There are easy ways to validate your ideas
You know something’s a hot topic when the likes of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet’s Ray Kurzweil and Tesla’s Elon Musk publicly argue about something. In the case of technological unemployment (you know, when robots and AI take your job), Musk says he believes intelligent machines and robots are the workforce of the future. Zuckerberg, meanwhile, has called such doomsday scenarios “irresponsible” and says he is optimistic about AI. Musk’s response was to criticize Zuck’s understanding of the topic:
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff predicts mass layoffs as AI and automation begin to take over some jobs, while Ray Kurzweil more recently said:
“We have already eliminated all jobs several times in human history. For every job we eliminate, we’re going to create more jobs at the top of the skill ladder. … You can’t describe the new jobs, because they’re in industries and concepts that don’t exist yet**.**” — Ray Kurzweil, Director of Engineering at Alphabet
In contrast, the World Economic Forum predicts seven million jobs disappearing between 2015–2020, mostly routine office functions. Professor Moshe Vardi of Rice University foresees unemployment surpassing 50 percent by 2045. Frey and Osborne’s research shows that 47 to 81% of jobs as we understand them could be under threat from technology within 20 years.
With so many conflicting viewpoints, it’s worth stopping to ponder what’s going on. Why are some tech leaders optimistic about our future and why are others sounding warning bells?
Which jobs are at risk and should you as an employee be concerned?
The answer is hidden in a little chart which has been called the “elephant graph.” It starts low at the tail on the left, gradually rising up to the top of the elephant’s head, sliding down his face and then back up as if he were raising his trunk proudly:
The “elephant graph” from Lakner and Milanovic, 2015
What it’s charting is global cumulative real income growth during the 20-year period from 1988 to 2008: how much people’s income has gone up or down, in every income bracket, around the world. You can read a detailed commentary on the graph, or I can summarise it for you:
There are three points on this chart that are particularly interesting: the tip of the trunk, the high point at the elephant’s head, and the dip in between.
Let’s start with the tip of the trunk. This is the global 1%, and they’re doing pretty well. If you were rich to begin with, you’ve gotten richer — your income’s gone up by more than 60% over those two decades. No surprises there.
The top of the elephant’s head — where around half the world’s salaries exist — is also a happy story. Those are the jobs created by the industrialisation of China and India, where people went from nothing per day to a little better than nothing per day: a huge increase in percentage terms — over 80%.
Let’s move on to where the trunk dips. This is where 75–90% of salaries exist. Those are basically average people in rich countries (earning between $15,000 and $48,000 per year). They’re not looking too good, because their income has basically not risen over two decades, while inflation has reduced their buying power.
The crux of the matter (and the point that all of the optimistic tech leaders haven’t grasped) is that as technological performance gets better, the dip in the elephant’s trunk will extend to the right, replacing knowledge workers. As the cost of automation plummets, it will extend to the left, replacing manual labour like drivers and factory workers.
Current advances in big data, machine learning and quantum computing are skyrocketing technological performance, while at the same time tech costs are plummeting. We’re in for a rocky ride. The increasing dip in the elephant’s trunk is the hollowing out of the middle class all around the world. This is the shift from labor to capital. This is the source of a significant amount of global discontent: where phenomena like Brexit and Sanders and Trump find fertile ground.
If you’re currently employed — and you’re woke — when would now be a good time to start a business?
But I’m not ready to quit my job to start a business!
The good news is that you don’t have to. The past 5 or so years has seen a rapid growth of remote working platforms and freelance marketplaces. Easy access to just about any skill imaginable has made it simple for budding entrepreneurs to build any product, while they’re still employed in a full-time job. If you have cash or a regular income, it’s relatively easy to launch an app that solves a problem, and feel good about it.
But there’s a problem.
The road to entrepreneurial success, riches and fame is littered with people who had a bright idea and then realized they had built a me-too product. Some who had already grown a company have had to fire staff and go back to the drawing board. In extreme cases they’ve had to quit their company to go back to the workforce.
This is why there is a lot of burnout in the startup world. It’s also why many entrepreneurs experience mental health issues. They constantly fight against the norm. It’s only after trial and error that the breakthroughs happen.
Why is starting a first-time business so challenging?
Creating a company is not the point, validating your idea is. Most people fall into the trap of not testing product-market fit early. That’s a challenge for any entrepreneur ranging from Elon Musk, who needs to prove that his SpaceX technology works for earth transport before shooting for Mars, to a random entrepreneur who comes up with “Uber for X” which eventually may become a self-serving tool for one side of the marketplace.
CB Insights, a venture capital research firm based in the Valley, has been collecting stats of failed startups to find a common chord of startup failure and they have found a few. By far the highest reason (at 42%) is No Market Need for Product.
How do entrepreneurs solve product-market fit today?
Many go through accelerators and incubators, where the process itself helps to validate their idea. Would-be entrepreneurs apply with their idea, receive some cash in return for giving up hefty equity, and start developing the product. Validation check-points are built-in throughout the process.
However, the accelerator and incubator space has become competitive. It has gone from “anyone with an idea can apply” to “you are too early for us to be profitable by investing our time on you”. That doesn’t stop determined entrepreneurs, but the problem still exists. The depth of the problem is directly proportional to the number of applications to these accelerators. As more and more recognize the coming threat of technological unemployment in the corporate world, the number of applications grow exponentially. On average, members of the Global Accelerator Network (GAN) only accept 2.1 percent of applications.
What’s the solution?
Get an approval from your employer that you are working on your project. Most employers like Google allows this. While you’re still employed, form a weekend team. This is a small group of people, who are excited by your idea and want to help launch your company, ranging from mentors to the product builders. Keep iterating until you get to the first customer. Your full-time job shouldn't get in the way of starting a company. By lowering your risk, you should be able to validate your ideas before making the big decision of quitting your job. If your validation works the way you expect it to, quitting your job will be a no-brainer. There will be so much demand for your great idea that remaining employed until a robot takes your job will make no sense whatsoever.
Almost anyone can build a product, but an experienced mentor/advisor is critical to help make sure you build a product that people will love.
That’s why we’ve started Team Leo with A.I. In five months it will take you from idea to your first customer, without having to quit your job. During the program our AI technology provides the help by matching you with an advisor, product engineers, designers, and marketers. We’re taking the growing risk of technological unemployment seriously and we want to help as many employees build great businesses before it’s too late. We hope you will join us.
Clapping also helps other employees #getstarted.