Sam Altman's closing conversation at YC Startup School left me thinking about one idea:
AI is not ending the startup era. It is raising the level of ambition required to participate in it.
What once took a development team months can now be built or rebuilt much faster with AI.
I'm already seeing this in my own work.
I've taken several projects that were originally created by development teams and rebuilt or significantly improved them with the help of AI. I continue working this way, and honestly, the experience has been fascinating.
At the moment, I feel surprisingly comfortable.
I can move from product thinking to design, implementation, testing, and iteration without waiting for a large team at every step. That does not mean everything is easy, but the barrier between an idea and a working product has become much smaller.
The big question is scale.
I don't yet know how far I'll be able to take this approach, how maintainable these products will be over several years, or what new limitations will appear as they grow.
It reminds me of the discussion around buying an electric car:
Everything may feel great today, but people still ask what will happen to the battery, infrastructure, maintenance, and resale value several years from now.
Working with AI feels similar.
The current experience is exciting and convincing. The long-term answers are still being written.
But I'm looking at it positively.
Even with the uncertainty, small teams and individual builders can now attempt projects that would previously have required much more time, capital, and technical capacity.
Coding speed is becoming less of a competitive advantage. Access to technical knowledge is becoming less of a barrier. The new constraints are ambition, product taste, understanding users, distribution, and choosing a problem worth solving.
This may really be the beginning of a golden age for ambitious startups.
AI gives more people the ability to build.
The real advantage will belong to those who know what should be built, why it matters, and how to turn it into something sustainable.