Why Fast Learning Is the Only Protection Against AI Disruption | Jody Glidden - Tech Entrepreneur & CEO

In this lessons episode, explore how AI and automation are reshaping the job market and forcing a complete rethink of how we build careers. Learn why adaptability and lifelong learning are now essential survival tools. Learn how logic rather than specific skills will define success in an AI driven world and learn why the future may belong to companies of one rather than massive corporate teams. So what are how are people going to learn or upskill if you know technology is completely replacing them like I think there's going to hit people coming out of college and university the hardest immediately because I don't know where they're going to get jobs anymore. No I think that you know I have a daughter now that's that's 16 years old and I think the most important thing is to be agile. You have to expect that the the job market that you're going to enter is not foreseeable right now and and so one of the the ways that I've always adapted anyway and is is by being open to learning and just constantly whatever that new thing is there's always going to be a new thing and whatever that new thing is if you're on top of it not trying to outsource it to people you know I'm all weekend all evening I'm like constantly watching videos and studying and things like that reading books like that's going to be a more important skill than ever because if we're expecting to okay we're going to go do high school we're going to go do college and then we're done learning yeah you're done yeah and I think that this is something that people first realized during COVID like if they haven't upskilled and they got laid off during COVID then they tried to get back into the job market and they were just doing the same job for the past you know 20 years and they have an upskilled then there was a lot of friction with them getting a new job now AI is making it even more difficult for those people I think that everybody has to start acting like an entrepreneur that's really that's going to be a trend yeah like I can see now already that the company sizes are shrinking dramatically right you're seeing at the big companies like meta and Google and all these companies are shrinking headcount and and still achieving the same and and exceeding revenue too and and I think there was a thing about meta just shrunk headcount exceeded revenue numbers and people were giving them a hard time like why would you lay people off I'm like well will those people do like what yeah I know like do at meta or Google when there's exactly people are more productive and you have to think the company's mandate is to grow the company grow the revenue decrease expense it's their job it's their job so as much as it you know from um from uh oh it's nice if the company just employs people to employ people at the end of the day no companies ever going to act that way so you have to understand how companies act and then you're conduct yourself accordingly that's the world we live yeah and that's the world you know our children are going to move into and everything so you know I think I've seen it also at the smaller scale right because I've done a lot of companies from zero to you know they call it zero to one but these companies from zero to a hundred or several hundred people are now I think you can still you can build those same kind of companies with fewer heads yeah and and so if you can you have to because the investors will only give you that much money so I mean you've built you've built several companies if you look at if you look at how you build in 2025 versus how you used to build what are some of the biggest differences like when you first started out what was what was like the first company because I would have been how many years ago I don't want it I don't want to date you but it was it was a couple of years ago right early 90s yeah so when you first started that company what was notably different in how you had to think through getting something from zero to one getting it off the ground raising money hiring I'm just I want to pay the picture for how much things have changed and how quickly things have changed yeah you know I so my first one was like in the early 90s and then the late 90s and and back then I think it was it was it kind of like what we were very cash constrained back then and then the two in the early 2000s all of a sudden cash was free and now it's starting to get more cash constrained again because people investors know that you can do it on less cash so back then I was doing things like profitably for example you know because that was the idea yeah exactly yeah but I think now we're moving into we're you know we're still doing the same the same kind of thing where we're doing a cash constrained but it's incredible what we're able to get done in a short period of time in in postalize my new company from quarter to quarter when I go back and show customers or prospects the the feature list that we've accomplished with such a small team it's like blowing people away so when you say blown away what what is so impressive what is it doing because not everybody like not everybody goes not everybody's in the weeds on this all we everyone hears about like no code low code right but that's all that's almost people ever hear about it they don't actually know what that means and I don't even think that that is even AI it really it's not yeah so that's those things like bubble and things like that flutter but but this is even beyond that I'm not sure that those are even I think those are becoming obsolete now because now you can actually make actual you know Java code Python code you know no JS code yeah having like not a lot of knowledge I saw a guy on a podcast he was one of the business guys at Uber and he created like a very very successful app just him it's generation he was not a technical guy he was like a business development guy yeah he has no staff it's just him and he taught himself you know what nowadays they call vibe coding yeah yeah and he built it and is that just as simple as going into chat GPT and saying literally I need to build this app can you code it for me and then taking that code and then hosting it somewhere well or is there most of the time that's going to get it wrong yeah I get it but if I look at what was happening say a year and a half ago the code that it was producing versus the code that it produces today there's very few errors versus back then it was you know a lot of errors so that's just continues to get better and better on top of that you have you you have to have knowledge of like the more knowledge you have of coding the the better you're going to be at it because if it's like 90% of the way there then you can take a look at it and that's still tons of time saved exactly yeah that's what a lot of the developers are talking about is that it gets them 90% of the way there yeah although now with products like cursor and some of the newer models like O3 I'd say you can get it closer to like 95 96 percent there in the past you said that intro high was going to be your last company before AI came along so I mean I'm laughing because I sit down with so many entrepreneurs and whenever they say they're done it's always a lie yeah so what was it about what was it about I mean I think I know the answer but I want to hear it from you like what was it about generative AI that was so exciting for you I know that it's efficient I know that it can do incredible things I know that it's the future but you don't have to work again so why do you want to build in generative AI and go from zero to one all over again like every time it's like an extra great hair right and it's it's not less painful yeah I know if the coding may be easier and all this stuff but but it is for everybody else in the world too yes I'm exactly now exactly yeah no I would say that yes I was going to be done and but I think now what got me are really a couple of things I'm really worried about our future generations a little bit so I think that there might only be you know maybe three to ten more years left to earn before the middle class could be completely wiped out there because there might be so many blue collar jobs and white collar jobs that are replaced white collar with the AI that we know now and blue collar with the robotics and everything that's coming maybe five years from now that I feel like maybe the maybe I need to earn more for yeah help with my future generations my daughter and you know all of that I can ask chat GPT for anything what do I actually have to know I know I know how to interpret the output of a generative chat tool so what do I actually have to know just enough to interpret it and prompt it or well I think really with all of those whether it's you know physics or chemistry or math or coding well they out what threads through them all is logic you know and so the better we all get at logic then I that's that's an adaptable skill that you'll be able to drop yourself into any environment learn up you know some domain and make yourself useful I think like building a company is also a process of logic you have to figure out what what should the product be or the service be you're figuring out you know what's the market sizing what's the competition like what how do you pick a good idea you have to learn all about how to pick yeah then you have to figure out well how do I persuade an investor and you learn all about that but these are all logic problems right and and so if you don't get the logic skills built up in your early years you're probably going to struggle later on when probably like you said the main job will be building a company it might be a company of one it could be a company of one and I mean one of my favorite charts is actually looking at how many people it takes to make a million dollars in annual revenue and if you look at the graph over you know a period of times it's a 1940s or 50s it used to say pretend it was like 50 people and now to make a million dollar you know ARR annual recurring revenue or annual revenue company it's one person yeah the guy that was so and not even just million it could be several million with a chrome extension or what they're they're they're predicting I think the same Altman might have said this but a lot of people have that they think that they're in the next several years there's going to be somebody that will make a billion dollar company with one person thanks for tuning in if you found this valuable don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode and if you want to dive deeper into this conversation check out the links in the description to watch the full episode see you in the next one