Raphael Schaad

ITALY IS DYING — AND THE NUMBERS ARE BRUTAL Italy just recorded its lowest number of births since 1861. Only 355,000 babies were born in 2025, while deaths reached 652,000 — a net loss of nearly 300,000 people in a single year. The total fertility rate has collapsed to 1.14 children per woman, far below the 2.1 needed to sustain a population. This isn’t a temporary dip. It’s a long-term demographic collapse that threatens Italy’s entire future: shrinking workforce, collapsing pensions, aging society, and disappearing regions. Without massive immigration, Italy’s population would be shrinking even faster. This is what happens when birth rates stay critically low for decades. Italy is the clearest warning sign for many other developed nations heading in the same direction.

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MIT student asked a question earlier today that a lot of young founders are quietly wondering about: "Won’t the frontier labs just do everything?" Yes it's true that OAI/Ant are shipping at incredible pace, but it's quite easy to avoid their blast radius and build amazing startups: OpenAI is not going to build a cattle-herding drone, buy an old F-150 and drive from ranch to ranch like the founder of one of the fastest-growing YC W26 startups, Graze Mate. Anthropic is not going to integrate with dental insurance verification systems (Lance). Google is not going to navigate NATO procurement (Milliray). The value is in the last mile, not the model. Sales cycles require humans who understand the customer. And most importantly, the market is expanding, not shrinking: AI isn't cannibalizing the existing 1% software spend — it's unlocking the other 5-6% that was going to humans. That's a much bigger market for startups yet-to-be-founded than the one the labs are playing in. Now, what DOES seem risky? A thin UI layer on top of ChatGPT with no domain expertise; a general-purpose chatbot or assistant; or a product that gets obsolete when model capabilities improve. But — tools for specific industries; "full-stack" AI companies that actually are the service (AI law firm, AI accounting firm, AI uranium exploration company); or generally products where the customer doesn't want a tool but an outcome — are defensible ideas for startups.

MIT student asked a question earlier today that a lot of young founders are quietly wondering about: "Won’t the frontier labs just do everything?" Yes it's true that OAI/Ant are shipping at incredible pace, but it's quite easy to avoid their blast radius and build amazing startups: OpenAI is not going to build a cattle-herding drone, buy an old F-150 and drive from ranch to ranch like the founder of one of the fastest-growing YC W26 startups, Graze Mate. Anthropic is not going to integrate with dental insurance verification systems (Lance). Google is not going to navigate NATO procurement (Milliray). The value is in the last mile, not the model. Sales cycles require humans who understand the customer. And most importantly, the market is expanding, not shrinking: AI isn't cannibalizing the existing 1% software spend — it's unlocking the other 5-6% that was going to humans. That's a much bigger market for startups yet-to-be-founded than the one the labs are playing in. Now, what DOES seem risky? A thin UI layer on top of ChatGPT with no domain expertise; a general-purpose chatbot or assistant; or a product that gets obsolete when model capabilities improve. But — tools for specific industries; "full-stack" AI companies that actually are the service (AI law firm, AI accounting firm, AI uranium exploration company); or generally products where the customer doesn't want a tool but an outcome — are defensible ideas for startups.