This morning, as I sipped my coffee and prepared to wrangle my inbox (and my spirit), I was reminded of a delicious little tweet from back in January 2022.

Sam Altman, the AI guy with vision and caffeine-fueled ambition, had just introduced the world to ChatGPT. “Give it a try,” he said. “Talk to it. See what it can do.”

And lo and behold, a blue-check-marked human—who likely uses a fax machine for therapy appointments—replied:

“Love the ambition and thesis. But given the current tech, I’d say it’s your worst product/concept thus far.”

Well. That didn’t age well, now did it?

Here we are in 2025, with ChatGPT writing everything from bedtime stories to wedding vows to newspaper articles. And that tweet? It’s become a shining example of a life truth: there is always a hater when you’re trying to build something bold.

Whether you’re designing the next AI, rethinking nonprofit leadership, or just trying to start a backyard garden without being judged by your neighbor’s smug tomato vines, someone will doubt you. Someone will snark. Someone will peek out from their curtain of conventional thinking and scoff, “That’ll never work.”

Spoiler alert: they’re not your problem.

There will always be people so tethered to the past they can’t see the spark of the future even when it’s setting off fireworks in front of them. They’re the folks who laughed at the Wright brothers, side-eyed Oprah, and said email was “a phase.” Bless their tiny risk-averse hearts.

But here’s the trick: don’t take it personally. Take notes.

Save the receipts. Not for petty revenge but for confetti.

Make celebratory balloons out of their doubt. Use their tweets as streamers for your launch party. When your vision takes off, you’ll need decoration anyway.

Because innovation? It’s messy. It’s mocked. Until it’s not. Then it’s everywhere. Then it’s inevitable.

So keep dreaming. Keep building. Keep throwing glitter in the face of skepticism.

And always remember: there’s a blue-check hater in someone’s drafts right now, underestimating the next big thing.

Stay weird. Stay forward.