For many hopeful entrepreneurs, founding a successful company is a ticket to the top, the lofty promise of fame and fortune.
Yet for a growing number of up-and-coming AI executives, a successful tech startup is the end in itself — not a step toward luxury, but a rejection of it.
As the Wall Street Journal reports, the newest class of young founders flocking to the Bay Area are eschewing the frivolities enjoyed by their peers in favor of a proudly minimalist, monk-like existence.
“Why would I go drink at a bar if I can be building a company?” Emily Yuan, a 23-year-old who co-founded an AI finance company called Corgi, told the WSJ.
While you might have heard of tech bros going “San Francisco sober” before — a refusal to participate in the booze-hound startup culture of yesteryear — the founders of the AI generation seem to be taking it to a whole new level.
In addition to forgoing alcohol, the 20-somethings grinding away on AI ventures claim to be giving up even the most basic earthly pleasures, including privacy, social lives, and free time. In some circles, even basic needs like food or sleep are put on pause in order to build.
Marty Kausas, the 28-year-old founder of a company called Pylon, for example, told the WSJÂ that he primarily eats prepackaged meals-in-a-tin from Blueprint, the company founded by venture capitalist health obsessive Bryan Johnson. When he doesn’t have to think about food, Kausus told the publication, his workday is more efficient.
That workday sounds grueling. In a recruiting post on LinkedIn, Kausus made the incredible claim that he’s been “putting in 92 hours a week for the past three weeks.” That includes an 8am to 1am shift from Monday through Thursday, a 13-hour day on Friday, and a lighter, 11-hour Sunday.
“This is not meant to glamorize or encourage. We just really, really want to win,” he continued. “Winning means we build a generational company that goes public worth over $10 billion. We expect you to put in everything you can to help get us there.”
Still, the outward appearance of a puritan lifestyle comes upon one of the most extravagant business environments the tech industry has ever seen.
In 2024, the share of US venture capitalist spending on AI companies was 45 percent, representing some $40 billion in tech investment. In the first three months of 2025, AI spending accounted for 71 percent of all venture capitalist funding. So far in 2025, some 33 AI companies have raised over $100 million or more, with multiple billion-dollar fundraises recorded.
Whether these 20-somethings are really spending 17 hour days working on finance software is difficult to say. What’s more likely, behavioral science scholar Jerry Davis argues, is that the “monastic founder” is a myth held up to separate the future titans of industry from the common folk.
Davis tracks the beginning of this myth to Ayn Rand’s grim 1957 novel “Atlas Shrugged” — a favorite of billionaire founders including Elon Musk and Steve Jobs — in which…
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