The Future Won’t Build Itself: We Need to Upskill the Next Generation

Chenai and Jo

Every few weeks, I read another post on LinkedIn celebrating the genius founder who plans to build the next billion-dollar company entirely on their own. No staff. No partners. No board. Just them, a laptop, and a stack of AI tools.

It’s positioned as the aspiration of every founder. Lean. Hyper-efficient. Frictionless. The ultimate form of personal leverage.

I can’t shake the feeling that something is very wrong here.

Because while a few people may actually pull it off, I don’t believe this is progress. In fact, I think it may be one of the clearest signs we are quietly regressing.

That model leaves millions of people with nowhere to start.

Yesterday I was reminded what real progress looks like.

I visited Jo Tasker FRSA co-founder of Community Coworking Limited, at her social enterprise hub near Blackfriars station in London. I left genuinely moved.

In an outdoor space that would otherwise sit empty, young people were being trained in brickwork. Nearby, a group of eight were learning painting and decorating. Real, practical skills. The kind of work we constantly say we need more of in the built environment. The kind of jobs that physically shape the world we live in.

Photos from my visit to Jo

Jo works with people who haven’t been handed easy opportunities. People who just need one door opened.

So while one half talks endlessly (and with glee!) about their intention to never employ anyone, people like Jo are enabling new jobs, new skills, and new futures.

But not enough people are. An article by Kevin Roose in The New York Times puts it perfectly: For Some Recent Graduates, the A.I. Job Apocalypse May Already Be Here.

It seems as though too many of us are already giving up on upskilling the next generation.

For most of human history, we built things together. We passed down skills. We created ways for people to contribute. And many of us grew companies that generated opportunity not just for founders, but for entire communities.

The one-person unicorn flips that model on its head. People become friction. Teams become inefficiency. Diversity of thought becomes optional. And success becomes something to hoard rather than something to share.

If this becomes our dominant model of entrepreneurship, it won’t benefit society.

It will simply concentrate wealth and opportunity into even fewer hands. It will hollow out entry-level jobs. It will choke off the development of new talent. And it will leave millions locked out of meaningful work while amplifying one person’s narrow perspective at global scale. We will be the first generation to give up on shaping the next stewards of our industries, institutions, and economies.

History is full of examples of what happens when we fail to invest in people.

The French Revolution. The Arab Spring. Even the rising economic and political instability in modern Western democracies. In every case, when too many people are excluded from work, from growth, from opportunity, the consequences don’t stay economic for long. They become political. They become social. And ultimately, they become destabilizing.

Investing in people isn’t charity. It’s basic economics.

We should be building systems that widen participation, not shrink it.

That’s exactly what I am trying to do with my impact venture askChenai, which I launched earlier this year. We support global executives with a brilliant team based in Zimbabwe.

The people behind this are smart, university-educated, and ambitious. And like millions globally, come from a cohort that was chronically underemployed.

But let me be clear. We are not a charity. We are genuinely creating value for small businesses around the world. We are simply Africans who want to participate in the global economy. Technology has made that possible. But only if we intentionally build these pathways.

Ashtley and Joy in a training exercise at askChenai

What Jo is doing, and what we are doing at askChenai, is rooted in expanding access and opportunity for the many.

Yes, powered by technology. But centered on people. On building real pathways. On creating systems that help individuals develop valuable skills and participate meaningfully in a changing global economy.

At askChenai, we don’t just offer jobs, we offer a career. We invest in our team. We train and upskill them in how to use modern technology, hard and soft skills, marketing, executive support, ADHD coaching, and more.

We are building long-term human capacity, not short-term transactions. We grow stronger when more people participate.

The future of work doesn’t have to be a handful of people running AI empires while everyone else watches. We can build a future where technology amplifies human contribution, not replaces it.

But only if we choose to.

PS: If you want to learn more about our work at askChenai please follow us on LinkedIn. And if you like what you've read, follow me Chenai Gondo, PhD