What do 3 founders in their mid-20s doing $5 to $50 million a year have in common?

Not one of them started with a market thesis.

At a founder dinner Monday, all three told the same origin story. Something that just bothered them.

Alfred built Shredder because he didn't feel safe skiing alone. That was the whole origin story, told like it was the most obvious thing anyone had ever done. It has users around the world now.

Cormac is working on clean water access.

Hunter has been through multiple app exits and is pointing that product instinct at AI.

Every person at that table picked a problem they actually cared about and refused to be talked out of it.

Turns out that's the thing that scales.

A niche problem you understand deeply beats a big problem you're guessing at, because the internet will always find the other people who have it.

I was nowhere near this at their age. Most of what I know I had to figure out myself, over a long time.

That's exactly why I left optimistic. Every generation of founders starts further along than the last one, with more leverage than anyone had before. If this is what mid-20s looks like now, I'd love to see what they're building in forty years.

Thanks to Jaimin Desai at AppCap for the invite and Zach at Helium for cohosting.