Yes it's a lot of risk, yes most startups fail, and yes you could make more money at FANG. However, this is one of the most exciting times to build a startup, thanks to AI.
The big winners of the all the AI advancements (especially OS) are devs and AI startups:
- No more vendor lock-in
- Instead of just wrapping proprietary API endpoints, developers can now integrate AI deeply into their products in a very cost-effective and performant way
- Price race to the bottom with near-instant LLM responses at very low prices are on the horizon
It's as if your product automatically becomes better, cheaper, and more scalable with every major AI advancement. This leads to a powerful flywheel effect: AI improves product -> better product attracts more users -> users generate more data
Besides the product perspective, AI also allows you to operate your startup a lot more efficiently.
Will we see a single-person unicorn soon? Very likely not.
Will we see very successful small and bootstrapped startups? Yes, already the case.