Good morning. I'm writing this one from a balcony on Oahu, coffee in hand, palm trees and open ocean out in front of me. The kind of view you usually only see on a screensaver.
I'm not telling you that to brag. A decade ago, a morning like this was a someday for me too. So here's the one thing I want you to take out of this issue: you are standing in a 1995 moment, and most of the people around you cannot see it yet.
Picture it. It's 1995. You wake up knowing everything you know today about what the internet is going to become.
What do you do?
You don't overthink it. You put everything you've got into being part of it. And in all honesty, you'd probably be a success story right now.
That's not a daydream. That's about where we are with AI today. You're standing in it.
Here's the part most people miss. We only ever hear about the few. The Steve Jobs, the Bill Gates. But the real story of the internet boom was never the billionaires. It was the tens of thousands of regular people who quietly got comfortable.
Look at Microsoft. By some counts its stock created around 12,000 millionaires, and plenty of them weren't engineers. They were secretaries, marketing assistants, and front desk folks who took a little stock instead of a bigger paycheck. Then about ten years later, Web 2.0 did it all over again. Bloggers, Etsy sellers, YouTubers, people running a real one-person business out of a spare bedroom.
Nobody made a movie about them. They changed their families' lives anyway.
If you're reading this, you already raised your hand. You signed up to build something real with AI. We've been showing you that anyone can do this, and do it fast. That you can try five things this week and keep the one you love.
So if you're stuck, or you started strong and lost steam, stop for a second and look at where you're actually standing.
You're early. Again. Most people aren't.
And if you've got folks in your life rolling their eyes at all this, remember something. Those same people would have told you the internet was a fad in 1995. Getting doubted isn't proof you're wrong. A lot of the time it just means you're early.
Yes, this will make billionaires. Maybe even trillionaires. That could genuinely be you.
But it's also going to make tens of thousands of quiet wins. People who build something real, live a good life, and never get famous for a second of it. People who take care of their family, help their friends, and every now and then start something that changes the world.
You don't have to be the headline. You just have to build.
Here's what got me thinking about all this in the first place.
Last night we ate dinner out by the water, and about twenty feet in front of our table, Jude Bellingham and his girlfriend Ashlyn Castro spent the whole meal getting in and out of their cabana and playing in the sand. If you don't follow soccer: he plays for Real Madrid and England, and one week earlier he had sealed England's 6-4 win over France in the World Cup third place game, in stoppage time. Seven goals in that tournament, the most any Englishman has ever scored in a single World Cup. She's an American model and influencer. Same beach as us, same sunset, same sand.
At one point two teenage girls recognized him and asked for a picture. He said yes right away, and Ashlyn took their phone, lined the girls up, and directed the shot for them. Nobody turned it into a scene. It was just a nice thing that happened between a few people on a beach, and honestly it made me a fan.
And that's what I keep coming back to. A week ago he was playing in a World Cup. Last night he was barefoot in the sand, taking a picture with two kids who couldn't believe their luck. The gap between the dream and the people already living it is a lot smaller than it looks from the outside. They started somewhere too. They put in a pile of reps that nobody clapped for. They just didn't quit.
This is exactly the kind of thing we figure out together, every day.
So here's your steal for the week. Take the idea you keep talking yourself out of, and give it one hour with your AI tonight. Not a business plan. One rough version. You're not betting your future, you're just getting in the game.
And go in knowing this: what you start with probably won't be what you finish with. That isn't a problem, that's the whole point. Start anyway.
You're early. Go build.
Danny
Claude, Actually is a program of the AI Actually Foundation, a California nonprofit public benefit corporation. We teach everyday people how to build a real business with AI, and give the whole roadmap away. No selling, no catch.
AI Actually Foundation is a California nonprofit public benefit corporation. We provide free education and are not a substitute for legal, tax, or financial advice. Not affiliated with Anthropic.