Adapt or exit 🚪 AI’s cull is already here
This is the new founder reality
At London Tech Week, the city tried to crown itself the world’s AI capital. Keir Starmer called AI “the next revolution,” splurged a fresh £1bn on UK’s compute power, and shared the stage with Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, who rolled out the “envy of the world” platitude for Britain’s AI scene.
But the sharpest reality check on AI didn’t come from the Prime Minister or a $3.5tn company CEO. It came via the 20VC podcast with Harry Stebbings, where Fiverr founder and CEO Micha Kaufman laid out what nobody else in the AI hype cycle dares to say:
“If you’re not adapting to AI, f* you. You’re done.” — Micha Kaufman
Kaufman’s take is pure founder energy: no one is coming to save you, no one will upskill you, and the only way to survive the AI shake-up is to make yourself indispensable, again and again.
I heard the same reality on my latest Millennial Masters podcast with Oliver Yonchev (co-founder of cocreatd), where we skipped the theory and talked survival.
Here’s what you need to know from the two conversations 👇🏻
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Upskill or exit: the AI era is ruthless
1️⃣ No one will save you
Kaufman’s reality check:
“Why do you think it’s my responsibility to make you better as professionals? … If you’re not going to take the time to make yourself valuable, to embrace reality, you’re doomed. I’m not going to help you if you don’t want to do this, you’re either going to be poor or a burden on society.”
The safety net is gone. If you’re waiting for corporate to upskill you, you’ve already lost.
Millennial Master Oliver Yonchev (cocreatd) agreed:
“The fallacy of a stable long-term career has gone. The paths that myself and people that came before me had, the opportunities they had, they no longer exist and they certainly won’t exist in the future. So you can either complain about that… or you can do something about it.”
2️⃣ Automate yourself, or be automated
Kaufman’s told his staff bluntly:
“My expectation of you is that each and every one of you … is going to replace 100% of what you do with automation… If you can automate 100% of what you do, now you have 100% of your time free to figure out what you can do that cannot be automated.”
If you automate yourself, you’ll solve higher-value problems. If you don’t, the market will automate you.
The alternative? Oliver Yonchev believes you’ll have to build your own thing:
“Large companies will get smaller, which means displacement, which means talented people will have to choose agency and have to build their own thing… Sometimes people need a jolt to send them in the right direction.”
3️⃣ Be more human, or get replaced
Kaufman says AI is a humanity filter:
“Maybe in a weird way what’s happening with AI is forcing us to rediscover our humanity… If functions that we do as robots can be automated, there’s no reason for a human being to do it. What makes you special is your ability to ideate, to think in a way that’s unconventional.”
When the bots take over the busywork, what’s left? Taste, judgement, unconventional problem-solving, emotional intelligence, and anything with nuance, ambiguity, and soul.
The new edge isn’t technical, it’s human. Mansoor Soomro, who leads Future of Work research at Teesside University (and whose book The Generalist Advantage I reviewed in a recent Booksmart edition), is blunt:
“If AI can take specialist roles, then there’s a new demand: generalists over specialists.”
Mansoor’s answer isn’t fighting the bots head-on, but learning to use AI as a tool, stretch your skills, and stay useful across more than one lane. Generalists win by connecting dots, adapting fast, and building new value on top of what the algorithms automate away.
Your brand, your business, your team must lean into what makes you weird and original. The rest is for the LLMs.
4️⃣ The new market ruthlessness
Kaufman says you have to adapt or exit:
“If you don’t want to do this, you’re either going to be poor or a burden on society … wake the [__] up, grow up. If you don’t want to work, don’t work. The exit from the building is on ground floor, bye-bye.”
In Kaufman’s world, the future is binary:
No one is owed a living
Those who wait for a company to “find a place” for them will get swept out by market forces
For founders, the bar just got higher for hiring and retention. Build teams of owners, not passengers.
5️⃣ Marketing juniors, say goodbye
Kaufman’s warning:
“The area that is going through the most fundamental disruption is actually marketing… Entry-level juniors have been replaced the fastest, definitely faster than developers.”
Everyone obsesses about AI replacing coders, but Kaufman points to a faster cull:
Entry-level roles in marketing and customer support are already vanishing
If your skill is “junior” or easy to automate, it’s already at risk
The winners will be those who master context, nuance, and advanced creativity, which are traits bots don’t have (yet)
If you’re a founder or hiring manager: upgrade your expectations. The days of “hire and train” for entry roles are numbered.
No one will save you in the age of AI
No one’s going to give you a future-proof career.
Not the government, not your CEO, not your manager.
It’s on you (and your team) to become un-automatable.
If you’re waiting for permission or a helping hand, you’re already out of the race.
This week, London was the AI capital. Next week, it’ll be back in Silicon Valley.
The hype moves on, the lesson stands: adapt or disappear.
P.S.: History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes
When steam engines and tractors hit the farms, entire rural communities had to find new ways to earn a living, swapping fields for factories. Now, as AI tools automate “white-collar” and knowledge work, we’re heading for another skills migration.
More from Millennial Masters on AI
AI is killing mediocrity: How to survive the next era 🪽 | Oliver Yonchev (cocreatd)
AI isn’t just another trend. It’s killing average work, lowering the cost of building, and letting more founders move faster. If you’re not pushing for excellence, you’ll be left behind.
