Over the past six months, a lot of founders have come to me with the same worry: If I’m not building in AI right now, am I already too late?
The shift is real, and it’s brutal. In Q1 of 2026, AI alone took about 80% of global venture funding. Everything else — every founder not working on AI — was left fighting over the remaining 20%.
I’ve met people who’ve spent years building in their domain, only to look up one morning and feel like the whole market has moved on without them. Some are wondering if they bet on the wrong thing. Others are asking a harder question: Will what I’m doing today even exist in ten years? I don’t think founders have ever had an identity crisis quite like this one.
I understand the anxiety. But I’ve also noticed something: people keep asking “What should I do next?” and almost no one asks “Why did I start doing this in the first place?”
So I asked myself.
When I started my first company, I didn’t have some grand vision of changing the world, and I definitely wasn’t sitting on a genius idea. I just liked solving problems — even small ones. I liked the feeling of working through something, and I liked knowing that every bit of effort I put in was building up somewhere inside me.
It was the same when I moved into investing. Ten years ago, when I was getting into early-stage, I asked myself what kind of investor I wanted to become. The answer came easily: I wanted to be the first person a founder thought of in the moments that mattered. When they first had an idea. When the company was on the edge. When they were questioning themselves. I wanted to be the call they made.
Ten years later, the early-stage world looks nothing like it did then. But that part hasn’t changed. And looking back, I realize it wasn’t a strategy or a thesis that kept me going — it was knowing the kind of person I wanted to be.
AI has changed how we work, and it keeps changing what the market rewards. But some things don’t move with it. Why you do what you do. Who you’re trying to become. Those questions stay yours.
So now, when someone asks me whether they should pivot into AI, I usually ask them something else: Does what you’re doing now bring you closer to the person you want to be?
That’s not a question AI can answer for you. And maybe, the answer is already inside the question.
