As of today, any hopes of ever making Forbes 30 under 30 have been dashed.

But I *did* make it to 30, and I’m celebrating in Tuscany, so I feel like I'm still a winner.

Ten years ago I dropped out of uni to build what would become Topham Guerin. I never would have thought at the time that Sean and I would end up advising world leaders and leading a global creative agency.

So to mark the big 3-0, here are thirty things I wish I’d known then:

1. Work should feel like play. If it doesn’t, you’re doing it wrong.
   ‍
2. The biggest moments don’t always feel big at the time - when we did boomer memes and comic sans “Get Brexit Done”, we didn’t realise it would re-write the political playbook.
   ‍
3. The hockey stick graph has lots of wobbles when you zoom in. It’s not always roses and buttercups.
   ‍
4. It’s better for *something* to happen than for a perfect plan to never get off the page.
   ‍
5. If you’re growing in your career, by definition you will often feel out of your depth. Lean into it!
   ‍
6. When doing something ambitious, lots of people will have an opinion. Most of them can be ignored.
   ‍
7. Similarly: if everyone agrees with what you’re doing, it’s probably not bold enough.
   ‍
8. If I’d stayed at uni to finish my degree, TG wouldn’t exist. A certificate can be helpful, but isn’t always necessary to do meaningful work.
   ‍
9. A random coffee or after-work pint can turn into a major client or other new opportunity. Always take the meeting.
   ‍
10. Curiosity didn’t kill the cat. It built rocketships.
    ‍
11. You’re capable of more than you think is possible - it might just take time.
    ‍
12. There is basically nothing that a group of smart and committed people can’t achieve together. Just find the right people. 
    ‍
13. You can build a good business with a smart idea. But building a great one is only possible with a co-founder that shares your vision, values and work ethic. Cheers Sean!
    ‍
14. What’s right isn’t always popular, and what’s popular isn’t always right.
    ‍
15. Depending on what you do, AI will either take your job, give you superpowers or (in some rare cases) make little difference. Work out which one applies to you and act accordingly.
    ‍
16. Some nights are for cheap Prosecco, others are for the 10yr old Bordeaux. Both are good!
    ‍
17. Health and productivity can go hand in hand - it doesn’t have to be one or the other (I learned this one far too late).
    ‍
18. A little is always better than too much or nothing at all. Try the cake!
    ‍
19. The brain is a muscle - exercise it daily.
    ‍
20. There is no such thing as “too many books”.
    ‍
21. My 1,592 day Dutch language Duolingo streak is more useful than the 5 years of French I did in high school. A little each day is better than a lot a long time ago.
    ‍
22. Running 500km sounds nuts. But 10km each week is doable, and even with two weeks off you’ll run 500km in a year. The same principle applies for any other big goal.
    ‍
23. Don’t set goals that are just about wishing for an outcome. Goals are achieved by creating & sticking to habits.
    ‍
24. Take time to reflect on each day, each month and each year. If you’re not where you want to be, that’s ok: just seek to understand why and what you can do about it.
    ‍
25. It’s exceedingly rare for things to go accordingly to plan, and that’s ok. If you set a direction and act with intention, you’ll get there in the end.
    ‍
26. Who you choose as a life partner is everything.
    ‍
27. On that note: my fiancée Mirjam Tavenier is always right.
    ‍
28. When working to a 9am deadline, getting up at 5am to smash out the final stretch is always a better option than working past midnight.
    ‍
29. If your calendar’s full of tasks, you’re leaving no room for the big-picture thinking that actually moves things forward. Both matter.
    ‍
30. If in doubt, take the leap.

Grateful for everything I’ve learned so far, and excited for everything I don’t know yet. 

Big thanks to all that have supported, tolerated, indulged and challenged me on this journey so far.

Here’s to the next 30!

‍

Will AI take your job? Maybe. Maybe not. But this shift didn’t begin with ChatGPT.

Not long ago, the average S&P 500 company needed eight employees to generate $1 million in revenue. Today it’s just two.

That’s not because everyone suddenly got four times more productive. It’s decades of pressure from software, outsourcing, automation.

And now AI is just the latest force continuing the trend.

And while nobody can predict what white-collar work will look like in 5, 10, or 20 years, one thing’s certain: it won’t look like how we work today.

Instead of just asking “will a robot take my job?”, it's worth taking a moment to dig deeper.

If you're an employee, it’s worth questioning how relevant the idea of a linear career path really is.

In most industries, the idea of working your way steadily up the ladder feels increasingly outdated. Some people are optimising for flexibility, others for fulfilment, others still for financial gain, and very few are treating those priorities as fixed.

You might have once been told to specialise early. Now you’re just as likely to be rewarded for range. And the lines between employee, freelancer and founder are already blurry. In the next few years, you might cycle through all three, or do them all at the same time!

If you're building a team, different questions emerge.

What do you actually need humans to do? Not what you’ve always hired for, but the actual value humans deliver that AI tools can’t.

That requires a different approach to headcount planning.

It means getting comfortable with having AI agents in the org chart, while also thinking about culture in a new way by asking new questions.

For example - how do you maintain morale, shared purpose, and creative energy with a hybrid team of humans and AI agents?

These are the questions we’re thinking about at Topham Guerin in our strategy sessions as we plan for our next phase of growth. And they are hugely exciting conversations to have!

Because this isn't about robots vs people.

It's about what does it actually mean to do good work, create value from your time, and enjoy what you do.

Let's take a moment to step inside the world of a startup founder in 2025.

You raise $100 million, hire a team, obsess over the product, and launch something great.

Then a giant tech company drops a new feature that does the same thing: except it’s integrated into a suite of products already used by billions, maybe even offered for free.

This week, that's exactly what just happened to entire categories of startups, all at once.

Don't believe me? Let's take a look at what was announced at the Google I/O event:

Real-time translation on video calls

Google Meet now does real-time voice translation, and it keeps your voice, tone, and timing intact.

Initially it will support English and Spanish, with more languages coming soon.

RIP to... KUDO

KUDO raised $28 million to bring live interpretation to enterprise video calls.

They built a strong product, but Google just turned the feature into a default setting.

AI-generated video with native audio

Google has introduced a new version of Veo, its video generation model. It now creates 1080p clips with ambient sound, dialogue, and audio effects baked in.

This is the first model of its kind that combines high-quality video and audio in a single output.

RIP to... Runway

Runway has raised over $300 million and has long led the charge on AI-generated video.

But its models still don’t handle audio. Google just leapfrogged them.

(I'm exaggerating to say that Runway is dead - their video model is still excellent and we used it a huge amount in our work at Topham Guerin. But the pressure is on for them to overtake Veo 3 before customers jump ship.)

AI-powered video editing

Flow is Google’s new creative tool built into YouTube Studio. It uses Gemini to help creators script, storyboard, and edit videos faster.

The goal is clear: turn your idea into a Short in minutes, without leaving the platform.

RIP to... Captions

Captions raised $60 million to bring AI editing tools to creators.

Now Google has built the same tools directly into the biggest video platform on Earth.

Smarter, safer password management

Chrome and Android are becoming full-service sign-in assistants tjat:

• Generate strong passwords
• Flag compromised ones
• Fix issues automatically
• Seamlessly log you in to web and apps

RIP to... 1Password and Dashlane

Between them, they raised over $800 million to manage passwords.

But now Google is giving that away for free, built into tools people already use every day with a product that is easily a generation ahead.

I use NordPass and after this demo am already considering cancelling my subscription.

Virtual try-ons with your own photo

Upload a photo and Google will show you how clothes will look on your body. The system accounts for shape, pose, fabric, and texture.

It's live now in Search Labs for US users.

‍RIP to... Every ecom startup pitching virtual try-ons, including Fashable who seem to have already deactivated their website

Fashable raised $6M to build virtual try-on tools, but Google just shipped a version that works at global scale, across billions of listings, directly inside Search.

It's a tough time to be building in this space.

So what now?

We have looked at five examples, and you could easily list a dozen more just from the Google I/O event.

Real-time translation. AI video generation with audio. AI video production studio. Agentic login. Smarter shopping.

All companies worth investing in, now just another Google feature.

And you could repeat the exercise with recent events from Microsoft and OpenAI and knock out another dozen startup categories.

Now, I exaggerate when I say these product categories are wiped out.

If some of these startups move fast to leapfrog Google or go deep on specific niches, they might hold their own.

Competing on price, UX, or meeting the needs of a unique customer segment are viable options.

The deeper problem

This isn’t just a platform advantage. It’s a fundamental structural challenge of building a product offering built around AI.

Owning a distribution platform now matters more than building a perfect product. When you’ve got the right model and data stack, launching something new is the easy part.

And that’s the real issue for venture-backed startups. VC relies on winner-take-all outcomes. You need a few portfolio companies to dominate their category.

But what happens when the “winner” is just a feature inside someone else’s ecosystem?

As far as VCs are concerned, it's not enough for their portfolio companies to survive or even thrive - they need to dominate the market entirely to justify the investment.

That is just going to be more difficult than ever in an age of AI -powered product development

Because if distribution is the moat, and the platforms keep pulling features closer to the metal, then the number of breakout challengers might be smaller than anyone wants to admit.

Everyone’s worried about the rise of “vibe coding” — the idea that we’re starting to let LLMs generate content, code, or legal arguments that we don’t fully understand.

But that’s not new. We were already doing that before AI showed up.

This meme sums it up perfectly: engineers who can’t code, lawyers who can’t read legal docs, politicians who don’t know their own laws, and yet somehow the whole thing still runs.

Modern life is too complex for anyone to hold in their head.

Most software is built on codebases so layered and outsourced that even senior engineers only understand the top few layers.

Politicians regularly legislate on issues they have no direct expertise in, relying on advisors, briefings, and party lines.

Even something as essential as healthcare is delivered through institutions shaped by protocols and policy frameworks most of us couldn’t begin to explain.

We navigate those systems not by understanding everything, but by reading the signals, asking the right questions, and trusting the right sources.

Rick Rubin, one of the most successful music producers alive, even openly admits: “I have no technical ability and I know nothing about music.” He doesn’t know how to operate a soundboard. Does that make him less credible? Or more?

This is how high-trust systems work. We rely on tools, people and institutions to fill in the gaps for us. The key skill isn’t mastery. It’s navigation.

That’s why I think the anxiety around LLMs is often misplaced. They’re not eroding some golden age of human understanding. They’re compressing access to knowledge. They’re giving people a way into systems that would otherwise take years of training to approach. And in doing so, they’re levelling the playing field.

If that sounds like cheating, so is using a calculator. So is Googling an error message. So is asking someone smarter than you to show you how it works.

No system is perfect. But if it helps more people make smarter decisions, that’s a win.

The future isn’t going to be clean, linear or fully explained. But if you can read the room, work with the tools, and stay curious you’ll do just fine.

Even if you’re just going on vibes.

Most five-year plans feel like a guessing game. But this one is different.

We start our financial year each April here at Topham Guerin, so we're currently thinking hard about the future as we do our annual planning: what we’ll look like, how we’ll work, what we’ll actually do.

And the honest answer is, I don’t know. Not because we lack a strategy. But because the tools are changing so fast that planning beyond a couple of years starts to feel a bit pointless.

In 2030, we might not be using any of the platforms or workflows we rely on today. That’s not a warning. It’s an opportunity.

I don’t believe AI will replace the creative and strategic work that agencies like ours do. But I do believe that AI will enable small, lean teams to deliver the kind of impact that once required whole departments. The work doesn’t vanish, the shape of the team just changes.

That’s a big deal for an agency like TG. And an even bigger one for our clients.

Because it means the barriers between ambition and execution keep getting lower. Want to build a brand from scratch, launch a movement, test a dozen campaign routes in 48 hours? You can. And you won’t need a skyscraper full of staff to do it.

But that’s just the near-term shift.

Zoom out a bit further, and you start to see what Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, calls the "country of geniuses in a datacenter". He predicts that powerful AI, smarter than Nobel Prize winners across most domains, could emerge by 2026 or 2027.

If he’s right, we’re not just getting better tools. We’re dealing with a new operating system for society. One where AI can tackle complex problems in biology, governance, and economics faster than most institutions.

In his essay Machines of Loving Grace, Amodei lays out a vision that’s both radical and grounded. Eradicating disease. Personalised education. Transparent governance. Accelerated economic development. Not in 100 years, but 10. Maybe even less!

And his company is putting that into practice. Anthropic’s recent submission to the U.S. government’s AI Action Plan outlines how to prepare: secure labs, expand energy infrastructure, stress-test national security systems, and modernise how we measure the economy.

We should take it seriously.

Because the next wave of AI will reshape how intelligence operates: who uses it, who benefits, and who gets left behind.

The question for creative and strategic agencies like TG isn’t whether AI will replace us. It’s how we stay relevant when the world gets smarter.

That’s what we’re thinking about. Not in 10-year plans or annual forecasts, but in experiments, hires, projects and habits that help us stay adaptive.

The future isn’t written yet. But it’s being coded, tested, and deployed right now.

And if we’re smart, we’ll do more than keep up. We’ll help shape it.

The strategic communications consultancy Charlesbye has just released the Talking to the Nation 2025 report — the largest study ever conducted into how UK adults consume, trust and talk about news with a sample size of 8,000 UK adults.

At Topham Guerin we have worked closely with Charlesbye’s founder, Lee Cain, since the 2019 election campaign, where we helped deliver the Conservatives’ digital strategy. We also worked together through the COVID-19 pandemic, shaping the government’s comms response during one of the most challenging public information efforts in modern history.

Charlesbye understand not just what’s shifting in the media landscape, but how to turn that insight into real-world strategy when the stakes are high. This report is a great example of their expertise, with a clear-eyed look at how fast things are changing and why most comms playbooks are already behind.

I was on the panel for the launch event alongside voices from The Spectator and The Sun where we dug into the findings, and there were six key insights that are worth paying particular attention to.

1. Social media has overtaken traditional news sources

Facebook is now the UK’s most popular news source. Not the BBC. Not ITV. Facebook.

Half of the top 10 most-consumed outlets are now social platforms. That alone should tell you how much the media landscape has been redrawn.

For years, the national conversation was shaped by a few trusted gatekeepers. That’s gone. People no longer tune in at the same time or start their day with the same front page. The algorithm decides what they see, not an editor. And that shift from editorial control to personal feed changes not just how news is delivered, but what people absorb and act on.

2. People are their own fact-checkers

Under-45s are using 8 to 12 different news sources a day. Over-75s are averaging six. That’s not passive consumption. That’s active, deliberate comparison.

We’ve moved from a one-to-many broadcast model to a many-to-many ecosystem. The public isn’t waiting to be told what to think. They’re assembling their own view — sometimes well, sometimes badly, but always with a higher degree of autonomy. They’re skimming, scanning, cross-referencing and weighing up tone and context as much as content.

For anyone communicating at scale, this should be a wake-up call. If your strategy relies on the public accepting your version of events unchallenged, it’s going to fall flat.

3. Podcasts are eating legacy media

Joe Rogan now reaches more Brits each day than the Today programme on Radio 4. That’s not a niche stat. It’s a generational handover.

What draws younger audiences in is the space to think out loud. Podcasts offer long-form discussion, disagreement, personality and friction. They feel less staged, more revealing. And in a world where trust is fragile, that sense of transparency matters. It’s not about whether you agree. It’s about whether the conversation feels real.

Legacy formats still rely on heavily edited segments, polished soundbites, and a top-down tone. That’s not how people under 45 are consuming content. If you’re not adapting to that shift, you’re missing your moment.

4. WhatsApp is shaping the conversation

WhatsApp is now the UK’s fourth most popular news source. It’s not where stories start, but where they spread. Quietly, quickly, and with more built-in trust than any news brand can buy.

When a link comes from a friend, it hits differently. The sender brings credibility. The format encourages sharing. And once a story has landed in a group chat, it becomes part of the conversation whether it’s accurate or not.

For communicators, the challenge is clear. Messages need to be built for velocity. If they don’t survive the screenshot, they won’t spread. If they aren’t quotable in two lines, they won’t be repeated. And if they don’t feel personal, they’ll never leave the feed.

5. Trust is moving from institutions to individuals

More and more people are turning to independent voices, creators and niche commentators instead of traditional media brands. Not because they always have better information, but because they feel more human.

In a high-noise environment, people don’t just trust facts. They trust people. They’re looking for consistency, personality and perspective. They want to hear what someone thinks, not just what happened. And they’re deciding who to believe based on tone, track record and audience interaction over job titles.

This isn’t just about media. It also affects politics, activism, brand loyalty and public policy. If your message isn’t delivered by someone the audience already trusts, it probably won’t land at all.

6. The generation gap isn’t just about platforms. It’s about trust.

One of the most striking findings in the report is the gap in trust between younger and older audiences when it comes to social media.

Under-45s have a net trust of +23 percent in social media as a news source. Over-45s come in at minus 23 percent. That’s a 46-point swing. On the same platforms. Looking at the same content.

Older generations grew up with gatekeepers. Younger generations grew up with feeds. They’re not just consuming news differently. They’re thinking about it differently.

For communicators, this creates a serious problem. You can’t rely on a single channel to reach everyone. But more importantly, you can’t assume the same content will be trusted by different demographics in the same way. Relevance and trust are now inseparable from context.

So, it’s not just about where you place your message. It’s about which channels your audience trusts enough to even listen.

If you work in politics, communications, or media, the Talking to the Nation report is essential reading. You can find it here.

It’s the most detailed snapshot we have of how the UK public is thinking, reading, watching and deciding what to believe. And it should be required reading for anyone trying to shape the conversation in 2025.

‍“WTF? Surely that can’t be right.”

That was my reaction when I first saw the chart, and I bet you thought the same.

We all know the US is home to the big tech names: Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta. No surprises there.

And no one will be shocked to learn that the US economy is bigger than Europe’s. In 2023, the numbers looked like this:

• United States: $25.44 trillion
• European Union: $16.75 trillion

That’s a 52 percent gap in nominal GDP. Big, but not outrageous. The real shock comes when you look at what each economy has produced in terms of new companies.

Specifically, from-scratch public companies started in the last 50 years with a market cap over $10 billion.

But that doesn’t come close to explaining what the chart shows.

When it comes to that criteria, the US doesn’t just outperform Europe: it's no comparison at all.

Even if you ignore the tech giants, the US list is long and varied. Logistics, finance, pharma, consumer, media. Hundreds of serious businesses built within a generation.

And as for Europe? Fourteen (14).

That’s the total number of companies in the EU that meet the threshold of being founded from scratch, not by merger, takeover or spinout.

Here’s the list, with market caps from November 2024:

Spotify - $93.3 billion (Sweden, 2006)

DSV - $48.8 billion (Denmark, 1976)

Adyen - $45.7 billion (Netherlands, 2006)

Argenx - $36.5 billion (Belgium, 2008)

EQT AB - $33.6 billion (Sweden, 1994)

Amadeus - $30.2 billion (Spain, 1987)

BioNTech - $28.4 billion (Germany, 2008)

Hexagon AB - $26.5 billion (Sweden, 1975)

Ryanair - $21.0 billion (Ireland, 1984)

Evolution AB - $18.7 billion (Sweden, 2006)

ICON - $17.5 billion (Ireland, 1990)

Pandora - $11.8 billion (Denmark, 1982)

Delivery Hero - $11.5 billion (Germany, 2011)

AB Sagax - $10.0 billion (Sweden, 1995)

I’d heard of about five or six of them. The rest were new to me.

Nearly half the list is made up of companies from Sweden or Denmark. Ireland and Germany show up twice. Spain makes the cut once. Southern Europe is barely represented.

The stat that inspired this chart came from Mario Draghi’s report into European competitiveness. It’s a blunt one:

“There is no EU company with a market capitalisation over EUR 100 billion that has been set up from scratch in the last fifty years, while all six US companies with a valuation above EUR 1 trillion have been created in this period.”

That’s the sentence that Andrew McAfee picked up on. He and his team dug through the data to visualise what that gap really looks like, resulting in this chart and more, originally published here.

They used Draghi’s definition of a from-scratch company: not created through mergers, acquisitions, or corporate spin-offs. And they only included public companies, not private valuations. Which is why a company like Celonis, despite being valued at $13 billion, doesn’t appear.

The 14 companies listed above have a combined market cap of around $430 billion. On one hand, that’s a lot. On the other, it’s less than half the value of Tesla. It’s one-eighth of Apple.

The gap isn’t just in scale. It’s in surface area. The US has produced more large companies, in more industries, with more upside still ahead. Europe hasn’t.

So what’s going on?

You’ll hear plenty of theories. The US is a single market with one language and consistent regulation. Europe isn’t. There’s more risk capital in America. There’s more ambition. More tolerance of failure.

All probably true, to some extent.

But language isn’t the main problem. German, French, Spanish, Italian, and English are spoken by tens of millions of Europeans. Language doesn’t stop Netflix or TikTok. It shouldn’t stop new companies either.

The real problem is structural.

Draghi again: “Innovative companies that want to scale up in Europe are hindered at every stage by inconsistent and restrictive regulations.”

Inconsistent is bad. Restrictive is worse. Europe isn’t just fragmentedm, it’s cautious. And while caution is fine in some areas, it kills startups.

The US has created not just giants, but ecosystems. Europe hasn’t.

Of course, this isn’t just a European problem. It’s a global one. The world needs more centres of innovation, not fewer.

If everything is built in California, the rest of us become dependent, both economically and strategically.

We need more successful companies being built all over the world. Not just in America.

There’s a lot going on in Germany’s election results. But the takeaway is simple: the government got punished, the far right surged, and nobody came out looking strong.

The CDU/CSU, led by Friedrich Merz, technically “won” with 28.5% of the vote. But that’s still one of their weakest results since the 1940s, and only a modest lift from 2021.

The AfD doubled their national vote share to 20.8% and came out on top in much of the former East, where they picked up an enormous 34% of the vote.

The SPD, led by Olaf Scholz, slumped to 16.4% - their lowest ever result, down more than nine points from the last election.

Digital tactics played a role. The AfD leaned heavily into TikTok and X. The SPD and CDU stuck with YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. That split isn’t just about platform choice. It reflects something deeper about risk appetite and audience instincts.

But the real story sits outside the tactics.

This was a referendum on failure. The electorate didn’t so much vote for something new as they voted out what they had. Scholz promised change in 2021. He didn’t deliver. And voters didn’t wait around.

That’s a warning to first-term governments everywhere. In Australia, New Zealand and the UK, leaders elected on a message of change should be paying close attention. Intentions aren’t enough. People want outcomes.

Turnout in Germany was the highest since reunification at an incredible 83%. People showed up. And while they didn’t agree on who should lead, they made it clear that what came before wasn’t working.

Now Merz faces a brutal coalition puzzle. A deal with the SPD or Greens might be the only path forward, but it won’t excite anyone and risks hollowing out the political centre even further.

The same forces that punished Scholz could be coming for Merz next. And if you’re in government and trailing in the polls, don’t assume you’ll get time to figure it out.

The electorate isn’t waiting.

Meta has announced a scaling back of its moderation policies: ditching third-party fact-checkers, reducing content demotions, and taking a more “hands-off” approach to political content. Cue the panic.

"Brand safety experts" are now clutching their pearls, warning that ad placements next to controversial content could destroy brand trust, spark boycotts, or worse.

But here’s the reality: consumers don’t judge brands based on where they show up. They judge based on what those brands say and do.

This isn’t a new dilemma: traditional media has had adjacency “issues” forever.

Billboards next to strip clubs. Luxury watch ads in papers running financial scandals. Your brand’s lovingly crafted TV spot sandwiched between war footage and political takedowns.

My personal favourite? A McDonalds billboard alongside a diabetes ad (below):

Somehow, none of that brought the advertising industry to a halt.

The difference now is that digital makes adjacency feel more granular, more visible, more “trackable.” But that doesn’t mean it’s more consequential.

Most people scrolling Instagram or Facebook aren’t drawing a line between the weird meme they just saw and the sponsored post beneath it. They understand how algorithms work. They know your ad didn’t personally endorse the post above it.

You don’t lose trust because your banner ad appeared next to a spicy meme. You lose trust because you treated your customers like idiots. Or ran a tone-deaf campaign. Or ducked a hard question. Or stood for nothing at all.

Everyone knows ads are served algorithmically.

The average person isn’t scrolling Instagram, pausing mid-story, and thinking, “Wait, my bank’s ad appeared under a conspiracy theory. Time to change accounts.” They’re moving on in half a second.

The real risk isn’t adjacency. It’s irrelevance.

Because while you’re busy reviewing screenshots and writing escalation memos, your competitors are saying something that actually matters. They’re picking a fight, offering a point of view, making people laugh, or just being useful. And no one cares what post they appeared under.

So by all means, keep an eye on placements. Avoid actual harm. But stop pretending that safety comes from silence or sanitisation. It comes from clarity, confidence, and having something worth saying.

In other words: if you’re worried about where your ads show up, you’ve already missed the point.

Some of the brightest minds of our generation are choosing to fix the US government.

So naturally, people are mad about it.

This week, WIRED ran a piece naming a group of young engineers working inside Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The angle? They’re too young. Too online. Too inexperienced.

What happened next? An incredibly patronising meme went viral.

“Who are these little boys? And why are they in charge of our money?”

So who are these guys?

• Akash Bobba, 21, has already worked at hedge funds, Meta, and Palantir.
• Edward Coristine, 19, has clearly already impressed his colleagues after interning at Neuralink.
• Ethan Shaotran, 22, founded an AI startup backed by OpenAI.
• At 22, Luke Farritor built an AI that deciphered a 2,000-year-old Roman scroll no one had been able to read.

Luke is the perfect example of what critics are missing. He didn’t just show up to work on a government project: he’s already made history.

Using machine learning, he helped unlock the words inside a scroll buried in volcanic ash for two millennia. Historians said it couldn’t be done. He proved otherwise.

When I first heard about that project three years ago, I was blown away. It’s one of the best examples I’ve seen of science, tech, and history coming together to do something nobody thought was possible. And it’s exactly the kind of thinking we should want in public service.

We need more people like Luke. Not fewer.

None of them has a background in federal bureaucracy. But they’re bringing something else: actual talent. And probably a few mattresses in the office too — they’re working round the clock.

It’s totally fair to scrutinise DOGE. Question the reforms, the process, the politics. But dismissing the team just because they weren’t in student government ten years ago is lazy thinking.

More importantly, young people have always been at the forefront of change:

Young people have always led revolutions

Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein at 18.

Blaise Pascal invented the first mechanical calculator at 19.

Isaac Newton developed calculus & the laws of motion at 23.

Napoleon Bonaparte became a general at 24.

Pablo Picasso co-founded the Cubist movement before 25.

And given that we are talking about fixing the bureaucracy of the US Federal Government, let's take a look at the ages of America's own Founding Fathers on July 4, 1776:

• James Monroe was 18
• Aaron Burr, 20
• Alexander Hamilton, 21
• James Madison, 25
• Thomas Jefferson, 33
• John Adams, 40
• Paul Revere, 41
• Washington, the elder statesman, was all of 44

And on a personal note - I was just 21 when we founded Topham Guerin. If we’d listened to the people saying we were too young, we’d never have built what we have today.

I'm used to being the youngest person in the room, and having to deal with condescending comments from people that respect "experience" over ability. That's why people's attacks on the DOGE team for their age really winds me up.

The fact that some of the brightest minds of our generation are choosing to fix public service should be something to celebrate.

But instead of engaging with their ideas, critics are stuck on how old they are. Maybe that says more about them than it does about the DOGE team.