Comment by DannyBee

I get this is basically advice for young founders and entrepreneurs, but i would ignore that request and encourage 17 year olds to spend time trying to find a happy medium between work and life.

Being a super rich and an unhappy workaholic, or a super-impressive engineer who wakes up one day at 45 and realizes they regret wasting half their life (I ran into way too many of these) is a much worse fate than "not being rich from your startup" and working a relatively regular job while feeling fulfilled and happy by more than just work.

Especially in the US, which is uniquely bad at this and encourages people to work themselves to death, mental health and work life balance are much more valuable things for 17 year olds to focus on than finding good startup ideas.

In case you think i'm being a bit dramatic, let's look at the state of 17 year old mental health in the heart of Silicon Valley:

"The City of Palo Alto and the Palo Alto Unified School District approved a funded contract to place 24/7 human security guards and monitors at all four local Caltrain grade crossings, including the Churchill Avenue crossing directly adjacent to Palo Alto High School."

(in case it's not obvious, it's because of suicides by high school students)

The 17 year olds do not need advice on better startups, and this situation will never get better if we focus our advice on how to be better at work instead of how to be better at life. This will require redirecting the conversations.