The biggest thing missing from this talk -- something that would have been easy to include, even for a younger audience -- is that the majority of startups fail, and even many startups that do well enough end up making their founders less money than if they went to work for another company.
It feels irresponsible to tell kids how they can build the next Google, without also telling them how likely it is they won't succeed at it.
Granted, most people in their early 20s have very little to lose, so a failed startup may not be much of a problem, outside of the stress and emotional effects.
I mean, like most advice from my generation and prior ones, the notion that people in their 20s can't fuck up too badly because they have little to lose applies considerably less well to all but the fairly affluent people in their 20s today. For many, taking risks means being gated out of the financial system by bad credit, being behind in an unforgiving job market, and possibly even destitution if they don't have a safety net of some kind
To be clear, this was always true to some degree, but inequality is higher, industries have more power and thus workers have less, and safety nets that don't come from your parents being well-off are weaker (and fewer people's parents are well-off) than when I was a kid, and this has actually been true for a few subsequent generations of kids
It feels irresponsible to tell kids how they can build the next Google, without also telling them how likely it is they won't succeed at it.
Granted, most people in their early 20s have very little to lose, so a failed startup may not be much of a problem, outside of the stress and emotional effects.