You just have to immerse yourself in it. You should just constantly be building. That's what's going to give you the best chance of having the relevant skill set that is needed to make a difference in technology.
In the AI era, it should be easier than ever for people to build new businesses. We want to build the services that enable this. This is important for ensuring that people broadly share in the prosperity created by superintelligence.
"You could tell where his skill set was as a coder and as a thinker, and he was just supremely advanced. He was taking senior-level courses as a freshman and showing up to a three-hour final exam, two hours late, and getting the highest grade in class."
My journey as a bootstrapped founder has been pretty unique, and I love to share my insights and lessons learned with others who may be traveling along a similar path. But there's another dimension, too. I want to be embedded in the communities that I think Jotform should reach. If you know me, and my product feels familiar, you're more likely to think of us the next time you need an online form builder.
It's pretty unlikely a five-year-old today will be looking for a job. The need to work will go away. People will still work on the things they want to work on, not because they need to work. Rapid advances in AI and robotics will make most labor effectively free within 15 years, creating an era of extreme abundance and lower prices.
Just as software finished eating the world, zero interest rates ended. Companies optimized for cash and slowed hiring. The market didn't shrink, but stopped growing at the breakneck pace we all expected. The result: a glut of entry level talent groomed for jobs that never materialized. This would explain a more competitive entry level market. But it doesn't explain the entry-level market shrinking, despite overall industry growth. In short: demand for senior talent is rising, but has fallen off a cliff for juniors.
When you're starting off, you solve problems with code. When you get more experienced, you solve problems with people. When you get even more experienced, you solve problems with money. In other words: You can be the person writing the code, and solving the problem directly. Or you can manage people, specifying what they should do. Or you can invest in teams, telling them about the problems you want to solve, but letting them set specific goals and managing the day-to-day work.
Even before he'd graduated from the University of Bath in 2024, Arnau Ayerbe landed a highly coveted role as an AI engineer with JP Morgan - yet he felt limited and uninspired. "I realised very quickly that the person to my right and to my left were going to be me in 20 years, and I didn't want to become that," recalls London-based Ayerbe.