Why Young Founders Are Winning — and How I'm Accelerating It

It's all over the headlines, and yes, it's absolutely true: young founders are not just participating in, but leading this new frontier of artificial intelligence.

At Harvard and MIT alone, 11 of 27 AI unicorns have been founded by under-25 founders, representing $82 billion in value created. Scale AI, Perplexity, Cursor, Cognition, Decagon, and Etched are just a few examples of category-defining companies built by young technical minds with fresh ambition.

As a young GP myself, I couldn't be more excited, and I have a huge edge to win here.

Two Mental Models Explaining the Rise of Young Founders

So why are young founders—especially those from Harvard and MIT—winning at such a high rate in AI? I use two mental models to frame it:

1. The Fall of Permission

In 2006, AWS unlocked a world where anyone could start a company without buying expensive servers. Fast-forward to today, and AI has lowered the bar even further. Anyone can now build almost anything with minimal capital, minimal headcount, and no need to ask for permission.

The result? Founding is nearly fully democratized.

2. Naval's Four Forms of Leverage

Naval Ravikant famously described four kinds of leverage: labor, capital, code, and media.

• •Traditionally: labor and capital were prerequisites for building a company. That meant young founders needed permission—from people willing to work for them and from investors willing to fund them.
• •From 2006–2021: code was the main permissionless lever. If you could write code, you could start.
• •Today: media and code have become the two most valuable levers—and young founders have an enormous advantage.

AI agents have democratized building product. Two determined founders can now use AI to substitute for labor across engineering, design, sales, and operations. Meanwhile, distribution is dominated by media, which Gen Z founders understand intuitively.

Labor and capital no longer gatekeep the zero-to-one journey. Young founders can build first, then ask for permission later—at a much higher leverage point, once traction is already proven.

The New Barrier: Insights and Ideas

Ironically, the biggest constraint young founders face today isn't capital or labor—it's insight. They may lack deep industry expertise, which means they sometimes struggle to identify the "right" problem.

But this can also be an edge. Without entrenched assumptions, young founders see the opportunity set differently. They are more willing to reimagine industries and challenge what others assume is impossible.

The key is to put them in environments where they can see high-value problems firsthand.

021T's Approach: Accelerating Young Founders

At 021T, we believe this AI supercycle will produce multiple trillion-dollar companies—and that young founders will be behind them. Harvard has already given the world two $1T+ companies from dropouts (Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates). We believe this era will create more.

Here's how we're helping accelerate that outcome:

1. Forward-Deployed Founders

We place young technical talent directly inside legacy industries and with CEOs of major organizations. By embedding them at the source, they can observe real problems, identify opportunities, and ideate solutions that others can't see.

2. Micro Grants for Exploration

We provide small, fast grants to help young builders test projects, hack together prototypes, and converge on ideas worth scaling. These micro-bets help unlock ambition and speed up the zero-to-one journey.

3. Upscaling Ambition

Our name—021T—reflects our mission: to write the first check and help the next company go zero-to-one-trillion. We're not just backing startups; we're fueling ambition, pushing founders to pursue legacy-scale outcomes, and giving them the scaffolding to succeed.

Informed Optimism and Work Ethic

The final ingredient is mindset. Young founders bring a blend of informed optimism and relentless work ethic. They're not bogged down by "this is how it's always been done." Instead, they wake up asking, "Why not me? Why not now?"

And with AI as their co-founder, they are moving at unprecedented speed.

If you're interested to learn more, please contact Devon Triplett at devon@021t.vc.