Joseph Bennett
324 posts
@JoeKBennett
Startup Dawg @ Datadog. Previously HBS, AWS, eBay, founder. Australian. Data Science background. Views are my own.
It's time to Build Australia™
I actually think the whole "permanent underclass" narrative is wrong. I think we're about to see the largest EXPLOSION of entrepreneurship in human history. I get why the fear exists. Jobs are getting cut. AI researchers are privately saying most people are screwed. The models are getting ridiculously better and faster than anyone expected. Project that forward linearly and yeah, it looks BLEAK. But linear projections are usually wrong during platform shifts. Nobody projected that the internet would create 50 million small businesses. They projected Walmart would eat everything. Nobody projected that mobile would create a million app developers. They projected phones were just phones. What actually happens is intelligence gets cheap and a flood of new builders enter the market with domain knowledge the incumbents never had. Millions will get laid off or just never hired over the next 24-36 months. Those jobs are not coming back. So they become entrepreneurs. Out of necessity at first. Then out of opportunity. The underclass idea is VIRAL because it confirms something people have been feeling for a decade. That the ground is shifting and nobody at the top is reaching down. And they're right. But the interesting thing about this particular technology is that it doesn't check your resume or your zip code. The same tool that eliminates your position hands you the ability to build the thing that replaces it. The weapon and the escape hatch are the same object. We're about to see more new companies started in the next 5 years than in the previous 50. And I think we're going to look back at this moment the way we look back at 1995. Everyone was scared. Everyone was right to be. And the people who built anyway became the next generation of owners. I know you might be reading about the permanent underclass and it's scary. Who wants to "get stuck in the permanent underclass no one. My POV is the permanent underclass isn't a foregone conclusion. I know some people are genuinely struggling right now and "just go build" sounds tone deaf when you're worried about rent. I get that. But the reason I'm optimistic is that the cost to start something just dropped to nearly zero, intelligence on tap, and eveyr category/industry you can think of is getting reshuffled. The explosion of entrepreneurship is just beginning.
Still need to pinch myself sometimes: We’ve raised $4.600.000 pre-seed with Schematik. It's time to make hardware less hard :)
