A recent report tells a story that evokes mixed feelings for many parents. Andrew Castellano, a sophomore at Harvard University, returned home during winter break and informed his parents of his decision: he was taking a leave of absence to work full-time on his AI startup. His mother burst into tears upon hearing the news. His investors, however, did not cry. Instead, they bought him an apartment.
Castellano and his co-founder, Nebiyu Demie, both computer science freshmen, met while working campus jobs during their first year. After leaving school, they moved out of their dorm and directly into an apartment building purchased by venture capital firm Link Ventures near MIT. Their neighbors included three fraternity members developing AI to help insurance companies sell more policies.
This is not an isolated case. Reporters have found that in the current AI startup boom, venture capital firms are no longer satisfied with just providing funding. They are purchasing apartments, furnishing them with IKEA furniture and kitchenware, and offering teenage and twenty-something founders services like housekeeping, private chefs, and cleaners. Some are even spending money to convert garages into gyms or add cold plunge pools in yards. The goal is singular: to ensure these young people can work seven days a week, rarely needing to leave the building.
The logic is straightforward: fewer distractions mean more waking hours available for coding. A professor with thirty years of experience in Silicon Valley, upon seeing this report, offered a profound observation: "Look at these young people—Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman—they all started ventures around age 20. But don't be fooled by their youth; they often already had a decade of experience tinkering with computers before turning 10. That's like mastering a skill from childhood."
This is not merely the story of a few偶然 gifted teenagers. On a data level, a generational shift is occurring. A report from global early-stage venture firm Antler, which analyzed 1,629 unicorn companies and 3,512 founders, reached a startling conclusion: the average age of AI unicorn founders has plummeted from 40 years old in 2020 to 29 in 2024—a drop of 11 years in just four years.
Even more intriguing is the opposite trend in other sectors. The average age of founders in non-AI unicorns has risen from 30 in 2014 to 34 in 2024. Only in the field of AI is the age trend sprinting in reverse. Why? Fridtjof Berge, co-founder of Antler, offers a precise explanation: "To stay fluent at the technological frontier, youth is an advantage. Because you've just learned the newest things." The pace of technological iteration in AI is so rapid that an architecture mastered six months ago might be obsolete today. The concept of "experience" in the AI world is transforming from an asset into a liability.
The professor's assessment aligns perfectly with this data: "These famous Silicon Valley companies are on one hand hiring high schoolers because they pick up new technologies faster; on the other hand, they are laying off coders from the previous generation because their jobs are being automated by AI. The current threshold is often mental maturity; they prefer to hire younger individuals, provided they are mentally mature enough."
The world's youngest self-made billionaires are the three 22-year-old founders of the AI recruitment platform Mercor, who achieved unicorn valuation by October 2025. On average, AI startups reach a $1 billion valuation in just 4.7 years, a full two years faster than companies in other industries.
Castellano made a statement that might keep many parents awake at night: "If you wait until after graduation, all the good ideas will be taken." This first-generation immigrant college student—his parents moved to the US from Ecuador and Venezuela—made one of the most radical decisions of his generation: forfeiting a Harvard degree to bet on a narrow window of opportunity in AI entrepreneurship.
He is not alone. A 21-year-old, after completing the Y Combinator accelerator program, raised $5 million for his defense-tech AI company, SalesPatriot. He now lives in a house in San Francisco with 10 employees, with investors covering rent, private chef, and cleaner costs. Their logic is to eliminate all life friction, allowing founders to pour all their energy into the product.
The founder of Link Ventures spent $5.4 million last year to buy a six-story apartment building near MIT specifically for young founders. The apartments are furnished with IKEA furniture, a plant, and Martha Stewart-branded kitchenware. A telling detail of the AI era found in the kitchen is the absence of fancy appliances, featuring only three items: an enormous fish pot, a large rice container, and a griddle capable of batch-cooking a week's worth of breakfast at once.
Starting a company has never been easier, nor has it ever required fewer people. New AI tools can help write code, debug software, build websites, and even create marketing plans. One person, augmented by AI, can now accomplish what once required an entire team.
The professor has a keen sense of this shift: "Students from our lab work on Silicon Valley projects with top talents there. If you perform adeptly, they seek you out. My son created an environmental protection app; based on that project, he received a scholarship to Berkeley and a full-time offer from Uber at age 19. You don't need to wait for university graduation; they look at what you've done, not what you've studied. Nowadays, if high school students have the capability, they are directly recruited by major companies."
What does this signify? Not everyone should drop out of school, but everyone needs to wake up to this reality. It must be stated plainly: not every child should leave their studies to start a business. Castellano could successfully take a leave of absence because he had already begun AI projects at Harvard, accumulated technical skills, found a co-founder, and gained the trust of investors. His departure wasn't "abandoning his studies" but rather his "studies could no longer keep pace with his progress."
What truly warrants deep consideration for every parent is not "whether to let my child drop out," but three key things:
First, the window of opportunity in the AI era is genuinely short. Many founders state clearly that there is a brief window to build something before AI systems become smarter than humans. This window might only last two or three years. The professor's words are more direct: "If you truly master skills from childhood, these days you can become a super-individual. Look at those of us who understand AI; in Silicon Valley, we earn seven-figure salaries." For parents, this means don't wait. Start exposing your child to AI tools and real projects today. The goal isn't necessarily to have them drop out, but to equip them with the fundamental literacy required for the AI era, regardless of their chosen path. Spending 30 minutes daily having your child use AI for a small task is like helping them practice an essential skill from a young age.
Second, an entrepreneurial mindset is more important than entrepreneurship itself. The founder of SalesPatriot offered a particularly wise insight: "You need to make every employee feel that because they've learned these incredible things, they've become highly valuable—even if your company fails." This means true education is not about teaching children how to win, but how to be valuable in any circumstance. Individuals who can use AI, execute projects, and solve real problems are the most sought-after talent in the market, regardless of their startup's success or failure. The professor has been practicing this philosophy for thirty years: "Learning theory is inferior to studying cases; studying cases is inferior to doing cases; doing cases is inferior to playing with cases. Our lab engages children in real projects from a young age!" How to implement this? Don't let your child just practice exam problems. Have them create a real small product during summer break. The process is more important than the outcome; doing is a hundred times better than not doing.
Third, discovering a child's innate talent is more critical than selecting which university they attend. Bill Gates started tinkering with computers at 13, Mark Zuckerberg was writing code in high school, and Sam Altman dropped out of Stanford at 19 to start a company. While they succeeded before turning 20, they had already been immersed in their passionate fields for a decade. The professor notes: "Every child is born with unique talent. The most crucial element is discovering where a child's talent lies—their innate gift, their passion, the thing that makes their eyes light up. Mastering the first two foundational skills can lead a child to become a prodigy, enter top schools and companies, and achieve financial freedom before 30. Mastering the third makes the child even more exceptional." Don't rush to map out a "Harvard -> Big Tech -> High Salary" path for your child. First, spend time observing: What captivates them? What makes them forget to eat? That is their talent. Your task is not to sculpt it, but to protect it.
Conclusion When venture capital firms are willing to spend millions on apartment buildings, chefs, and nannies just so twenty-year-olds can focus on coding—when the average age of AI unicorn founders plummets by 11 years in four years—when a Harvard student is willing to bring his mother to tears to seize the AI opportunity—these signals point not to a multiple-choice question about "whether to drop out," but to a fundamental rewriting of the era's underlying logic: those who act first will own the future.
Not every child needs to drop out of school to start a business, but every child needs one thing: to find their innate talent as early as possible, and then use the most powerful AI tools of our time to polish it. As the professor clearly stated: "The best education is immersion; most abilities require foundational practice from a young age." Waiting until after university graduation to begin? By then, the best ideas might indeed be taken. And the children who started building from around age 10 are already on their way.
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