Boris Cherny, co-founder of AI company Anthropic and creator of the coding tool Claude Code, advised 22-year-old computer science graduates to found startups if they have an entrepreneurial spirit. He said today is the "golden age" for entrepreneurship thanks to AI tools enabling founders to build and scale companies faster than ever before [1, 2].
At a May 2026 Y Combinator founders event, Cherny reported that about half of the startup founders said Claude Code wrote 100% of their code. Most of the several hundred founders surveyed used Claude Code for at least 50% of their coding. Only one founder claimed not to use Claude Code at all [1, 2].
Cherny predicted the number of people writing code or using AI-based coding agents will increase by 100 times in the future. He also suggested the job title "engineer" may evolve, but the scope of coding work aided by AI will greatly expand [1, 2].
Supporting this shift, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said technical talent remains important for startup founders. However, he stressed that the ability to deeply understand users is now critical—even if someone cannot code. Altman said he wants to fund founders who “really deeply understand their users and can't code at all” [1].
Cherny emphasized there are still entry-level jobs available for graduates who want to work in established companies. However, he encouraged those with entrepreneurial ambitions to start their own ventures now. "If you're at all entrepreneurial, go start a startup. There has never been a better time in history to do it; it's the golden age," Cherny said [1].
The next significant milestone is the continued tracking of AI adoption among startup founders, as reported at the Y Combinator event in May 2026 [1, 2]. This will provide further insight into how AI tools like Claude Code transform early-stage company building.
