“While young founders have dropped out of college to pursue startup dreams during previous tech booms, this time, their financial backers are funding housing for them and making sure their daily needs are met, from changing sheets, taking out the trash, and booking travel.”
There’s a lot of VC money flying around in the tech world right now, and this article is about the latest generation of young people who think they’re capable of absorbing some of it while they have the youth and vitality to do so – which makes total sense. However, this time, the founders apparently realized there was a “small window of opportunity” to create their various unicorns before the dawn of AGI arrived. And VCs seem like they’re encouraging that notion, and doing everything possible other than wiping their butts to make sure they’re building fast.
That notion of a ticking clock reminds me of other Wall Street Journal articles about tech incubators during the boom period. Here’s a quote from 2010 about something called I/O Ventures:
Incubators typically help entrepreneurs foster small businesses by providing space, services, and advice, often for a fee or an equity stake in their business. Well-known incubators include Y Combinator and Plug and Play Tech Center, with many venture-capital firms also incubating start-ups. [One entrepreneur] He says there can be some downsides to incubators too – he said some try to impose too much control, while others are geared towards young entrepreneurs fresh out of college – he’s exploring I/O ventures since he hasn’t raised any funding and is looking for camaraderie with other start-up founders.
That article was titled “Start-up Incubators Reborn” because, at the time, incubators were a throwback to the dot-com bubble days. People were making apps in 2010, but like the dot-com era, the app era also ended.
The article (which does not use the word “incubator”) says, in the AI age, young people are even younger. The Journal notes, “According to investment firm Antler, the average age of founders of so-called AI unicorns—companies valued at more than $1 billion—has fallen from 40 in 2020 to 29 in 2024.”
21-year-old founder of a defense tech company:
[…] Lives in a house with his staff of 10 in San Francisco’s Twin Peaks neighborhood, where rent is paid with investor money, a personal chef, a house cleaner and a maid to make sure the trash is taken out and the fridge is stocked with LaCroix. It also paid for them to convert the garage into a gym and add a cool plunge pool on the deck, changes that helped ensure they could work 15 hours a day, seven days per week, and rarely leave the house.
In one of the houses there is a “Den Mother” – who is actually the VC’s office manager – who says of the future billionaires whom she brushes off, “I’d do anything for them.” The Journal notes that “the happy birthday sign from months ago is still hanging on the wall of the fraternity brothers’ apartment and a leftover keg is lying in the basement of the building.”
“My worst-case scenario is going back to Harvard, which is not a worse situation at all,” says a 19-year-old entrepreneur quoted in the article.
“I don’t think you need college anymore,” says another 19-year-old quoted in the article.
When we read about startups we wear the glasses of survival bias. Of course, most startups don’t go anywhere. And callow, college-aged tech entrepreneurs getting articles in the Wall Street Journal has been a tradition dating back to at least the year 2000. But I think the latest people think is that AGI is going to come soon and take out their garbage for the rest of their lives, even after their mother is gone. And it bothers me a little.
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