3 NOV 2026

Hi Reader,

Our young founders are starting where they already play. Two weeks into the Young Founders coaching, every one of them has landed on a business inside their own sport, and every one has chosen a physical product to build.

What we learned this week

That sporting thread is the part I've loved most. These are young people who train, compete and turn up, and they're already noticing the gear and the gaps that get in their way. That's rule number one in everything we teach: are we solving a problem, and are we making someone's life better? They got there on their own, because they already live with the problem.

Then we went into the why, and into who they are and why they want to build a business at all.

The questions in the course are deliberate. Each one leads into the next, so an activity that feels abstract on Tuesday is pointing somewhere by Thursday. You can see them relax as it clicks.

They arrived engaged, and now they're settling in.

We also mapped where they'll need help. Marketing and sales came up straight away, along with who's comfortable out front with people and who'd rather work behind the scenes.

We talked about the life they want around the business too, whether that's one home base or the freedom to work from anywhere in the world.

The thread I'm pulling on next is digital. Right now they see their business as a product, and that's a strong place to start. I'm encouraging them to think past the single product, because the people they'll sell to live on their phones, and so do they.

(the 'artificial' elephant in the room) 🤖

Bringing AI in as a tool

Their parents asked for AI to be part of the training, and I was glad to hear it.

The young people already use it at school, some to help them study and some for research.

This week I showed them a series of apps we're building at Velvet Onion, my agency which is going through its own metamorphosis.

The Dino Loco game puts wild dinosaurs on the map around you, and you walk to meet them, with every 12,000 steps opening the next chapter of the book. The Faster Zebra app (coming in Feb 2027) is a daily venture school, and Gospel of You is a daily practice for knowing who you are. All three are in testing, and all three are built from books, Kits and story worlds that already exist.

The Dino Loco game is a good example of the split. The whole game had been designed in Figma and sat dormant for two years (the quotes were mind-boggling, so I parked it). In just over 6 days, AI took on building the playable app from that file, and every character and every asset in it was created by hand. I've been using voice commands to further evolve the gameplay, and the system (we call her "Brigid") orchestrates the technical set up.

The message I keep giving them is simple. AI is a tool to work with, and the thinking always stays with them. That's why the course runs on questions. Each answer is theirs, and it sets up the next one.

Over the coming weeks I'll take them through the production system behind those apps.

This month at Velvet Onion we took a strength training app for people over 50 from a written idea to a working concept in 2 days, and to a fully functioning app on a phone in less than a week, with 136 wireframes behind it. We kept the thinking, design and every creative call, and the system took on the production.

That's what I want our young founders to learn early, from research into UX design, then prototypes and phone demos, and right through to the app stores, with their ideas in charge the whole way.

If you'd like to see everything we're building, take the lift through Velvet Onion.

On identity and mindset: the argumentative one

Somewhere this week a teacher or a parent says "argues with everyone", usually with the same request: let it go.

Arguing is negotiating without a deal on the table 🫯

Give it a deal and it becomes a trade. Picture a 16-year-old whose neighbour has a spare sofa to sell. She lists it, holds her ground against a first offer of $150, and closes at $250. Her agreed share is 20%, which is $50 for one afternoon of doing the exact thing that earned her the label.

The label tells you how a young person sounds in a quiet classroom. A buyer and a price tell you what they can do with that sound.

Try this tonight, it'll take 5 minutes

This week's tool comes from our Be You Kit (this kit helps you work out who you are). We call it One honest no, one honest yes.

• Write down one "no" you've been avoiding and one yes you've been holding back.
• Pick the one that feels smaller and say it out loud this week, to the person it belongs to.
• Write down how it landed.

Do it alongside your young person, or do it for yourself. Someone who argues is already practising the hardest part of saying no. The exercise gives it somewhere to land.

If this one lands, the rest of the method is in the Kit. Come out knowing exactly who you are.​

What we learned out there

The ZenBusiness State of Entrepreneurship Report 2026 surveyed 2,000 aspiring and current small business owners, and 91% were first-time owners.

47% said AI is doing work that would otherwise need a co-founder or someone they'd pay, and making and selling goods was one of the three most popular niches (Forbes, 16 October). It's a company survey, and the picture it paints is the one our young founders are walking into: a physical product, a lean team and AI doing some of the lifting.

Closer to home, the Universities Admissions Centre asked 20,813 Australian school leavers about AI, and a third said they expect their course to teach practical AI skills and how to use them responsibly (UAC, May 2026). A smaller study of about 200 Australian secondary students found two thirds use AI for schoolwork, and 74% learn about AI mainly from social media (arXiv preprint, 2026).

Young people are asking for guidance on using AI well, and right now most of it comes from their feeds. A parent or mentor who sits beside them and shows how they use it themselves fills that space fast.

Hit reply and tell me: what's one problem in your own sport or hobby you'd love someone to fix? I read every one, and I'd love to hear yours.

As always, Good things come to those who make.

My best,
Charbel