# Reality of Commercial AI World from a 16 Year Old's Perspective > Source: > Published: 2026-07-09 20:16:50+00:00 Let me tell you who I am first. I'm 16, a mad scientist. Started coding and AI at 12 — before ChatGPT existed. Built AI voice assistants in 2022 when nobody knew what AI was. Worked 10 hours a day at 12, building anonymously. I HAVE 1 THING: ASK ME TO BUILD ANYTHING — IMPOSSIBLE OR POSSIBLE — I WILL FIGURE IT OUT. AI, MATHS, SCIENCE, WHATEVER. THAT'S IT. At 15, I started selling AI automation and voice agents. Cold called, cold emailed, worked hundreds of hours for 4 straight months. Never got a single sale. Fine — selling wasn't my strength. Then I tried building real products — made an OpenClaw clone that ran on low-end laptops, built AI researchers. I'm not a salesman. I'm the guy who if you say "build Claude from scratch including model training" — I'll somehow do it. But "build something cool" — I freeze. Still, I tried the startup routes. Here's what I found: 1) INVESTORS & VCs: Completely opposite of what they sound. They claim to find talent and take risks. They don't. A16Z has 1-1.5% selection. They invest in ex-Google employees, ex-DeepMind CTOs, founders who already built million-dollar companies. What about the 14-year-old who didn't know what you wanted? What about that 25-year-old building AI agents before OpenClaw and Claude Code existed — you just weren't comfortable investing in talented unknowns. VCs lost their entire meaning trying to be "safe." 2) FOUNDER STUDIOS: 10,000 ultra-talented people apply. Maybe 1,000 are genuinely strong. 100 get selected. The other 9,900 showed they can build anything, anyhow — but you wanted people with 10 years at Google, ML degrees, millions in the bank. You wanted morons with credentials over builders with capability. 3) BUILD IN PUBLIC — COMPLETELY DEAD: Among 100% who try, 10% succeed, and 9% of those are AI slop YouTubers with zero real skill. Reddit, X, GitHub — only giants with existing traction get seen. A developer starting today gets 0-1 viewers and zero forks. Community is gone. 4) JOBS: Small AI startups want years of experience. Medium companies want 10 degrees for junior roles. Giant AI companies want 5 years experience + ML degree. And to GET that experience you go to small companies — who also want experience. THE LOOP HAS NO ENTRY POINT. Fellowships say "freshers welcome, any age" then in fine print: "ML degree, Rust/Python, 18+." Their brains are stuck in 2015 while their tools are from 2035. You know why 90% of AI startups fail? They're selling AI, not using it. They still want manual coders in interviews for Applied AI Engineer roles — while Anthropic spent billions building models that score top on coding benchmarks. And even the owners of those model companies still have 2005 mentality: degrees and manual coding. HOW TO ACTUALLY HIRE TALENT: Launch an impossible challenge. Automated evaluation — answer is right or wrong, no 10-day human review. Winners go straight to final interview. That's it. OpenAI's Parameter Golf was close. Nothing else comes close. I'm tired. It's been years. Build in public — closed. Freelancing — trap. Investors — too cautious. Jobs — need experience and age. NO WAY LEFT. But if somehow you read this far — THANK YOU, THAT'S ALL I CAN SAY IF I BECOME SUCCESSFUL, I WILL READ THIS POST AGAIN, IF I DIDN'T , STILL I WILL READ THIS POST AGAIN I DONT KNOW MAN, ITS TODAY IS 10 JULY 2026, I AM VANSH SHARMA NOW , I AM SIGNING OFF THANK YOU I HAVE STRGGLED A LOT I HOPE YOU GUYS SUCCEED I DONT KNOW IF ANYONE IS READING OR NOT Comments URL: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48851812](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48851812) Points: 1 # Comments: 0