I’m not entirely sure when or why I saved the article “You Are Not Late” by Kevin Kelly, but I read it for the first time the other night, and it resonated with me because it felt as true today as I imagine it felt when it was published ten years ago. It felt so true that initially, I didn’t realize I was reading something published in 2014, even though the year is referenced a few times. Specifically, the tongue-in-cheek reference to looking back and lamenting that product opportunities were as easy as picking “almost any category X and add some AI to it, put it on the cloud” felt of the moment in 2024.
However, what stuck with me the most was the rallying call that there is no better time to start something on the internet than today.
There has never been a better time in the whole history of the world to invent something. There has never been a better time with more opportunities, more openings, lower barriers, higher benefit/risk ratios, better returns, greater upside, than now. Right now, this minute. This is the time that folks in the future will look back at and say, “Oh to have been alive and well back then!
That just hit me in the core of my being. When I was in my 20s, I wanted to write for a living and even tried publishing content online a few times. But then I stopped and focused on my career and life, and with each day that passed, inertia set in more deeply. I continued to write — effectively even — in my career. But I never felt like that writing belonged to me. Both emotionally and, well, according to the terms of my employment, that writing belonged to the company.
So, in the spirit of not letting time and inertia win, I am pressing publish on this post and starting something today. Something for me.