Should You Be Optimistic About The Future of Technology? | Dalton & Michael Podcast

**Dalton Caldwell** (0:00)
I cannot wait for the day where my daughter and son say like, oh, 45 minutes to Tokyo, that's so fucking slow. I can't wait.
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.

**Michael Seibel** (0:27)
Yeah, if you look at the numbers, we know a lot more about failing and failed startups than successful ones.

**Dalton Caldwell** (0:35)
By in order of magnitude.

**Michael Seibel** (0:37)
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 the job that we have. We're experts on failure.

**Dalton Caldwell** (0:48)
And just so you don't think, oh, well, 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 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?

**Michael Seibel** (1:12)
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.

**Dalton Caldwell** (1:21)
Yes.

**Michael Seibel** (1:22)
It's weird.
And so part of the reason we want to do this video is to give you some reasons to be optimistic yourself. Yes. And I think it comes down to perspective, Michael.

**Dalton Caldwell** (1:34)
Yes.

**Michael Seibel** (1:34)
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. There's a lot of...
The biggest technology stories right now are some version of like, this is bad, these people are bad.

**Dalton Caldwell** (1:52)
People are being exploited.

**Michael Seibel** (1:54)
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 100 years ago.

**Dalton Caldwell** (2:04)
Don't point to me. I wasn't...

**Michael Seibel** (2:09)
And again, I'm not sure that's true. I think it's a perspective thing. So again, like, so Wokwa is here. Let's talk about perspective. Let's talk about the things that have improved since the 90s when we were like teenagers. Let's go through the list. Let's go through the list.

**Dalton Caldwell** (2:24)
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.
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.

**Michael Seibel** (2:51)
And you could just search it. It was on one disk.

**Dalton Caldwell** (2:53)
Exactly.

**Michael Seibel** (2:53)
It was easy to search.

**Dalton Caldwell** (2:55)
And like that now, God knows how much more information than that is like for free on the internet.

**Michael Seibel** (3:01)
Literally everything that's textual information is a search away.

**Dalton Caldwell** (3:04)
Yes. And video.

**Michael Seibel** (3:05)
Fricking YouTube itself.

**Dalton Caldwell** (3:07)
Crazy.

**Michael Seibel** (3:07)
There's a website where anyone can record any video of like any length on any topic for free.
And you can watch it for free forever. That is like mind blowing to me.

**Dalton Caldwell** (3:21)
Yes.

**Michael Seibel** (3:21)
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.

**Dalton Caldwell** (3:27)
Yes.

**Michael Seibel** (3:27)
This is incredible.

**Dalton Caldwell** (3:29)
Incredible.

**Michael Seibel** (3:29)
And none of this existed.

**Dalton Caldwell** (3:30)
Well, and this isn't like we're not talking about 50 years ago, right? We're talking about like 20, 25 years ago. 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.
And that's it.
Dot was communication.

**Michael Seibel** (3:48)
And again, people are like, well, but it must have been so great. There were no phones, and it was so much easier to be a teenager and all that.

**Dalton Caldwell** (3:56)
No.

**Michael Seibel** (3:56)