At London Tech Week, the city tried to crown itself the worldâs AI capital. Keir Starmer called AI âthe next revolution,â splurged a fresh ÂŁ1bn on UKâs compute power, and shared the stage with Nvidiaâs Jensen Huang, who rolled out the âenvy of the worldâ platitude for Britainâs AI scene.
But the sharpest reality check on AI didnât 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:
âIf youâre not adapting to AI, f* you. Youâre done.â â Micha Kaufman
Kaufmanâs 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.
Hereâs what you need to know from the two conversations đđť
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Upskill or exit: the AI era is ruthless
1ď¸âŁ No one will save you
Kaufmanâs reality check:
âWhy do you think itâs my responsibility to make you better as professionals? ⌠If youâre not going to take the time to make yourself valuable, to embrace reality, youâre doomed. Iâm not going to help you if you donât want to do this, youâre either going to be poor or a burden on society.â
The safety net is gone. If youâre waiting for corporate to upskill you, youâve already lost.
Millennial Master Oliver Yonchev (cocreatd) agreed:
âThe 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 wonât exist in the future. So you can either complain about that⌠or you can do something about it.â
2ď¸âŁ Automate yourself, or be automated
Kaufmanâs told his staff bluntly:
âMy 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.â
If you automate yourself, youâll solve higher-value problems. If you donât, the market will automate you.
The alternative? Oliver Yonchev believes youâll have to build your own thing:
âLarge 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.â
3ď¸âŁ Be more human, or get replaced
Kaufman says AI is a humanity filter:
âMaybe in a weird way whatâs happening with AI is forcing us to rediscover our humanity⌠If functions that we do as robots can be automated, thereâs no reason for a human being to do it. What makes you special is your ability to ideate, to think in a way thatâs unconventional.â
When the bots take over the busywork, whatâs left? Taste, judgement, unconventional problem-solving, emotional intelligence, and anything with nuance, ambiguity, and soul.
The new edge isnât technical, itâs 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:
âIf AI can take specialist roles, then thereâs a new demand: generalists over specialists.â
Mansoorâs answer isnât 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.
4ď¸âŁ The new market ruthlessness
Kaufman says you have to adapt or exit:
âIf you donât want to do this, youâre either going to be poor or a burden on society ⌠wake the [__] up, grow up. If you donât want to work, donât work. The exit from the building is on ground floor, bye-bye.â
In Kaufmanâs world, the future is binary:
No one is owed a living
Those who wait for a company to âfind a placeâ 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.
5ď¸âŁ Marketing juniors, say goodbye
Kaufmanâs warning:
âThe area that is going through the most fundamental disruption is actually marketing⌠Entry-level juniors have been replaced the fastest, definitely faster than developers.â
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 âjuniorâ or easy to automate, itâs already at risk
The winners will be those who master context, nuance, and advanced creativity, which are traits bots donât have (yet)
If youâre a founder or hiring manager: upgrade your expectations. The days of âhire and trainâ for entry roles are numbered.
No one will save you in the age of AI
No oneâs going to give you a future-proof career.
Not the government, not your CEO, not your manager.
Itâs on you (and your team) to become un-automatable.
If youâre waiting for permission or a helping hand, youâre already out of the race.
This week, London was the AI capital. Next week, itâll be back in Silicon Valley.
The hype moves on, the lesson stands: adapt or disappear.
P.S.: History doesnât 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 âwhite-collarâ and knowledge work, weâre heading for another skills migration.
More from Millennial Masters on AI
AI is killing mediocrity: How to survive the next era 𪽠| Oliver Yonchev (cocreatd)
AI isnât just another trend. Itâs killing average work, lowering the cost of building, and letting more founders move faster. If youâre not pushing for excellence, youâll be left behind.
