Gary Vaynerchuk: If He Were 16 Today, He'd Spend Every Spare Minute on AI

Gary Vaynerchuk, 50, says a 16-year-old starting a business today with just 1,000 euros needs almost none of that money — because content and AI cost practically nothing to deploy. His advice: spend the capital of time, not cash, on mastering the tools.

Speaking on the "Nude Project" podcast on Thursday, hosted by Bruno Casanovas and Alex Benlloch — the founders of the Spanish streetwear brand Nude Project — Vaynerchuk laid out exactly how he'd approach a launch if he were 16 again.

"I would make content," Vaynerchuk said. "The dollars don't scare me at all because it takes no dollars. I would spend every ounce of time learning AI. Like, from what OpenClaw is to Claude Code, to using it to think and ponder my ideas."

What does this change for aspiring founders?

For practitioners, the practical takeaway is a shift in budgeting logic. Where earlier generations of entrepreneurs had to allocate money to marketing, prototyping and staffing, Vaynerchuk argues the binding constraint today is learning hours, not capital. AI tools and agents, he noted, can automate chores, save money, and even hunt down sold-out items at the best price — tasks that once demanded either extra staff or specialized expertise.

If he were 16 today, Vaynerchuk said, he would fully immerse himself in learning tools such as Grok, Gemini, Nano Banana, and Higgsfield. "Everything, everything, everything. All of it," he said.

He also pointed to the founders' own success — Casanovas and Benlloch built Nude Project largely on internet-era distribution — as proof of what the last platform shift made possible for young operators with limited budgets.

Why he thinks hesitation is the real risk

Vaynerchuk acknowledged that many people are still weighing AI's enormous potential against its possible drawbacks. He considers that balance-sheet thinking a trap.

"Much like the internet, much like computers, much like electricity, there will be pros and cons to big technologies. That is the story of man. That is life," Vaynerchuk said.

"This is the most opportunistic technology that has ever been invented," he continued.

His framing: missing the upside of AI would be a bigger loss than navigating its downsides. He said it would be a missed opportunity "to not take advantage of how profound this technology is."

He also made a generational argument. Younger people often underestimate the internet's impact because they've never known a world without it — and the same blindness, he suggested, will apply to AI.

"For 7-year-olds right now, they will never understand how profound AI is," Vaynerchuk said.

The skill list for young founders

Vaynerchuk's advice to young people was specific about how to spend free time:

• Learn content creation
• Learn strategy
• Learn app-building
• Learn how to use AI throughout their lives

This isn't a new position for him. Back in 2023, Vaynerchuk said AI was "coming fast" and that he believed workers could adapt to the disruption it would bring. His long-standing optimism frames Thursday's comments as a continuation, not a pivot.

The so-what

The context matters here. AI tools are already lowering barriers for startup founders and small-business owners to create marketing content, build early product prototypes, and automate routine tasks that once required a bigger budget, specialized expertise, or additional staff.

But there's a flip side worth watching: as those tools become more accessible to everyone, creativity may become the defining factor in standing out. In other words, the cost of entry keeps falling — which means the premium shifts to what you actually make with the tools. That's the practical question every founder working through Vaynerchuk's playbook will have to answer for themselves.