📺 Watch now on Substack or YouTube | 🎧 Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts
This week’s Millennial Master is Simon Jenner, co-founder of Million Labs.
Simon has spent the last two decades building, breaking, and rebuilding startups. He sold his first business in his mid-twenties, shaped the UK accelerator scene before it was fashionable, and has since helped launch more than 1,900 startups.
What makes this conversation timely is what he’s seeing now.
AI can build your product faster than ever. Vibe coding has collapsed the cost and time of execution. Non-technical founders can ship things that used to take teams and six-figure budgets. But that hasn’t made startups easier.
In this episode, Simon explains why sales and distribution are now the real bottleneck, why most founders still quit at the same stage, and why the economics of startups have changed without changing the hardest part of the job.
We also get into side hustles versus all-in bets, why niche ideas suddenly work, what breaks when everyone can build, and the uncomfortable truth about launching before you feel ready.
If you’re building with AI, or thinking about it, this episode will change how you think about effort, risk, and what actually moves the needle.
🔗 Find Simon on LinkedIn
Takeaways from Simon’s episode
1️⃣ Building is no longer the hard part
AI and vibe coding have collapsed the cost and time required to ship an MVP. What once demanded £100k and a year of development can now be achieved for a few thousand pounds in a matter of weeks. That shift changes who gets to start, how quickly ideas move, and how much personal risk founders need to take at the beginning.
2️⃣ Sales and distribution now decide who survives
As execution becomes cheaper, attention becomes the constraint. Many startups struggle because founders underestimate how difficult it is to reach customers beyond their immediate network and how quickly acquisition costs stack up once paid channels enter the picture.
3️⃣ Starting small is a strategic advantage
Million Labs sees the same pattern play out again and again. Founders who focus on one customer, then ten, then a hundred, build momentum faster than those chasing scale too early. AI has made narrow markets commercially viable because serving a focused audience no longer requires heavy upfront spend.
4️⃣ Side hustles create better environments
A large share of successful startups Simon works with began alongside paid work. That financial breathing room reduces pressure, extends the learning window, and allows founders to respond to customer feedback without making rushed decisions driven by cash burn.
5️⃣ Delaying launch causes more damage than weak ideas
Many founders hesitate because they want their product to feel finished before anyone sees it. That moment rarely arrives. Progress accelerates once real users interact with something imperfect, because direct feedback exposes what matters far faster than internal refinement ever can.
In this episode we cover:
00:00 Introduction to Simon Jenner
01:24 Selling a business at 25 (and what he got wrong)
04:26 Building a startup scene before it existed
06:36 Why most accelerators don’t actually work
09:13 What separates builders from wannabe founders
10:50 The one-million startup ambition
14:47 No-code, vibe coding, and the collapse of build costs
23:00 How startups should really go to market
28:17 Why marketing costs kill more startups than tech
32:37 Founders must sell or stall
35:50 How Million Labs uses AI internally
38:27 The traits Simon sees in winners
42:00 The ideas that still excite him
44:40 What off-road driving teaches about startups
45:48 Protecting life outside the business
49:03 Launch before you feel ready
54:13 The myths founders need to let go of
The era of the brand is over 👑
The internet’s golden age of branding is dead. In a world of platform “enshittification,” algorithmic paywalls, and bottomless digital noise, it’s no longer enough to polish your logo or chase the perfect tagline.
