[mannanj]

Hi Eric. In this day and age, and in the next year or two, what do you foresee as the most practical first steps for someone to work towards delivering a startup for income they can sustain themselves on?

And how has the traditional loop of validation, delivering and iterating on products, and getting your first paid customers changed since fast output is now possible with AI and technology?

Please structure this for someone with no startup experience, and such that event a child can understand. And please create a version that works for someone to begin to validate their idea right now and measure progress, and modify/iterate towards a goal of money generation for themselves or a team now and long-term. (And would you also describe then how this person can work on attracting a team for someone who has never successfully navigated choosing their own team before.) (And would you also accept my thanks, this is very kind of you)

[eries]

This is kind of a big and deep question, more than I can get into with so many other questions pending, but let me see what I can offer. First of all, we are living through a golden age of entrepreneurship. Unfortunately, because times of tremendous turmoil are often times of tremendous startup opportunity.

But in particular, this moment, the capabilities of individual people are being amplified thanks to all these new technologies. You have the opportunity to be an early adopter of a technology that billions of people will use just a few years from now, but you get it first. That probably means that the things you care a lot about or know a lot about, you could do something about it that would have been absolutely impossible even five years ago.

Now, you have to avoid that feeling that you're too late. I remember feeling, in 1998, that I'd already missed the internet. The vast majority of people have never used Claude Code. The vast majority of people have no idea how LLMs work or what they do. The vast majority of people simply don't even know that starting a company is something you could use this technology to do.

As inexperienced or behind as you might feel, just the fact that you're here having this conversation right now proves that you are way, way, way ahead. All you have to do is use that advantage.

[mannanj]

It was a lot, I see that now. I appreciate you responding anyway! Thank you for the words of encouragement.

Personally, I think my challenge is less on starting, and more on finishing, and on the pieces of extending it from personal project to something others use and pay for. A bootcamp I did inspired by your methodology was still running on old paradigm and had us doing a lot of validation before building a thing; it didn't make sense when I can quickly development and produce with AI.

Would love to hear more if you would speak to that and I can clarify and focus my question(s) later. Thank you so much.