On Friday, a group of Penn students will be swinging by my office as part of "Penn Tech Trek", a program where Penn students visit tech companies here in NYC. I went on two amazing Tech Treks, so I am really excited to get to pay it forward for the next generation.
So I sat down and thought about:
- What I wish someone would've told me when I was in college
- What I learned since I graduated
- What advice I'd give to a college graduate in 2026
I feel like in 2026 you have to start with AI. It's just in the air, so much excitement and fear. What jobs will be left? It's a wild time to be joining the workforce!
I've been thinking a lot about workout classes. For most of human history, working out was a part of life, farming, cleaning, etc. But then we automated 99% of physical labor, which is why it seems like there's a gym or yoga studio on every block. If you told a farmer in the year 1800 that 99% of people wouldn't farm in the future, he'd be very confused. What are these muscles for? What jobs will there be?
The same may be true for us. Maybe brains won't be required for work. Maybe we're about to automate thinking.
What's left? The human touch. Take solace in the fact that we don't watch robots play basketball or chess or art.
Also: if there's no job for you because a robot can do anything you can do better, then that also necessarily means there's incredible abundance in society. Maybe we all become like trust-fund kids looking to make life meaningful. There's always teaching or art.
But most importantly, I want to share a lesson about bubbles. A very smart friend called me frantically about how they feel like they need to quit their job and join a company to get in while it’s good, because this is a once-in-a-lifetime new industry being born. I told her she should take a deep breath. Hype cycles come and go. It’s hard to have historical perspective on your first one. She didn't believe me. But that wasn't even AI! That was crypto. That's how all-consuming bubbles are. I know this one feels different, but that's how they all feel. So we should all take a deep breath.
Legibility is a bit like personal-brand building but in a non-annoying way. Being legible gives the world at large affordances for how they can interact with you and fit you into their lives – job, romance, friend, collaborator, vendor, speaker, etc. As Henrik says, "A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox").
When I started the Future of Coding podcast & community and blogged super publicly, I thought about creating a lighthouse to attract my people and collaborators. I walked into an empty room and started talking at the walls and you'll never guess what happened next. People came into the room. And they're still there! (Even though I left!)
Legibility is how I found some of my best friends, investors, employees and solutions to my problems. Unfortunately Twitter is not what it was, but find a place where you can post online – a link is all that matters – and do as much of it as you can. Quantity over quality, excluding slop, of course.
A well-phrased problem is a problem half solved. In framing it, you sometimes solve it. Now that its written down you can email it to friends, tweet it, ask AI. I had incredible back pain and was complaining about it to a friend who had a super kooky solution that worked out.
However, don't let illegibility stop you from doing things, especially in the earliest days. When I started my independent researcher / podcaster phase, everyone in my life thought I was crazy, and it was hard to explain to folks what I was doing. I just kept talking about it online in whatever way I could, and it got more legible over time. Henrik does a great job explaining the importance of illegibility in Looking for Alice.
Likely, the best work you’ll ever do will be with people. Either you choose them, or they’ll be chosen for you. (Either you'll hire them or you'll join a team.) Take this incredibly seriously. Your job is to cultivate your relationships and future coworkers, employers, and employees.
Treating people super well is such an amazing hack, and it’s easy to justify all the way up and down the value chain.
Figure out (and continually refine) what your values are so you can spot when your partners don’t share them and end things earlier, saving yourself heartache. For example, I value reading, writing, honesty, integrity, kindness, self-awareness, legibility, nerdiness, personal projects.
Reading is important.
My strategy is to stop reading or listening whenever I’m bored. Don’t let the wrong book stop you from reading the right one. Boring books will become interesting when the timing is right. I mostly do audiobooks. It’s important to play with speed to keep you engaged. Fiction counts.
The solutions to a lot of your problems exist, and someone took the time to write them down. Don’t be stupid - read the solutions. For example, if you want to start a startup and you don’t read The Lean Startup, The Mom Test, Paul Graham's essays, and watch the Startup School videos, you’re playing guitar hero, not guitar.
Goals are tricky, because the stupidest and least informed version of yourself is the one setting them for smarter future versions of you. Still, containers and targets are powerful.
I think it’s super useful to point yourself at concrete examples. This is the point of role models and heroes. The same is true in startups. A startup pitch is a lot about which company you want to be like. For example, Val Town wants to be like Vercel or GitHub or Cloudflare. This is also relevant is selling, positioning.
Seek out role models and role model companies, and as you "meet your heroes" find increasingly better role models. Nobody is perfect.
Focus is your biggest weapon. Jealousy is the guard. Do fewer things better. The rewards to scale make this exponentially true.
Stay until your cliff date if there’s a good chance the company will make good.
Don’t try to save money on corporate lawyers. Just use Nick Harley (or someone else strongly recommended) and don’t worry about it.
VCs are pretty good at recommending startups. Once you realize you need to underwrite the startup you join as if you were a VC, you can kinda outsource it to VC firms. But it’s even better if you can talk to the VC who's on the board, not just read press clippings.
VCs and other wise folks have so much wisdom, but also so much anti-wisdom. They’re often biased by what worked for them at a specific moment in time, ie they convinced me in 2013-2019 that devtools was not an investable category. Joke’s on them!
Pre-seed investing is mostly about people. Ignore the market and product, except as signals about the people. Only invest in people you’ve known for years and trust implicitly. That way you can underwrite their trajectory, judgment, taste, and integrity. If they have those, they’ll fix any bad product or market faster than you ever could. As PG says, a startup idea must seem like a bad idea in order to succeed, so don't judge ideas, judge people.
A really great path to starting something is to get a job somewhere cool and learn all their problems. It’s really hard to get jazzed about a B2B enterprise’s problem. It’s really easy to get jazzed about your own problems. So join a B2B enterprise.
Once you work at a company, you can often find the role you want by navigating the company. It’s easier to walk in the easy door and then work your way over than to try to get the job you want when you don’t know anything.
It’s really hard to apply for jobs without knowing what it’s like to be on the other side, reviewing candidates and hiring. VC is the same. It’s awesome to be on both sides. Buy side and sell side. It makes things less mystical and makes you more empowered. College admissions teaches the wrong lessons. Life is a lot more hackable and personal.
If you want to work somewhere, make it your mission and target them relentlessly (respectfully, without being a stalker, ask them if you should stop, etc.).
Working at a VC firm early in your career is a great way to kickstart things. I recommend First Round Capital, but Thrive seems hot right now. Probably others too.
If you’re upset about someone else and pointing a finger, you’re probably upset about something in yourself that you’re not acknowledging yet and need some soothing. It’s usually not about them. Non-violent community is a great book.
If you have a bad habit you can’t quit, don’t shame yourself. Get curious. There’s probably a good reason it exists. Escapism. Learning leadership. Something else.
The Landmark Forum is a three-day motivational course that I recommend with caveats. I wouldn’t have had the courage to start my first company without it. Yet it’s also a bit culty in how they try to get you to sell their course for them. I’d recommend it heartily if you find yourself stuck
Email me with questions. I love giving advice. Most people do.
Ask for money or a job or intros, get advice. Ask for advice, get money or a job or intros.
I’m steve@val.town.