Pod Insights Y Combinator Podcast Should You Be Optimistic About The Future of Technology? | Dalton & Michael Podcast About this episode Social media often promotes a doom and gloom outlook about our future society. But is that worldview accurate? In this episode, Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel discuss the best ways for founders and aspiring founders to think about weighing optimism and pessimism in their day to day lives.
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Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 I cannot wait for the day where my daughter and son say like, oh, 45 minutes to Tokyo. That's so fucking slow.
0:09 Speaker 00 I can't wait.
0:13 Speaker 00 Hello, this is Dalton Post Michael and today we're going to talk about why are we optimistic about the future? So to be clear, at YC, we fund a lot of startups and even though we try to do a very good job, most startups fail.
0:27 Speaker 01 Yeah, if you look at the numbers, we know a lot more about failing and failed startups than successful ones.
0:35 Speaker 00 By magnitude.
0:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's just how the numbers work, right? And so we see failed startups every day. We live it, we breathe it. This is just the, this is the job that we have is we're experts on failure.
0:48 Speaker 00 Well, and just so you don't think, oh, well, you know, they're going to be optimistic because they're like rolling in the dough. The ones that work take like 12 years to work, right? So it's like, even for the ones that do well, like you don't make money fast being an early stage startup investor. So why is it a situation where it takes a long time to make money and a lot of startups are dying all around us every day? Why are we optimistic?
1:12 Speaker 01 I, I think it's this, I think if you zoom all the way back, all the way out, it's weird to talk to young people and have them be pessimistic about the future.
1:21 Speaker 00 Yes.
1:22 Speaker 01 It's weird.
1:22 Speaker 00 It is weird.
1:23 Speaker 01 And so part of the reason, you know, we want to do this video is to give you some reasons to be optimistic yourself.
1:31 Speaker 00 Yes.
1:31 Speaker 01 And I think it comes down to perspective, Michael.
1:34 Speaker 00 Yes.
1:34 Speaker 01 I think it's all about perspective where if all you do is read the news every day, you get bombarded with negativity, especially around technology.
1:42 Speaker 00 Yes.
1:43 Speaker 01 There's a lot of, the biggest technology stories right now are some version of like, this is bad, these people are bad, like.
1:52 Speaker 00 People are being exploited.
1:54 Speaker 01 Bad, bad, bad, bad. And so it's not hard if you're just consuming the news and not zooming out to be like, yeah, you know, things were better back 50 years ago or a hundred years ago.
2:04 Speaker 00 Don't point to me, I wasn't around.
2:08 Speaker 01 And again, I'm not sure that's true. I think this is a perspective thing. So again, like, so walk with us here. Let's, let's talk about perspective.
2:15 Speaker 00 Yes.
2:16 Speaker 01 Let's talk about the things that have improved since the 90s when we were like teenagers.
2:21 Speaker 00 Yes.
2:21 Speaker 01 Let's go through the list. We, we, we thought through some of these.
2:24 Speaker 00 Let's go through the list, right? So the 90s were supposed to be boom time, America. And if we think about what's better now than the 90s, I think I would start with like availability of information. I remember in the mid 90s, getting this CD-ROM called Encarta.
2:39 Speaker 01 Yep.
2:40 Speaker 00 And I remember my uncle, who's 20 years older than me, being like, oh my God, the encyclopedia is in your house? Versus having to go to the fucking library? This is incredible.
2:51 Speaker 01 And you could just search it. It was on one disk.
2:53 Speaker 00 Exactly.
2:53 Speaker 01 It was easy to search?
2:55 Speaker 00 And like that, now God knows how much more information than that is like for free on the internet.
3:01 Speaker 01 Literally everything that's textual information is a search away.
3:04 Speaker 00 Yes, and video.
3:05 Speaker 01 Freaking YouTube itself.
3:07 Speaker 00 Crazy.
3:07 Speaker 01 There's a website where anyone can record any video of like any length.
3:12 Speaker 00 Yes.
3:13 Speaker 01 On any topic for free.
3:14 Speaker 00 Yes.
3:15 Speaker 01 And you can watch it for free forever. That is like mind blowing to me.
3:21 Speaker 00 Yes.
3:21 Speaker 01 How incredible this is. Again, if you zoom out, if you think like you're an alien and you just have no context on this stuff.
3:27 Speaker 00 Yes.
3:27 Speaker 01 This is incredible.
3:29 Speaker 00 Incredible.
3:29 Speaker 01 And none of this existed.
3:30 Speaker 00 Well, and this isn't like, we're not talking about 50 years ago, right? We're talking about like 20, 25 years ago.
3:37 Speaker 01 Yep.
3:37 Speaker 00 This didn't exist, right? All right, next communications. I don't know about you, but we started with one phone line in the house.
3:44 Speaker 01 Yep.
3:45 Speaker 00 And that's it. That was communication.
3:50 Speaker 01 And again, people are like, whoa, but it was must have been so great. There were no phones and like it was so much easier to be a teenager and all that. I mean.
3:56 Speaker 00 No.
3:56 Speaker 01 Maybe.
3:57 Speaker 00 No.
3:57 Speaker 01 Maybe.
3:58 Speaker 00 No, it wasn't great.
4:01 Speaker 00 Like, you know, you couldn't be like on the internet and on the phone at the same time. I don't know if anyone's ever taken that for granted.
4:09 Speaker 00 So now, when people like, you know, I open up the messaging app folder on my phone, and there's like seventeen apps with video, audio, text. I can text people all over the world for free. I can call people anywhere in the world.
4:25 Speaker 01 For free.
4:29 Speaker 01 It's better. It's like a lot better.
4:31 Speaker 00 It used to cost money. We were living in New Jersey. It used to cost money to call New York.
4:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, man.
4:36 Speaker 00 Right next door.
4:37 Speaker 01 You gotta talk fast when you call.
4:38 Speaker 00 That was long distance. So yeah, so communications, little better.
4:42 Speaker 01 Transportation, freaking Uber, ride sharing, travel.
4:48 Speaker 00 Crazy.
4:48 Speaker 01 Maps. Do you remember printing out MapQuest?
4:51 Speaker 00 Dude, do you remember just having to buy maps?
4:54 Speaker 01 Physical map to drive around a city?
4:56 Speaker 00 And your dad would have a bunch of maps in the car for all the places you might want to drive to in the future. So, uh, transportation's gotten a little better.
5:04 Speaker 01 Yep.
5:04 Speaker 00 A little better. Uh, what else has gotten better?
5:06 Speaker 01 Healthcare. I mean, people are living longer, they're living better lives.
5:10 Speaker 00 Yes.
5:10 Speaker 01 Standard of care, infant mortality.
5:13 Speaker 00 Yes.
5:14 Speaker 01 Life expectancy around the world.
5:16 Speaker 00 Yes.
5:16 Speaker 01 People making more money, being raised out of the poverty line. I mean, just look at all the stats. You can look it up.
5:23 Speaker 00 Yes.
5:24 Speaker 01 Actually, like zoom all the way up out and look at this stuff for yourself.
5:28 Speaker 00 Yes.
5:29 Speaker 01 It's pretty cool.
5:30 Speaker 00 The number of people living in extreme poverty is less, the number of kids living longer. Once again, we're not talking about the difference between like the Civil War era and today.
5:40 Speaker 01 This was like twenty, thirty years ago.
5:42 Speaker 00 This isn't even our whole lifetime.
5:43 Speaker 01 Yep.
5:44 Speaker 00 We'd have had half of our lifetime. All right, what else? So we got entertainment.
5:47 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, think about, there's like an infinite supply of things to look at all day.
5:52 Speaker 00 Infinite.
5:52 Speaker 01 Infinite. Any movie you want to see, any television show ever created, any book ever created. If you want to pirate things, like if we include piracy in here.
6:03 Speaker 00 It's literally everything for free.
6:04 Speaker 01 The sum of all human creative content in the history of time is available at your fingertips for free.
6:10 Speaker 00 Yes.
6:11 Speaker 01 And the only thing limiting it is your willingness to go find it.
6:14 Speaker 00 Yes.
6:14 Speaker 01 Like, it's your appetite is the limiting factor, not scarcity.
6:18 Speaker 00 You might have to watch Demons.
6:19 Speaker 01 Yeah.
6:19 Speaker 00 You might have to watch Apple.
6:20 Speaker 01 It's post scarcity on this stuff. The only limiting is your imagination of what you want to watch.
6:24 Speaker 00 Exactly. It's all there.
6:26 Speaker 01 Okay, so we sound like boomers here, but the point, the reason to enumerate this stuff is that in the moment when all this stuff was happening, it wasn't immediately obvious that the world was changing. It was just kind of normal, like, oh, this new thing came out. Oh, that's cool. And even at the time, some of this stuff was, people were against it, or they're like, this doesn't seem so great.
6:45 Speaker 00 No.
6:46 Speaker 01 But when you gain perspective of looking back 20, 30 years later, it's way more obviously earth-shatteringly awesome.
6:52 Speaker 00 Yes. And so, well, and I think what's cool is that that wasn't a particularly special period of time. I think they're on the cusp of a bunch of new, interesting stuff, right? You know, hilariously, like, I remember when Starlink was like an idea.
7:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
7:12 Speaker 00 And it was kind of like a funny idea.
7:14 Speaker 01 An internet access anywhere, going to satellites?
7:17 Speaker 00 And it was like, theoretically, it's possible, but it was, I just remember it being like, well, first Elon has to figure out how to make his rockets not explode. But once he does that, he's just going to launch satellites around the earth, around the internet. I remember that being like, oh, sure. And then, like, I remember the day Starlink launched, and I was like, I guess the rockets work.
7:33 Speaker 01 It worked. It worked?
7:34 Speaker 00 Yes.
7:35 Speaker 01 Like, you can use it.
7:36 Speaker 00 You can use it. Cruise, perfect example. I remember getting into a cruise car with Kyle, driving down 101. And he said to me, uh-oh, there's a shadow in the road.
7:50 Speaker 00 Let's see how we handle this. And I'm like, ayo, oh, fuck.
7:56 Speaker 00 This is an MVP.
7:57 Speaker 01 Shadows, eh?
7:58 Speaker 00 Yeah.
7:58 Speaker 01 Haven't thought about that.
7:59 Speaker 00 Yeah, haven't thought about shadows in ever when driving. And I remember when Cruise did their kind of first open launch, and I got into a cruise car with my wife, and it just drove us to where we were going. And I remember for the first minute 30 being like...
8:18 Speaker 00 I can't believe this is the same.
8:21 Speaker 01 Yeah.
8:21 Speaker 00 I can't believe this is on a continuum that started with me being afraid of shadows and now it's like.
8:26 Speaker 01 Well, and again, I actually care about that stuff a lot. If I just think about, you know, growing up about just the number of people that I knew that died in car accidents.
8:33 Speaker 00 Yeah.
8:34 Speaker 01 And the number of people that every day get seriously injured or die in car accidents. I think we're going to look back and be like, that was crazy barbaric. That was like having surgeons that didn't wash their hands.
8:44 Speaker 00 Literally.
8:45 Speaker 01 In that era.
8:45 Speaker 00 Yes.
8:46 Speaker 01 Is I think how we'll look at some of this transportation stuff.
8:48 Speaker 00 Yes.
8:49 Speaker 01 Right? And we're right on the precipice.
8:50 Speaker 00 It's happening now.
8:51 Speaker 01 It's not like everyone's even excited about self-driving cars. It's like, oh, I don't know about this whole self-driving car thing. Drunk drivers aren't that bad, are they?
8:57 Speaker 00 Yeah. It's only tens of thousands of people who die a year in America. It's like, whatever.
9:01 Speaker 01 And so you should, I would expect people to be like, pretty excited about this.
9:06 Speaker 00 Yeah.
9:07 Speaker 01 But it's seen as sort of this like neutral or divisive issue instead of something that's kind of awesome.
9:13 Speaker 00 It's happening. I mean, another one's renewable energy. I had a friend who was working on a startup and he said something to me that I thought was a lie. He was like, oh yeah, based on like where you live in America, you can choose to just buy your energy from like a renewable source, like hydroelectric or solar. And I was just like, that doesn't exist. He's like, yeah, it's here. And I'm like, oh, well, it must be like 10x more expensive. He's like, no, like right now, it's I think like 10% more expensive. And I was like, what? Like that, it's, that's happening. Like we went from solar being the future in the 90s to
9:48 Speaker 01 just being the commonplace reality that no one thinks too much about.
9:51 Speaker 00 And it feeling economical for a lot of people. It's like, oh, you live in a sunny area.
9:54 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:55 Speaker 00 You're going to save some money. It did not feel that way in the 90s.
9:58 Speaker 01 We're in a solar-powered building right now. Like, and this is solar power powering this lighting. It's, there's solar panels on the roof.
10:05 Speaker 00 Yeah.
10:05 Speaker 01 Okay, whatever.
10:06 Speaker 00 Whatever.
10:06 Speaker 01 Do we care?
10:06 Speaker 00 No. It's happening right now. So, you know, and to me, the one that's like, we're probably a little bit more off the cusp on, but like, when this happens, I'm gonna be so pissed, right? Everyone talks about rockets and going to space. The whole like, when rockets are reliable, you can go anywhere in the world in 45 minutes. Like, we could commute to Tokyo.
10:27 Speaker 01 Yep.
10:28 Speaker 00 Like, when that happens, like, it changes the world in so many ways. And that was like, in the 90s, we were watching space shuttles.
10:37 Speaker 01 Yeah.
10:38 Speaker 00 Go up. And like, half of the shit in that space shuttle, basically, like, getting ejected into the freaking ocean. And whenever you did the math, it was like, oh, that cost us more than building a rocket from scratch and blowing it up. Like, that's where we were in the 90s. And now, like, we actually have a path to, I can go anywhere in 45 minutes? Like...
10:56 Speaker 01 It's pretty cool. And again, what this makes me think of, I don't have this graph handy, so I hope I'm not misquoting, but I remember the graph being references of the cost per pound to put something in space.
11:06 Speaker 00 Yes.
11:07 Speaker 01 And it looks like Moore's Law.
11:08 Speaker 00 Yeah.
11:09 Speaker 01 Where what's happening is that there's this Moore's Law-looking graph.
11:12 Speaker 00 Yeah.
11:13 Speaker 01 On how cheap, how much cheaper it is getting to put something into orbit.
11:17 Speaker 00 Yes.
11:18 Speaker 01 And how, if you just believe in the Moore's Law continuing to happen here, the amount of cool stuff that will happen in space in five, 10, 20 years, it's just mind-blowing.
11:27 Speaker 00 Yeah. And we're at that, we're at that moment.
11:30 Speaker 01 It's happening today.
11:31 Speaker 00 Yeah, exactly.
11:31 Speaker 01 It's getting really cool.
11:32 Speaker 00 Yes. So I think what's so cool is like, not only have things gotten so much better since the 90s, things are getting better. So, if all of this stuff's great, why are people so pessimistic?
11:46 Speaker 01 Well, I think it's hard to have perspective, man.
11:49 Speaker 00 Yes.
11:50 Speaker 01 I think when you're really caught up in the moment, everything gets polarized into political stuff, or tribal warfare about who's on what team. And so if it's, if your team is the thing, pushing for the thing, you celebrate it. But if the other team is...
12:04 Speaker 00 Yeah, screwing people, exactly.
12:05 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's very, everything is polarized.
12:08 Speaker 00 Yes. I also think there's this weird expectations game, right? Like... It's magical thinking to think that we get all the things we spent the first chunk of the video talking about and there's nothing bad.
12:19 Speaker 01 Yep.
12:20 Speaker 00 That's magical. That's like, that's not being an adult.
12:22 Speaker 01 There's gonna be trade offs.
12:22 Speaker 00 There's gonna be trade offs, right? Like, the trade off on having, you know, 60 second videos that are exactly what I want, that I can swipe anytime I want is like, you know, maybe two hours of swiping, I should be going to bed. You know, like, there are a lot of different trade offs and like, I just feel like when people treat themselves like children versus treat themselves like adults, it's like, you know, a child doesn't acknowledge that trade offs exist, right? A child can think magically.
12:53 Speaker 01 They want only the perfect, you know, it has to all be good with no bad.
12:55 Speaker 00 With no bad, yes.
12:56 Speaker 01 Cut the crust off.
12:57 Speaker 00 Exactly. Cut the crust off, right? And for a while, adults kind of create that world and then after a while, adults explain to their kids, like, that's, I can't cut the crust off the world.
13:06 Speaker 01 Or like, you need to cut your own crust off. I mean, if you want to do that, you can, but I'm not doing that anymore.
13:11 Speaker 00 No. World is crust. And like, you know, technology has crusts.
13:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
13:17 Speaker 00 Right? Technology, with the good comes some bad, right? So that's a big one. I also think that like, there's this weird thing where the pacing is inconsistent, right? Like, sometimes you get a lot of innovation in one part of the economy, and then sometimes you get a lot of innovation in another part of the economy. It's not reliable.
13:38 Speaker 01 Yep.
13:38 Speaker 00 And so, you know.
13:40 Speaker 01 And it's so easy, it's this, it's this debate thing where you could say, well, what about X problem? Like, no matter what good thing happens.
13:47 Speaker 00 Yes.
13:47 Speaker 01 And they're not wrong. What about X? Like, you're right, X is a problem. Like, that's totally fair. But if, if you want to tear down anything interesting that happens by saying, well, X over here isn't solved yet, it's easy to just get trapped in the mud.
14:02 Speaker 00 You tear down everything.
14:03 Speaker 01 Yeah.
14:03 Speaker 00 Right? So I'll say this, right? In reflection, you know, we both have young kids and I am super excited that my kids get to grow up now. I, I cannot wait for the day where my daughter and son say like, oh, 45 minutes to Tokyo, that's so fucking slow.
14:24 Speaker 00 I can't wait.
14:27 Speaker 00 In my day.
14:28 Speaker 01 This isn't so great. What's so great about that, Michael?
14:30 Speaker 00 It's really rocky. It's a bumpy ride. I like, I am so excited about the world that they're gonna join. And I'm confident they're gonna get even more over the next, you know, 80 years than we're getting, which is, which is really fun.
14:48 Speaker 01 And think about it. We all, you all, get to create this future.
14:54 Speaker 00 Yes.
14:54 Speaker 01 And there's this thing where it's cooler and edgier and more punk rock.
14:59 Speaker 00 Yes.
14:59 Speaker 01 To be like, everything is bullshit. And that's a good high horse to be on if you want to be cool.
15:04 Speaker 00 Yep.
15:05 Speaker 01 But if you're actually building things and you want to be a part of creating it.
15:08 Speaker 00 Yeah.
15:08 Speaker 01 It's much easier and more fruitful to be optimistic and think about all the things you can do and think about what you personally can do and what you can work on.
15:16 Speaker 00 Yes.
15:17 Speaker 01 Versus just being like, burn it all down because of X.
15:20 Speaker 00 Well, you know, I was thinking about it, if you really care about those problems, you have to be optimistic to try to solve them. And like, some of the people who are like, the biggest social critics or the biggest revolutionaries or the biggest change agents in our society, were default optimistic.
15:35 Speaker 01 Yep. Because they believed it could work.
15:37 Speaker 00 Exactly.
15:37 Speaker 01 They believed their effort wasn't a waste of time.
15:39 Speaker 00 No.
15:39 Speaker 01 You have to believe enough to invest yourself into something.
15:42 Speaker 00 Exactly. And so, I'm willing to bet none of your heroes were the cool, snarky folks who never did anything and just bitched about how the world was. Like, none of your heroes were that.
15:55 Speaker 00 And so, don't be one of those people. Like, you can choose to not be one of those people. All right. Great chat.
16:02 Speaker 01 Great.
16:02 Speaker 00 Thanks.
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