On June 13, the U.S. government ordered Anthropic to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5, two of its most advanced AI models, by any foreign national anywhere in the world, including Anthropic’s own foreign national employees. Anthropic, unable to verify nationality at the user level, disabled the models for all customers . It was a jarring reminder that we are not watching AI from a safe distance. We are inside it, and the ground keeps shifting.

A few weeks earlier, I had posted a question on LinkedIn . I asked my network to share the best advice they’d received that helped them take an entrepreneurial path. Within hours, founders, executives, and career-changers had responded with hard-won wisdom they wished someone had shared before their first real job.

What struck me wasn’t the volume. It was the urgency.

The soon-to-be graduates I’ve been hearing from lately are scared in a way I haven't seen before. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York , the unemployment rate for recent college graduates hit 5.6% in early 2026, near a decade high outside of pandemic-era peaks. The underemployment rate is even starker: 41.5%. A report from SignalFire found that AI is responsible for a 25% drop in new-grad hiring at major tech companies, including Meta, Microsoft, and Google. Employment for Gen Z graduates in software development and customer support has fallen 16% since late 2022 .

The traditional entry-level job, the one where you proved yourself doing the work no one senior wanted to do, is disappearing. And the conventional advice, "get your foot in the door, pay your dues, work your way up," was written for a labor market that no longer exists.

Is the traditional career path becoming obsolete?

The jobs most vulnerable to AI displacement are, not coincidentally, the jobs most new graduates compete for: data entry, customer service, content moderation, basic coding, administrative support. In the U.S., 60% of workers now believe AI will eliminate more jobs than it creates over the next year. That anxiety isn’t irrational. It is, if anything, under-calibrated.

But here’s what the anxiety misses. The answer to a shrinking pool of entry-level jobs is not to fight harder for a smaller slice. It is to stop treating the job as the destination and start treating your purpose as the map.

Khuliswa Mazizi , a multi-award-winning agro-processor and social entrepreneur, put it this way, “You don't need a perfect background, you just need an unshakeable purpose. When I founded Kusta's, I had zero formal training in food technology or agro-processing. What I had was a deep passion for indigenous African ingredients and a conviction that they could change the food system.”

That is not a story about natural talent or elite credentials. It is a story about what happens when someone refuses to wait for permission.

You don't need a perfect background, you just need an unshakeable purpose. Khuliswa Mazizi, Founder of Kusta's

What does "entrepreneurial thinking" actually look like for a new grad?

It doesn't necessarily mean starting a company. It means bringing an ownership mentality to whatever you do next, looking for problems that need solving rather than roles that need filling.

Jeffrey Traill , an executive search consultant who has spent his career placing high-impact leaders, told me, “Don't chase the biggest title. Chase the manager who's willing to invest in you. A great leader can speed up your career by years. A bad one can make you question your own potential. The environment you grow in matters just as much as the role itself.”

That framing matters more in an AI-disrupted labor market, not less. When routine tasks are automated, the work that remains requires judgment, creativity, and relationships. Those skills are built under the right managers, in environments where you're genuinely challenged rather than protected from failure.

Julia Beardwood , founder of a branding agency and C-suite consultant, started her career at Procter and Gamble before eventually building her own firm. "Start somewhere where you get really good training," she told me. "That powerful foundation served me well when I chose to become an entrepreneur." Her caveat is worth taking seriously: corporate environments, when they prioritize mentorship, can accelerate exactly the skills that entrepreneurship demands.

The two pieces of advice aren't in conflict. Beardwood and Mazizi are describing the same underlying truth from different starting points: intentionality, not prestige, is the thing that compounds.

Why is the hardest part not the risk, but the waiting?

The most consistent theme across all of the professionals I talked to was a version of the same idea: stop waiting until you feel ready, because that moment does not come.

Raj Vable , founder of Young Mountain Tea , shared a line his mentor once told him: "Take the leap and 10,000 hands will reach out to catch you." Robbie Thain , a founder and CEO in the CPG industry, offered a more grounded version: “Don't confuse activity with progress. Focus is an underrated entrepreneurial skill. The real breakthroughs often come from doubling down on the few things that are already working.”

Both pieces of advice point to the same truth. Entrepreneurial momentum builds on action and focus, not preparation.

Claudia Castellanos , co-founder of Black Mamba Foods , said it as directly as possible: “Most women founders are very risk averse and are nervous about scaling their businesses. We need to not be afraid of high-stake bets.”

Her call to "think bigger" isn't about recklessness. It's about refusing to let fear of the new landscape shrink your ambitions to fit the old one.

How do you build something when the ground keeps shifting?

The question I get most from graduates is some version of: where do I even begin? The market is uncertain. The skills required are shifting. The path that worked for people ten years older is no longer legible.

My answer hasn’t changed. Dare early. Don't wait until you've earned the right to do meaningful work. Go straight toward it. Believe that you can figure out what you don't yet know, because you can.

Asking for help is part of it too, not a sign of weakness but a genuine superpower. Most people are flattered when you ask for their support, and they’re often looking for a reason to give it.

Carissa Karban , co-founder of Astrapuffs , offered the clearest reframe: “Your worth does not come from any job or title.”

In a moment when AI is restructuring what jobs exist and what they pay, that is not just good advice. It is the foundation of every resilient career I’ve seen. The graduates who will build the next generation of companies are not the ones waiting for the market to stabilize. The opening is the instability itself. The only question is whether you're willing to walk through it.