[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":408},["ShallowReactive",2],{"content-query-QEmOQyHFqX":3},{"_path":4,"_dir":5,"_draft":6,"_partial":6,"_locale":7,"title":8,"description":7,"body":9,"_type":402,"_id":403,"_source":404,"_file":405,"_stem":406,"_extension":407},"/writings/the-4th-turning","writings",false,"","The 4th Turning (in Venture)",{"type":10,"children":11,"toc":392},"root",[12,27,34,51,56,61,66,76,81,95,100,105,110,116,121,126,140,145,150,162,167,173,178,183,195,200,205,210,216,221,233,265,270,282,287,292,298,303,308,322,327,341,355,361,366,371,377,382,387],{"type":13,"tag":14,"props":15,"children":17},"element","h1",{"id":16},"the-4th-turning-in-venture",[18,21],{"type":19,"value":20},"text","The 4th Turning ",{"type":13,"tag":22,"props":23,"children":24},"span",{},[25],{"type":19,"value":26},"(in Venture)",{"type":13,"tag":28,"props":29,"children":31},"h2",{"id":30},"background",[32],{"type":19,"value":33},"Background",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":36,"children":37},"p",{},[38,40,49],{"type":19,"value":39},"We’ve ",{"type":13,"tag":41,"props":42,"children":46},"a",{"href":43,"rel":44},"https://gagra.vc/writings/our-compass/",[45],"nofollow",[47],{"type":19,"value":48},"written before",{"type":19,"value":50}," about “The 4th Turning” by Neil Howe and William Strauss as essential reading for investors trying to make sense of the current moment. The concept has grown into a meme — losing some of its nuance in the process. It still carries the core message: we’re living through a period of tectonic power shifts, institutional decay and technological upheaval. But what is mostly left out of the zeitgeist is the focus on the human generational causes of the 4th Turning.",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":52,"children":53},{},[54],{"type":19,"value":55},"We’d like to remind our reader of them and to speculate on how this framework applies to venture investing.",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":57,"children":58},{},[59],{"type":19,"value":60},"Early-stage venture is, first and foremost, about investing in people. The project morphs by the time it finds product-market fit, key non-founders churn, market conditions shift. The only constant is the founder(s) and their ability to anticipate those shifts, adjust and carry on. So, when evaluating pre-seed or seed stage deals, the assessment distills to the two things that really matter in the end: a founder’s potential and their ability to live up to it.",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":62,"children":63},{},[64],{"type":19,"value":65},"You can even represent it as a formula:",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":67,"children":68},{},[69],{"type":13,"tag":70,"props":71,"children":73},"code",{"className":72},[],[74],{"type":19,"value":75},"skill level × grit = outcome",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":77,"children":78},{},[79],{"type":19,"value":80},"where “skill” is a base measure of past experience and talent, and “grit” is the multiplier.",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":82,"children":83},{},[84,86,93],{"type":19,"value":85},"This is our loose interpretation of Angela ",{"type":13,"tag":41,"props":87,"children":90},{"href":88,"rel":89},"https://www.amazon.com/Grit-Passion-Perseverance-Angela-Duckworth/dp/1501111108",[45],[91],{"type":19,"value":92},"Duckworth’s research",{"type":19,"value":94}," at the University of Pennsylvania, her core two formulas being: talent × effort = skill, and then skill × effort = achievement — emphasizing that effort counts twice. We adjust it for knowledge-based innovation, which is most of tech, since here the skill base matters more than raw effort. Yet investors routinely over-index on credentials and under-test founders for their resilience.",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":96,"children":97},{},[98],{"type":19,"value":99},"We’ve been thinking about how the current technological and generational shifts are reshaping both of these variables in the face of the 4th Turning. Here is the core thesis:",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":101,"children":102},{},[103],{"type":19,"value":104},"The portion of founder capability that was once about specialized technical knowledge: software architecture, data pipelines, product design — is increasingly commoditized. What you really need now is analytical thinking that can turn prognostication about where a trend goes into revenue-generating products. Really good founders have always been strong analytical thinkers rather than domain specialists. So, the introduction of AI into the mix doesn’t necessarily change the dynamic. But the skill of making it work has been made drastically easier to master. Everyone has ideas. Fewer barriers to execution means more of those ideas get tested as you don’t need as much skill as you used to. It’s a good thing, but mostly for the end users.",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":106,"children":107},{},[108],{"type":19,"value":109},"What it means for the founders, on the other hand, is that grit is now the primary differentiator between those who build lasting enterprises and those who produce a weekend demo that dies by next week’s end. And grit, unlike skill, is not evenly distributed across generations. It is forged by adversity, shaped by culture, and — as we’ll argue below — growingly scarce.",{"type":13,"tag":28,"props":111,"children":113},{"id":112},"the-generational-framework",[114],{"type":19,"value":115},"The Generational Framework",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":117,"children":118},{},[119],{"type":19,"value":120},"The 4th Turning thesis posits that Western history moves in roughly 80-year cycles, a “saeculum”, consisting of four generational “turnings” that mirror the seasons. The 1st Turning is a post-crisis “high” (institutional confidence, conformity); the 2nd is an “awakening” (cultural upheaval, individualism); the 3rd is an “unravelling” (institutional decay, cynicism); the 4th is a “crisis” — a period of existential challenge that tears down the old order and forces reconstruction.",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":122,"children":123},{},[124],{"type":19,"value":125},"Each period is dominated by the generation at its economical, social and cultural peak: the Hero generation (instituting order after standing up to crisis); the Artist (scarred children of the crisis, they try to fit into the world built by Heroes quietly sowing seeds of non-conformity); the Prophet (free of direct crisis experience, they seek to break off the established order, thus furthering the non-conformity trend); and the Nomad (disillusioned pragmatists, self-reliant and further undermining the established order). The tension between generations, exacerbated by some external factor (e.g. war, pandemic, financial crisis) causes a crisis and then the cycle repeats.",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":127,"children":128},{},[129,134],{"type":13,"tag":130,"props":131,"children":133},"img",{"alt":7,"src":132},"/images/writings/strauss-howe-cycle.jpg",[],{"type":13,"tag":135,"props":136,"children":137},"em",{},[138],{"type":19,"value":139},"Figure 1. The Strauss-Howe Generational Cycle — US Timeline",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":141,"children":142},{},[143],{"type":19,"value":144},"We are squarely in a 4th Turning now for most Western countries, primarily the US. The last one was the Great Depression through World War II (~1929–1946). Before that, the American Civil War. The pattern holds with eerie consistency. Interestingly, the cycles aren’t synchronised globally. Russia’s 4th Turning runs 10–20 years ahead (the 1917 revolution, the 1990s USSR collapse). China’s is 40–50 years ahead (the Cultural Revolution was the last crisis). One needs to factor this in too.",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":146,"children":147},{},[148],{"type":19,"value":149},"Now, importantly, the Hero generation doesn’t always respond to the challenge and this is where parallel insights from another book on the same topic — “Generations” by Jean Twenge — come in handy. Using a more data-driven approach, Twenge documents a long-term trend of rising individualism accompanied by lowered psychological resilience that accelerated sharply around 2012 — precisely when smartphone saturation hit critical mass among adolescents. She argues that individualism, paired with trends in technology, primarily the combination of Mobile + Social Media, have negatively affected newer generations’ ability to respond to crises.",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":151,"children":152},{},[153,157],{"type":13,"tag":130,"props":154,"children":156},{"alt":7,"src":155},"/images/writings/individualism-rise.jpg",[],{"type":13,"tag":135,"props":158,"children":159},{},[160],{"type":19,"value":161},"Figure 2. The Rise in Individualism Paired with\nTechnological Tailwinds, as Hypothesized by Jean\nTwenge",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":163,"children":164},{},[165],{"type":19,"value":166},"We’re more optimistic as to humans’ ability to correct self-harming behavior patterns. So, hopefully, Millennials in the West still have a chance to rise up to the upcoming challenges as Heroes, but if they don’t — more chaos and decay ensue, and the Zoomers won’t be able to correct the course within one generational turn.",{"type":13,"tag":28,"props":168,"children":170},{"id":169},"two-cohorts-we-observe",[171],{"type":19,"value":172},"Two Cohorts We Observe",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":174,"children":175},{},[176],{"type":19,"value":177},"None of the aforementioned are abstract observations. They show up in our founder evaluations and correlate with performance. The two primary cohorts in our deal flow: Millennials (born ~1981–1996) and Gen Z (born ~1997–2012).",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":179,"children":180},{},[181],{"type":19,"value":182},"The Zoomer founder profile. As a broad generalization that holds more often than it doesn’t: many Gen Z founders carry the neurological signature of a generation raised on algorithmic dopamine cycles. Rates of anxiety, depression and attention-deficit diagnoses among under-25s have roughly doubled since 2010 across developed economies. For founders, this manifests as volatility — rapid oscillation between extreme conviction and complete abandonment; difficulty sustaining focus through the unglamorous middle phase; low tolerance for the grinding adversity every startup encounters. They are not less creative or intelligent. Often the opposite. But sustained execution under pressure is where the gaps widen.",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":184,"children":185},{},[186,190],{"type":13,"tag":130,"props":187,"children":189},{"alt":7,"src":188},"/images/writings/anxiety-depression-adhd-stats.jpg",[],{"type":13,"tag":135,"props":191,"children":192},{},[193],{"type":19,"value":194},"Figure 3. Anxiety, Depression and ADHD Statistics",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":196,"children":197},{},[198],{"type":19,"value":199},"We also notice a weaker attachment to “the mission” among many Zoomer founders. Having grown up in an environment where identities and beliefs are fluid — a product of the social media ecosystem, not necessarily a character flaw — they find it easier to pivot, which is a strength, but also easier to abandon a hard problem. The market may briefly reward this short-termism, in crypto especially, where narrative cycles move fast and switching costs are low. But category-defining companies are built by founders who stay on a problem for multiple years.",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":201,"children":202},{},[203],{"type":19,"value":204},"The Millennial founder profile. The opposite failure mode. Millennial founders tend to over-index on norms: regulatory compliance, market conventions, institutional validation. They build “correct” companies that follow a playbook written for a world that is dissolving. When regulatory frameworks are being rewritten in real time, distribution channels upended, when the very definition of “software company” is shifting beneath your feet — reflexive norm-following is a liability.",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":206,"children":207},{},[208],{"type":19,"value":209},"However, and this is critical, early Millennial cohort (founders currently in their late 30s to mid-40s) displays a qualitatively different profile. These are the people who developed resilience through the 2008 Great Financial Crisis during formative career years. They experienced the full Internet > Mobile > AI transformation arc, unlike Zoomers, who experienced a relatively stable 15–20 years of Mobile. If they display strong neuroplasticity — curiosity, willingness to embrace new paradigms — their experience is an asset.",{"type":13,"tag":28,"props":211,"children":213},{"id":212},"disaggregation-of-software",[214],{"type":19,"value":215},"Disaggregation of Software",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":217,"children":218},{},[219],{"type":19,"value":220},"A broader structural shift intersects with these generational dynamics. Software — the venture frontier for three decades — is fragmenting. This is not because it is being “commoditized” as some AI doomers and apologists alike suggest — that framing is too crude. What is happening is closer to disaggregation: the monolithic software company (raise capital, hire engineers, build product, acquire users, monetise) is fragmenting into a constellation of smaller, creator-style businesses that will increasingly look more like workshops knocking off software with the help of agent apprentices than venture-scale enterprises.",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":222,"children":223},{},[224,228],{"type":13,"tag":130,"props":225,"children":227},{"alt":7,"src":226},"/images/writings/job-postings-vs-solo-founders.jpg",[],{"type":13,"tag":135,"props":229,"children":230},{},[231],{"type":19,"value":232},"Figure 4. Entry-Level Job Postings Decline vs. Solo-Founded Startups Rise, 2019–2025",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":234,"children":235},{},[236,238,245,247,254,256,263],{"type":19,"value":237},"The data confirms the trend was there even before the AI coding explosion. Entry-level job postings in the US ",{"type":13,"tag":41,"props":239,"children":242},{"href":240,"rel":241},"https://blog.getaura.ai/where-did-all-the-entry-level-jobs-go",[45],[243],{"type":19,"value":244},"crashed 38%",{"type":19,"value":246}," between 2022 and 2023 alone, and have since continued on that course — down roughly ",{"type":13,"tag":41,"props":248,"children":251},{"href":249,"rel":250},"https://www.randstad.com/press/2025/genz-workplace-blueprint/",[45],[252],{"type":19,"value":253},"29%",{"type":19,"value":255}," from January 2024. SignalFire found that entry-level hiring at the 15 biggest tech firms fell 25% from 2023 to 2024 while US programmer employment dropped almost a one third between 2023 and 2025, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Meanwhile, the share of startups founded by solo entrepreneurs ",{"type":13,"tag":41,"props":257,"children":260},{"href":258,"rel":259},"https://carta.com/data/solo-founders-report/",[45],[261],{"type":19,"value":262},"has climbed",{"type":19,"value":264}," from 23.7% in 2019 to 36.3% in the first half of 2025.",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":266,"children":267},{},[268],{"type":19,"value":269},"Building a software application is now akin to being a blogger — a craft anyone with a knack for users’ wants can practice with minimal upfront cost. Gen Z, most affected by the collapsing career ladder, will increasingly sort into this cohort of smaller software businesses, in our view. But given extreme competition most will generate modest income at best.",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":271,"children":272},{},[273,277],{"type":13,"tag":130,"props":274,"children":276},{"alt":7,"src":275},"/images/writings/tech-hiring-vs-college.jpg",[],{"type":13,"tag":135,"props":278,"children":279},{},[280],{"type":19,"value":281},"Figure 5. Tech Hiring by Experience Level (2019–2024) & Recent College Graduate Unemployment Rate",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":283,"children":284},{},[285],{"type":19,"value":286},"The experience stratification is even more telling. Hiring for people with less than one year of experience has been falling, while demand for those with 5+ years has actually increased. The unemployment rate for recent college graduates has risen nearly 50% — from 3.9% in September 2022 to 5.8% by February 2025, per the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. For the first time in US history, the unemployment rate for college graduates aged 22 to 27 exceeds the national average. Gen Z’ers are almost pushed into this world of one-person entrepreneurial activity.",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":288,"children":289},{},[290],{"type":19,"value":291},"For the Millennial founder, on the other hand, we expect more of them to gravitate towards the bigger missions that AI has made newly feasible — previously “heroic” problems in infrastructure, science, and complex economic coordination that required Elon-level courage to attempt before. AI makes some of those problems attainable, at least on paper. And Millennials love to, at the very least, LARP about tackling world’s issues — so discerning fiction from reality will remain an important investors’ job on this front. But jokes aside, that second category is where we see the bigger venture frontier now: physical engineering, hard science, new materials and new industry.",{"type":13,"tag":28,"props":293,"children":295},{"id":294},"where-the-venture-frontier-actually-is",[296],{"type":19,"value":297},"Where the Venture Frontier Actually Is",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":299,"children":300},{},[301],{"type":19,"value":302},"Investors still deploying into traditional tech verticals which have been dominated by software, but picking the ones that may “benefit” as opposed to getting “disrupted by” AI and expecting 1000x returns on now much more capital-intensive bases — may be in for a rude awakening. Many of them have only processed a surface-level memo: that enterprise SaaS and consumer apps are being disrupted. The picture is more nuanced, and in some ways inverted.",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":304,"children":305},{},[306],{"type":19,"value":307},"End-user applications that aggregate a specific niche and become discovery platforms are one of the few software categories we remain bullish on. The reason is the disaggregation trend itself: as building becomes trivially easy, discoverability becomes the bottleneck. Whoever owns the demand aggregation layer for a given vertical captures outsized value.",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":309,"children":310},{},[311,313,320],{"type":19,"value":312},"Entertainment apps (anything from Netflix ",{"type":13,"tag":41,"props":314,"children":317},{"href":315,"rel":316},"https://www.matthewball.co/all/presentation-the-state-of-video-gaming-in-2026",[45],[318],{"type":19,"value":319},"to TikTok to gambling",{"type":19,"value":321},", including crypto) is also safe from disruption, at least yet — why would you outsource your dopamine hits to an agent. That’s why we still like some consumer software, especially the lean team companies. But it’s hard to find founders who realize they don’t need much initial funding and should adjust their pricing too given heightened risk of competition.",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":323,"children":324},{},[325],{"type":19,"value":326},"Deep tech, especially agent-centric infrastructure, middleware and even all the way up to specialized platforms should also benefit in this new environment. But we don’t have a robust enough mental model at this stage as to where the value accrues in this vertical. One should form a credible outlook based on how the new agentic routing is being handled: i.e. is it a patchwork of multiple tools and middleware of the pre-agentic era, just evolved as APIs and MCPs, embedded into Skills and the like, or new ground-up environments, including DePINs and Blockchains.",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":328,"children":329},{},[330,332,339],{"type":19,"value":331},"What does not excite us, despite the hype: “robotics” startups assembling Chinese-manufactured components with thin software layers; new AI model architectures requiring massive CapEx to compete directly with Hyperscalers (a fight we’ve ",{"type":13,"tag":41,"props":333,"children":336},{"href":334,"rel":335},"https://gagra.vc/writings/flipping-the-ai-coin/",[45],[337],{"type":19,"value":338},"argued before",{"type":19,"value":340}," is structurally unfavorable for startups); and hardware-intensive tech dependent on global supply chains in a world experiencing ongoing disruptions. These verticals favor incumbents with existing manufacturing relationships, deep balance sheets and tolerance for multi-year timelines. Although bound for M&A as eventual consolidation takes hold, they won’t provide venture-style multiples given higher capital intensity, in our view.",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":342,"children":343},{},[344,346,353],{"type":19,"value":345},"The real venture frontier, we’d argue, sits at the intersection of AI-enabled capability expansion and new industry, as well as new scientific discovery and novel ways of productizing it. And, of course, we are still huge believers in the ",{"type":13,"tag":41,"props":347,"children":350},{"href":348,"rel":349},"https://gagra.vc/writings/the-new-value-stack/",[45],[351],{"type":19,"value":352},"Web3 Stack",{"type":19,"value":354}," vision, where the founders are optimizing for regulatory arbitrage and embrace a fragmenting world market, not avoid it. These are hard, unglamorous problems. They require precisely the kind of grit that a 4th Turning produces.",{"type":13,"tag":28,"props":356,"children":358},{"id":357},"a-note-to-founders",[359],{"type":19,"value":360},"A Note to Founders",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":362,"children":363},{},[364],{"type":19,"value":365},"If you have a software app idea — just go for it. The tools are extraordinary, and the cost of a working prototype is measured in hundreds of dollars and days, not millions and years. We’re seeing plenty of builders who are effectively vibe-coding their product but want venture funding to cover living expenses, while they figure out if anyone wants it. This is backwards. If you don’t have the conviction to put your own skin in the game, you probably won’t be able to make hard calls that building a successful company requires. Many founders have been spoiled by over a decade of “easy money” — expecting to live risk-free with investors footing the cheque. That era is over.",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":367,"children":368},{},[369],{"type":19,"value":370},"The new paradigm is actually more liberating. You can pivot continuously until you find product-market fit without explaining yourself to a board or grinding on something your heart is no longer in. You keep 100% of the equity and 100% of the revenue from day one. You don’t need to pitch to VCs — many of whom are secretly vibe-coding their own app ideas themselves. And if you find something that works and scales beyond what a small team can handle, that’s the moment to consider outside capital.",{"type":13,"tag":28,"props":372,"children":374},{"id":373},"closing-thoughts",[375],{"type":19,"value":376},"Closing Thoughts",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":378,"children":379},{},[380],{"type":19,"value":381},"The 4th Turning is not a metaphor for us. It is the operating environment. The global order is restructuring, the career ladder is dissolving, software is disaggregating, and AI is compressing what used to take teams of fifty into what one determined person can ship before breakfast. In this environment, the most scarce and valuable resource is not intelligence or technical skill, but the sustained will to push through adversity and the flexibility to iterate, often over years.",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":383,"children":384},{},[385],{"type":19,"value":386},"We are looking for founders who display both neuroplasticity and grit — the rare combination of intellectual curiosity to embrace radically new paradigms, and psychological toughness to endure the years-long grind that category-defining companies demand. Age is not the variable. Generational archetype is a useful heuristic, but not a deterministic one. The individual always matters more than the cohort. And if as an investor you find that one Gen Z’er with a very bold vision and absolute grit (you need to test for it and background-check) — that’s the one!",{"type":13,"tag":35,"props":388,"children":389},{},[390],{"type":19,"value":391},"But the bar is rising. The founders who will define the next decade are not the ones with the cleverest pitch decks or the flashiest demos. Many founders who would’ve exited to a bigger company in a previous era, and many of whom are still quite busy building “safe” AI-wrapper products, will just burn through millions of VC funding without an exit this time around. The ones who will still be building when the market turns against them, when the hype fades — a lot of them will get burnt even harder if they can’t grasp (and grasp fast) the shifts underlying the change. Only the founders nimble on the outside and strong from the inside can navigate this era, so much more challenging for startups. If you think you are that — hit our line.",{"title":7,"searchDepth":393,"depth":393,"links":394},2,[395,396,397,398,399,400,401],{"id":30,"depth":393,"text":33},{"id":112,"depth":393,"text":115},{"id":169,"depth":393,"text":172},{"id":212,"depth":393,"text":215},{"id":294,"depth":393,"text":297},{"id":357,"depth":393,"text":360},{"id":373,"depth":393,"text":376},"markdown","content:writings:the-4th-turning.md","content","writings/the-4th-turning.md","writings/the-4th-turning","md",1775135834724]