too hard, that means I'm doing something wrong. I should be searching for an easy-

Dalton Caldwell 5:33 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 5:34 And it's like, what's the Peter Thiel quote? There was something like, he's like, "Everything that is valuable is hard, but not everything that is hard is valuable." The first part of that, like, everything that is valuable is hard.

Dalton Caldwell 5:45 Well, it's funny you brought up Palantiry, and I'm not saying I'm the world's biggest expert on it.

Michael Seibel 5:48 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 5:48 But man, I knew some early employees that went nowhere. Like, they basically had to just toil in obscurity for many years, and now it's like a meme stock, and I think young people all know about it because of the stock price. But I think they started that company in, like, 2002.

Michael Seibel 6:04 I think-

Dalton Caldwell 6:04 It's been, like, 23 or 24 years

Michael Seibel 6:07 ... and I think for the first 10, maybe even 15 years, it was kind of belittled.

Dalton Caldwell 6:13 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 6:13 Like, "That's just a consulting company."

Dalton Caldwell 6:15 Right.

Michael Seibel 6:15 Like, "That's the gubtech. Ugh. Like, that's not cool." A- and-Talk about folks who've-

Dalton Caldwell 6:21 Yeah

Michael Seibel 6:22 ... toiled on hard problems for a long time. This duality that you're talking about is important. My advice to people when they're encountering this is, like, I don't sit well with this duality. I don't sit well with, like, I've gotta move fast and it's gonna take a long time in parallel. So I just like to make it a serial problem. When I was young and starting a company, it feels like an emergency, we gotta move really fast. I'm ignoring it's gonna take time.

Dalton Caldwell 6:47 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 6:47 Now that I'm in the company [laughs] oh, crap. Okay. [laughs] Like, now, you know, now that I'm pot committed, the thing's going, da, da, da, da. Now I kinda move on to this other belief. Oh, crap. Okay. Like, we're not gonna be able to solve any of the hard problems super fast. You, you gotta get to that second point.

Dalton Caldwell 7:03 Well, it's like you gotta keep showing up. Um, I was talking to someone about our videos. This is meta.

Michael Seibel 7:08 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 7:08 But basically, how many videos have we made, man? I think we made 60 or so, so far.

Michael Seibel 7:12 Yeah, yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 7:12 No one does that. Like, a lot of people start YouTube channels and they make one or-

Michael Seibel 7:17 Yeah

Dalton Caldwell 7:17 ... two.

Michael Seibel 7:18 Well, but it didn't blow up.

Dalton Caldwell 7:19 And it, and it didn't blow up. [laughs]

Michael Seibel 7:20 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 7:20 I- It didn't go viral.

Michael Seibel 7:22 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 7:22 And but, like, to actually build something that matters to people, you have to, like, keep doing it. And so, so to tie this into advice for, for AGI and all that good stuff, I mean, it is great to be impatient. It's great to wanna drop everything and learn the tools.

Michael Seibel 7:36 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 7:36 But you have to combine that-

Michael Seibel 7:38 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 7:38 ... with a willingness to sit with something and to really, to do great work. It's gonna take a while. And so whether that's school, whether that's job stuff, whether that's startup stuff. I was reading, uh, something by, uh, this guy recently. Think he called it the casino-ification of modern capitalism.

Michael Seibel 7:58 Ooh.

Dalton Caldwell 7:58 And how many young folks are used to the way, they implicitly are trained to believe that the way you build wealth is from sports gambling. It's a huge part of being young. Uh-

Michael Seibel 8:07 Crypto.

Dalton Caldwell 8:08 Crypto, stock gambling, zero data options. Like, all this stuff is all kinda casino stuff.

Michael Seibel 8:13 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 8:13 And so if every, if all of your norms are the way to get rich is to just make short-term bets, and you know people that made money from short-term bets, kind of what we're saying is not gonna land for you.

Michael Seibel 8:24 No.

Dalton Caldwell 8:25 You actually may know, know more people in your real life that made money from short-term bets than-

Michael Seibel 8:29 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 8:29 ... long-term bets.

Michael Seibel 8:29 Yes. Real money for most people is-

Dalton Caldwell 8:32 Yeah

Michael Seibel 8:32 ... sports betting winning money. You know, I was talking to a founder about this-

Dalton Caldwell 8:35 Yeah

Michael Seibel 8:35 ... and the quote-unquote anecdote I tried to give him to this feeling in his head was just, like, look at the 20 software companies that you respect the most and just, like, tell me which one of those blew up super fast. Like, which, which, which one was like they made it in a year? He's like, "None." And I'm like, "What does that, what does that mean?" [laughs] Like, come on. Like, 'cause I, to me, this also happens in startups so much where it's like, oh, well, they raised a Series A in two months. And I'm like, when did Series A become the endpoint? Like, when, when did that become the, like, victory, like, run through the line, get the gold medal point?

Dalton Caldwell 9:15 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 9:15 Like, it never, like, raising a Series A means you have a 90% chance of death.

Dalton Caldwell 9:19 I think it's a little higher, but yeah. [laughs]

Michael Seibel 9:21 [laughs] There we go. Great. [laughs] At least 90% chance [laughs] of death. Could be higher.

Dalton Caldwell 9:27 Depending on which investor you get-

Michael Seibel 9:28 Yeah, no. I think-

Dalton Caldwell 9:29 ... with that Series A-

Michael Seibel 9:30 I think-

Dalton Caldwell 9:30 ... it might round to 100%. [laughs]

Michael Seibel 9:32 [laughs] I think, I think we're gonna do better than that, but-

Dalton Caldwell 9:34 [laughs]

Michael Seibel 9:34 ... I think we're gonna do better. But anyways, and the thing that triggers this for me was a conversation I had with some very smart technical founders coming out of Stanford maybe three or four years ago. And they said this line to me that I will never forget. "We were taught that all consumer startups suck, and that it's only possible to build a B2B company." Any Stanford administration listening, um, maybe they're misquoting him. But anyways, um, it was so interesting because it's almost like they wanted to be given the rules to win the game. Like, they were so seeking, like, please give me a framework. If I do A, B-

Dalton Caldwell 10:14 Yeah

Michael Seibel 10:14 ... C, and D, I win. And this kind of nugget slot, slide, right, it's like regardless of what I'm interested in, slot A is it has to be a B2B SAS company. [laughs] Like, and slot B is this, and slot C is this. And then, like, if I do that, I win.

Dalton Caldwell 10:29 It's such a good point because so many people think that there's an answer, there's a secret, and that we have it. People like us have it.

Michael Seibel 10:38 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 10:38 Um, I think if you watch our videos, you'll, we, we tell you what we know.

Michael Seibel 10:42 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 10:42 But I don't think there's, like, a clip you can take out of one of the videos where like, oh, they said the secret.

Michael Seibel 10:46 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 10:46 And it's funny 'cause I'm sure you get these emails too. But there's a lot of people that are like, "The advice that you give in 15 minutes will change everything." Can you imagine actually believing that talking to us for 15 minutes would help whatever someone's problems are?

Michael Seibel 10:59 Well, I'll say especially after all these videos.

Dalton Caldwell 11:01 Yeah. I mean, what, what are we gonna say? We're-

Michael Seibel 11:03 [laughs] The likelihood in 15 minutes we're gonna say more than... [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 11:08 But, but the point is I think people think that there's, like, an optimal path or set of directions.

Michael Seibel 11:13 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 11:13 Like, this is a video game and there's-

Michael Seibel 11:15 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 11:15 ... like, a cheat guide.

Michael Seibel 11:16 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 11:16 Here's how you get to the-

Michael Seibel 11:17 Yeah

Dalton Caldwell 11:17 ... here's how you get through the maze. And that if someone just tells you how to get through the maze, it's, like, really trivial.

Michael Seibel 11:22 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 11:23 And it just bears repeating over and over again. The people that made it through the maze gritted through it, and it wasn't that someone gave them a really easy hack.

Michael Seibel 11:31 I love staying in this video game frame. There's the cheat code in the video game, right? Like, oh, you get more lives, you get to warp to the end. And then there's the guidebook that's just like, here's exactly how to do every step. I think neither of them apply in startups.

Dalton Caldwell 11:46 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 11:46 Like, and I think when people search for them, it's specifically that guidebook. I think the cheat book is, you know, we talked about that with crypto and stuff. I think that guidebook, that's what I'm kind of starting to call the MBA-ification of, of, of startup founders, where it's kind of like MBAs were originally created to train middle managers.

Dalton Caldwell 12:04 Yep.

Michael Seibel 12:04 And if you're bringing a middle manager into a company, there is a guidebook. There's a guidebook on how to get in. There's a guidebook on what to do. There's a guidebook on how to get promoted. Like-

Dalton Caldwell 12:12 Yeah, it's like they're teaching you the fundamentals of finance.

Michael Seibel 12:15 Yep.

Dalton Caldwell 12:15 Teaching you the fundamentals of, uh, management.

Michael Seibel 12:18 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 12:18 Like, it's, it was like General Motors, right? It was basically these really big companies needed a-To hire middle managers

Michael Seibel 12:23 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 12:24 And so these were training, these were trade schools

Michael Seibel 12:26 These were trade schools for middle managers

Dalton Caldwell 12:27 Yeah

Michael Seibel 12:27 And they would fund the business school, like they would donate money-

Dalton Caldwell 12:30 Yeah

Michael Seibel 12:30 ... to start this thing up. And I think that, like, that has been transposed on this startup thing, which was always a extremely high-risk, irregular, plans need to change all the times, luck based. Like, it, it was, I can't think of anything more opposite than being a middle manager at GM. And what frustrates me is that everyone knows there's no guidebook to being Michael Jordan, right? Like, everyone knows. Like, you know, you can do everything he did and, [laughs] you know, just like... But yet, people cause themselves to believe, "No, if I just follow this set of rigid best practices-

Dalton Caldwell 13:11 Yeah

Michael Seibel 13:12 ... successful company comes out the back." And it's like, no. I understood this being a belief of MBA folks, right?

Dalton Caldwell 13:19 Yeah

Michael Seibel 13:19 If you go to business school for two years, it'll infect you. This is now young technical founders-

Dalton Caldwell 13:25 Yeah

Michael Seibel 13:25 ... are, are being taught this stuff. It's so frustrating because it's kind of like th- these r- rules and best practices won't save you. Like, you're still gonna have to do something extremely hard and be lucky, and it's gonna be at the limit of your abilities. There's no guidebook for that.

Dalton Caldwell 13:43 [laughs]

Michael Seibel 13:44 As a quick aside, I remember this story. This band in England made a guidebook on how to write a number one single.

Dalton Caldwell 13:50 Okay.

Michael Seibel 13:51 And they sold it as a book.

Dalton Caldwell 13:52 Uh-huh.

Michael Seibel 13:52 And it, a b- one band actually did it and tried it, and it worked.

Dalton Caldwell 13:56 Okay.

Michael Seibel 13:57 And the song they made was Chumbawamba Tubthumping.

Dalton Caldwell 14:00 [laughs]

Michael Seibel 14:02 And it was like a satirical book, but they did it literally, where they were like, "Here's how you write a number one single."

Dalton Caldwell 14:07 [laughs]

Michael Seibel 14:07 And I guess Chumbawamba followed the book and wrote a number one hit single.

Dalton Caldwell 14:11 And by the way, I'm sure they made a lot of money on that book after that single. [laughs]

Michael Seibel 14:15 But I think that, like, maybe, you know, to close, for the advice to young people, I always tell founders, like, make sure that you're having fun, because to your point about you're gonna have to stick with it for a long time, I have not seen people be able to stick with hard challenges for a long time when they're not having fun.

Dalton Caldwell 14:35 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 14:35 And when they are having fun, I've seen them do crazy stuff.

Dalton Caldwell 14:39 Yeah, like literally crazy.

Michael Seibel 14:41 How many times have we seen people do good work that they're proud of fast?

Dalton Caldwell 14:46 It's almost like being able to take pride in your work and being proud of your body of work involves putting many years into it.

Michael Seibel 14:52 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 14:52 And that you almost wanna normalize that, or we wanna tell, you gotta tell people, "Yeah, this is what's normal, is, uh, sustained periods of long work-

Michael Seibel 14:59 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 14:59 ... to do something good, and not hitting a lottery ticket."

Michael Seibel 15:03 And I think even in this age of, or era of AI, you have time to do great work. Like, we are in the very beginning of it. So with that, thanks, Dalton.

Dalton Caldwell 15:13 Thank you. [outro music]