A founder who lived through the early internet boom draws parallels to AI adoption. They learned Netscape Navigator in 1994, started an internet company, and saw the real shift happen in mid-1997 when businesses rushed online. They predict AI's equivalent moment is 1 to 1.5 years away, and say learning to prompt and give AI roles now will give you a multi-year head start.
Chapters
I think that there are so many people that are afraid of the future because they have fear about the future, because they. The unknown that AI brings kind of into the future. I am so excited about the future because I believe that when we get on our toes and on our heels and we learn how to interact with AI, we learn basic prompting, we learn how to give AI a role in instruction. In some context, I think that AI is going to be one of the most amazing partners for us. I think it's going to be incredible. I think it's going to. AI has the ability to help enhance every area of our life.
But the thing is that means that you need to lean forward into it.
And not fall backward. And so I'm really excited about the future of using AI as, as a tool, as a companion, as an assistant, kind of like in all areas of my life. Yeah, yeah. Obviously there's so much that we don't know about, about the future. But the one thing that I do know is this. You know, I was, I was really early in consumer Internet. The first, like, commercial browser came out in, I think it was December of 94 with Netscape Navigator. And, and that was the month I started my first Internet company, which was a total disaster. Nobody knew what it was mess. But, but, but the thing is, you know, it took me to the Bay Area and I had some really amazing, really amazing experience there. But I remember that I got my first job working for this company called quote.com and I think that we were the first company to get permission from the stock exchanges to put a stock quote on the Internet. And Sequoia was one of our investors, Mike Morris from Sequoia and all that kind of stuff. And, and that, that's all really cool, but I remember in, like in 95 and in 96, it was so hard to sell anybody anything. It's like they didn't get it. All of the money was going into infrastructure like it is today for, you know, for AI, it's going into data centers, it's going into chips, it's going into large language models. Back then, it was going into, it was going into routers, and it was going into, you know, building pipes for MCI so we could get a fast Internet connection and stuff like that. At this point, you know, back with the whole Internet thing, people were still using AOL discs primarily to get online. Yeah. And so, but, but one thing I remember is it was in 1997, right around the middle of that year. It's like everybody woke up at the same time. And they're like, I get it. I need a website. Right? I get it. I have a storefront. But now I'm starting to understand what E commerce is. And you have this huge rush. I don't think that that is going to happen for another year, year and a half for AI. So the people today who invest in AI are the people that are going to be so far ahead five years from now. Like, that's the only thing that I is that I know is if you spend the time you invest in it today and you just get good at one thing or two things, five years from now, you're just going to crush the competition. Because when they have, I call it the oh moment, when they have their oh shit moment, you will have already built a business on top of it. And that's what's really cool.
