The Timeless Skill: Clear Thinking and Clear Language

I’ve spent 20 years in tech. I co-created Google Street View, helped build Uber Eats, and most recently co-founded an AI startup.

Right now, nobody in tech knows what their career will look like even 12 months from now.

So when I hear schools say they’re “preparing kids for AI careers,” I’m skeptical. Which careers? Doing what? With which tools? The skills that matter today may be irrelevant tomorrow.

But there’s one skill that’s timeless: clear thinking and clear language.

The ability to articulate exactly what you want from increasingly powerful tools. The ability to recognize when something is right, when it’s close, when it’s completely wrong. The ability to iterate, refine, and improve.

That’s the real meta-skill.

Take “vibecoding”—quickly generating working applications through AI assistance. I can build functional software now without writing much code myself. But I still need to know what I want, recognize whether the output is correct, and refine it until it works. That requires clear thinking and the ability to communicate precisely.

Here’s why Tradewinds isn’t a “tech school”: We’re not teaching kids to use specific AI tools. Those tools will change. We’re teaching them to think clearly, communicate precisely, and engage deeply with ideas. Those skills transfer to everything—whether they’re directing AI, negotiating a contract, explaining a scientific concept, or solving a problem that doesn’t exist yet.

Technology is part of the environment we operate in. But the foundation is thinking and language.