hypfer
Feels like a category error.It's a slide deck telling
people what a product can do (that's a normal thing to
release for a company), but the thing it tries to sell you
on is building your own business based on their tool.Which
makes no sense the way they sell it, because "founding a
business" is no standard process that could be formalized
in a way like that, nor does it make sense for society to
have people founding businesses at a scale comparable with
mowing your lawn or doing your taxes.All of this feels
just unreal because it is unreal. Founding cannot be a
commodity. If it is, you have no moat or point, meaning
you instantly collapse again, because you are an
interchangeable commodity.
|
> Planktonne
It makes sense if you think of 'founder' as an
identity like 'influencer', rather than 'someone
actually seriously founding a business'; just as with
influencers, some people will make a lot of money
doing it for real, but many, many more will post
enthusiastically on social media, living the
aesthetic.A lot of people already treat being a
founder/entrepreneur as who they are, not what they
do--witness the endless tide of LinkedIn posting about
hustle culture, divorced from reality. This is an
extension of startup chic.
|
> > kristianc
An enormous amount of LinkedIn appears to be more
about gatekeeping what other people can do than
doing anything yourself.
|
> > zero_
this is well said. and to me this is crazy and sad
at the same time.
|
> dmujic
Yeah, and these days it really isn't a big deal to
build things; it's much bigger challenge to actually
develop a distribution channels and cut through the
noise. I think people are just overwhelmed with
everything and attention span is shorter and shorter.
And that's the real issue - what I am finding now is
that again the thing that really works is good old
actual human conversation with potential clients.
|
> fsloth
"Founding cannot be a commodity. If it is, you have no
moat or point, meaning you instantly collapse again,
because you are an interchangeable commodity."IMHO you
still need to find the product and PMFThere are bunch
of books startup world recommends which sort of all
start from the principle of product, users,
traction.This is sort of scaffolding around that. It's
not entirely insane to try to formalize this process -
there already are books that do this (Bill Aulet,
Disciplined entrepreneurship)."nor does it make sense
for society to have people founding businesses at a
scale"Maybe not at scale of moving lawns but I'm
pretty sure the world is full of nichces that still
lack specific software offering or where options of
software offerings are limited.This is like "Uber for
logging" or "time reservation system for cat dentists"
level of "take existing product category and apply to
a domain you know".So not every cat dentist needs to
found a cat dentist time reservation app but I'm sure
there are niches withing niches with business
opportunities awaiting.
|
> uxhacker
Their argument on page 10 is that now agentic coding
reduces the effort of writing code there will be far
more failures unless you validate the idea properly.We
are actually seeing that in that the number of apps on
the app stores is increasing but usage is not
increasing.Some would argue that the right process
will lead to the right results.
|
> > teaearlgraycold
The barrier to entry drops and so more garbage
enters the market. This has happened many many
times but there can be a massive and beautiful
paradigm shift at the same time. Think about
YouTube. Most stuff on there is garbage, but
compare the good stuff of today to pre-YouTube
content. To be quite honest, I think most of the
best media is going straight onto YouTube.
|
> Gooblebrai
> Which makes no sense the way they sell it, because
"founding a business" is no standard process that
could be formalized in a way like thatIt makes no
sense, but most technical people wished it could be
like that and that's who this article is aimed at
|
> > hypfer
Yes but that means that it is lying in people's
face. Really just straight-up lying.
No fancy words to soften it. Just lies.Lying is
bad.
|
> > > Gooblebrai
As said in Seinfeld: "Jerry, just remember. Is
not a lie, if you believe it"
|
> > > > hypfer
How people cope with their delusion is
irrelevant tho.They're delusional. They
must stop
|
> thih9
We have seen that category in the past, in MLM.Perhaps
now it's only two levels but still somehow pyramid
shaped.
|
> weatherlite
I think a lot of founding is pretty much a commodity,
e.g coming up with a viable idea and then implementing
it has become rather easy now with these tools. The
real barriers are access to capital and clients. From
the startup I joined (I'm the 6th person) I see how
much the founders personal connections are important.
That indeed can't be commoditized yet. But the process
of coming up with an idea and iterating on it ? The
founders didn't even come up with our idea - they
thought of something initially but the investor led
them to his own idea - totally different. That's how
the company was born. Now the first clients are
connected to the investors. Etc.So access to capital
and clients, connections ,that's the last standing
moat I think.
|
> > benfortuna
It's a commodity in the same way that making music
is a commodity (i.e. using production tools to
make it sound good). But music today is so much
more generic and boring than it used to be.
|
> > hypfer
You seem to be mistaking the "rules" of the ZIRP
SV nonsense bubble for the rules of
reality.Understandably so, but still.
|
> bdcravens
The same is true of building a startup based on Rails
or React.
|
> perks_12
Welcome to the world of companies founded by business
school grads. No soul, no moat, just an endless cycle
of KPIs and billion-dollar exits to PE.
|
> logicchains
>nor does it make sense for society to have people
founding businesses at a scale comparable with mowing
your lawn or doing your taxesIt absolutely does. AI
and robots drives the cost of labour down; it's good
for capital, bad for labor. If everyone is a business
owner then everyone can benefit. A hundred years ago
the majority of Americans were self-employed; mass
wage labor is a recent phenomenon.
|
Oras
AI has changed the build for sure, it is a lot easier to
build now, a lot easier to practice multiple copywriting
ideas, do market research ... etc.There is something that
will never change for being a founder, you need to sell,
and for that you need network and credibility. It was
never about the building, its all about the selling. AI
has not changed that.
|
> ElProlactin
> AI has not changed that.But it has. AI can help you
do market research, develop buyer personas, evaluate
potential customers, create, analyze and enrich
prospect lists, evaluate marketing channels, create ad
copy, write sales scripts, think through objections
and how to respond, etc.Will it turn you into Jordan
Belfort? No. Will it be 100% successful or effective?
No. But can it help enough to make a difference? Sure,
in enough cases.
|
> > sturza
Assumption: now everyone can do more of the above.
The final line is still selling. So everyone will
get to the sales part, FASTER. Triage will still
happen at this stage, regardless of AI. You won't
be able to avoid this triage, regardless of how
fast you get there.
|
> > > agumonkey
I can't find a name to dig more but the
"everyone will get" part is something strange
to me. If everybody has the same capability
increase, then what changed really ? some
would even say it will increase the paradox of
choice.. more offer, still the same amount of
time to decide, or maybe more AI based
decision to match the amount.. so less human
understanding.
|
> > > > sturza
"everyone". it's there, it's accessible,
it's "cheap". acceleration will depend on
the operator capability. if the final
product will make a diff in the real
world, it will ALWAYS depend on the
entrepreneur, not the tools used.
|
> > jurgenaut23
If anything, AI has made it more difficult and
challenging because every customer and investor is
drowning in AI-generated collaterals, websites,
etc. The situation is dire in the academic world,
where both the applicants and the reviewers now
rely so heavily on AI that both publishing and
financing has turned into a lottery.I am positive
this will settle down at some point, but the
difference will always remain about your own
abilities, not that of AI.
|
> > > ElProlactin
> If anything, AI has made it more difficult
and challenging because every customer and
investor is drowning in AI-generated
collaterals, websites, etc.In many markets,
yes. If you're a software buyer, for example,
your inbox, LinkedIn, etc. is filled with
AI-generated sales outreach. And you know it's
AI.But keep in mind that there are tons of
markets (think local services) where buyers
aren't familiar with AI. They don't know that
what they're reading was produced by AI, and
they wouldn't care.In these markets, if you
use AI, you have a realistic shot at being
"better" than your competition, and if you use
it even a little bit more effectively, it can
make a real difference.
|
> > > > jurgenaut23
I get it, but it is still more difficult
to achieve differentiation from your
less-skilled competitor in the short term,
because they can simply slop their way
through, at least until prospects realize
that this is a bag of sh%t
|
> > LtWorf
AI generated market research won't necessarily
match reality.
|
> > > nieksand
Nor will human generated market research.
|
> > > ElProlactin
And? Spending 1000s of hours searching on
Google, reading human-written market research
reports, etc. won't necessarily "match
reality" either.AI is a tool. A starting
point. A feedback mechanism. It's not the end
all or be all.
|
> > dakolli
If you're using AI for your marketing you're going
to get lumped into a slop category, with plenty of
other products to keep you company. Only people
with AI psychosis actually believe this garbage.
All LLM output has a cheap stench to it that's
impossible to ignore.There is no shortcut to
hardwork, but llms somehow have people thinking
that is the cases, it plays so well into people's
desire to be as lazy as possible.
|
> > > ElProlactin
Outside of the tech/AI bubble, you'd be amazed
at how few people can spot AI-generated
content, and how few people seem to care if
they think the AI-generated content speaks to
their needs.I know a small business that
generates many of their leads by responding to
posts on social media. They recently started
using AI to create personalized comments
responding to these posts instead of generic
comment templates they used before. The number
of leads they're generating from their social
media commenting has skyrocketed.
|
> bdcravens
> ... its all about the selling. AI has not changed
that.Nor did the web, or mobile, or any other
innovation. That doesn't mean you can't build your
business around an innovation.
|
> hatefulheart
With all due respect this reads a little deranged. To
sell something to the masses you fundamentally need a
product to sell. I'll agree that how you market the
product can be a "product" in itself, but that only
gets you so far. If it was never not about the
building why waterfall vs agile why velocity why
stakeholder why business analysts why meetings why
board members pushing for features?This is like when
AI bros claim that AI has changed absolutely
everything for their project but the first thing they
do is reach for docker compose, react and postgres.
Why don't you forget the bloat and have your LLM make
your container, vdom differ and lightweight DB?It's
very surreal to have to point this out.
|
Netcob
Especially as someone outside the US, building a startup
on AI sounds like a bad idea. Some AI company fails to pay
their bribes on time, or your country doesn't cede
territory to the US president, the AI gets yoinked and you
are left with Mistral or Qwen.(Technically that also
applies to MS Teams, Google and so on and not just AI)
|
> superkickstart
Even worse if you build your processes around one ai
provider like anthropic.
|
asim
> The traditional startup growth arc assumes that the path
from idea to scale
is validate → raise → hire → build → raise again
→ grow → hire more → repeat.
Now, AI has erased the expectation that each new phase in
the startup lifecycle
requires a bigger team, a different skill set, and a fresh
funding round.From 2015-2019 I spent the whole time saying
"If I don't write the code nobody does". It was the point
of saying to do anything requires a team, to build that
team you need funding. It was a vicious cycle and took a
long time to get enough traction to raise funding and do
that... and then you end up in the MVP loop -> hire ->
build -> validate -> rehire -> rebuild -> revalidate.
Today all of that has changed. You don't necessarily need
the team to write the code, it's for a different function
entirely, maybe the original function which is the team
was the orchestration engine for all the different pieces
at play to make a company and product successful. The code
is only half the equation. Looking forward to seeing how
solo entrepreneurs leverage these tools and how teams
transform using them.
|
rienbdj
This feels like a "sell the shovels" move. Social media is
full of "this one prompt to get rich quick". It's the new
"one weird trick".
|
> edu
Build a $1B startup. Make no mistakes. /s
|
> > Lionga
"I will send you to jail if you fail" really makes
it work all of the time
|
> > > brohee
I know in which DC you are hosted and will cut
your electricity off.
|
OtherShrezzing
>As an AI-native startup founder, your responsibility is
to know what's in your
codebase, understand any potential exposure vectors, and
not ship obvious
vulnerabilities to real users who are trusting you with
their data.This is fairly funny coming from the company
whose employees report merging in hundreds of PRs per
engineer per day, and accidentally leaked their own source
code through a security misconfiguration in a package
manager they own.
|
> etoxin
Hundreds of PR's per engineer per day! They would have
zero visibility of their code. Their AI's would have
no visibility of the million plus lines of code.Sounds
super stable and cool.
|
> supriyo-biswas
> your responsibility is to know what's in your
codebase, understand any potential exposure vectors,
and not ship obvious vulnerabilities to real usersIt
seems like CYA; with all the marketing about how LLMs
will solve all problems it was really surprising to
see that, but legal probably told them to go easy on
it.
|
> koe123
100 PRs a day? I am sure this is hyperbole but
otherwise you have a quote for me?
|
> > owebmaster
Here's your quote:"employees report merging in
hundreds of PRs per engineer per day"
|
> geraneum
Yeah this is a Mythos pitch.
|
throwaw12
I like how dates and copies are still the ultimate version
control:"<filename>-05062026_v3 (1).pdf"So there were 4
iterations on 5th of June alone for this document
|
> y-curious
A beautiful analogy for non-technical founders
creating software products with AI. There are version
control systems, but who needs them when you can name
your pdf `n-final-updated-6-16-final-donottouch.pdf
(1)(2)`
|
bob1029
> Now someone with no engineering background can build
production
software that brings their idea to life, while a
technically adept founder with little business knowledge
can easily produce a go-to-market strategy, a financial
model, and a highly polished pitch deck.I had a bit of a
laugh. The non-technical business experts are much more
likely to achieve success than the technical experts. They
can actually talk to the customer and get the customer to
care. No quantity of GPUs and gas turbines can correct for
a lack of personality or reputation. The technology is
generally not the hard part in most businesses, despite
the extreme efforts of certain technology people to make
it seem so.
|
_pdp_
This framework does not sound that much different from
what people used to do but with AI agents and coding
assistants, and this is not going to work unless you are
lucky. LLMs cannot come up with good ideas and coding (if
you believe it is solved) is no longer moat especially in
the early stages.So either go viral or go home.Obviously
personal connections, timing, market position all play
role but let's be honest - this is not something that can
be planned although in retrospect it may seem so. A % of
the population will get all of this right many times in a
roll but this is just mathematical certainty.
|
petterroea
This should be obvious but why would you trust what the
spade seller says about being an AI-native startup.Even if
you believe AI-native startup is the future (the comments
are divided), you would at least want to hear from an
impartial source.This is just marketing material.
|
OsrsNeedsf2P
I looked at the PDF and confirm there is nothing of value
in there.
|
garn810
Why's everyone selling themselves as "AI-native" these
days?
|
frangonf
A serious AI-native founder should not waste time reading
this brochures, they should make agentic loops instead
where their agents autonomously read and produce brochures
for their brochure first, product second startups.
|
kubb
I'm pretty sure the one place people will never believe AI
can be applied is "being a founder".There's just too much
invested, in terms of beliefs and money into the idea that
founders are special and therefore deserve seven-eight
figures off of the capital pumped into their unprofitable
products.You'll see it here in comments. People will
defend A"I" applied to software engineering wherever (not)
possible, but building companies? Now listen buddy there's
an irreplaceable human genius at work.
|
> mentalgear
Exactly, I always find it ridiculous how the suits,
any layer of mid-managment to executives, are so eager
on AI 'outsourcing' everything, but they themselves
think the 'outsourcing' (if it really works) would
stop just before their position.
|
> jstummbillig
Why would that be true? Successful founders have to be
unsentimental by nature. If you make it harder on
yourself than it has to be, you just get killed by
people who don't.
|
> swiftcoder
You know, I've been fairly convinced we could automate
CEOs away since... ChatGPT 3.5 or thereabouts?
|
evilrabbit99
Does this include making annoying Linkedin posts every
other day about how AI 30x'ed your engineering output and
killed graphic design for real this time?
|
geraneum
> Founders who've never written a line of code before are
shipping production applications, reaching revenue before
scaling headcountStats please
|
> jeppester
I'm sure there are at least two in the world
|
letier
My absolute favorite quote:Loss of objectivityThe
challenge: Ask an AI tool for evidence supporting what you
already believe,
and it will find it. Confirmation bias now comes with a
research engine.
|
suyash
Mostly marketing fluff
|
rw2
Good guide but I think the product market fit portion of a
startup is so key that you need no other skills except
that to make a good startup. AI won't help you with that
portion, only in depth knowledge of a industry or natural
product intuition will.Who knows, maybe an AI ideated and
AI created product will be the best app of 2026.
|
TrackerFF
What's AI-native these days?I've noticed that seemingly
every single tech company has re-branded themselves as
"AI" company. Add a RAG system and you're now AI. Add a
AI-chatbot, and you're now AI.
|
SilverBirch
I feel like a lot of this advice is kind of dangerous. How
do I draft a tight investor memo? I'll ask the slop
machine!It's kind of analogous to how I'm writing code
right now. For simple stuff or low priority stuff I'll
fire claude at it and won't look at the code if it works.
But for the important stuff I'm very carefully integrated
into the cycle making sure what's coming out at the end is
just right. I'm carefully constructing prompt loops and
validation cycles to make sure what comes out looks like
what I want - because I have the knowledge and experience
of what works for my specific use case. Drafting an
investor memo seems like the second category of thing, you
need it to be right. I don't think claude offers much of
value there. What's more - if you start slopping your
investors, you are going to piss them off. Unless Claude
is going to say it has some special data source it's used
to train on so it knows good from bad, I think this is a
bad idea.This article also kind of fits in the category of
"Here's how to use AI for EVERYTHING!" and actually it
would be far more valuable to say "This is the bits that
AI is good at, and here's where you need to do it
yourself" - which is obviously a position that Anthropic
can't hold.
|
beratbozkurt0
I wish there was something similar to this, an online
marketing model. Indiehackers definitely need it.
|
59nadir
Are people upvoting this so more people can laugh at it?
This whole post comes off as a parody of what Anthropic
would say.
|
arun6582
Buying a welding machine doesn't make you a welder
|
> y-curious
Tell that to certain CEOs that realized they can
generate slop code and make their SWE teams deal with
the tech debt lol
|
neya
I wish hyperlinks used underlines. The worst possible UX
is making your hyperlink resemble normal text, especially
on a dark background. Sigh.Here is the direct link to the
slides:https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6889473510b50328
dbb70ae6/...
|
> kevsim
They've got underlines for me at least
|
jwpapi
IMHO most founder will fail because leaning to heavy into
ai and creating a system where they never experience the
friction necessary to build the domain knowledge which
ultimately could be the deciding factor.Just think about
website design, I don't think it's far-fetched to say that
a non ai design website will outperform an ai designed
one. These percentages add up in multiple disciplines.I
would argue betting against ai is your best chance of
succeeding frankly (not in all cases but certainly as
displayed here)
|
cultofmetatron
step 1: find a problem people are willing to pay to make
go away.step 2: find a way to solve that problem for less
money than they are willing to paystep 3: AI???
|
nilirl
As someone who uses these tools extensively: they're
extremely productive and extremely idiotic.Detail-oriented
work with lots of output that can cover up the noisy bits
of thoughtless garbage? Sure, great.Analysis-oriented work
where decisions have consequences over large amounts of
resources? Only an idiot would use these tools for
that.Maybe as a conversational note-taker, but anything
more and you don't know what you're doing.
|
Schiendelman
I think it's easy for those already in the tech industry
to pooh-pooh this, as the previous comments on this post
have.Right now, people with ideas prompt their LLM by
saying "I know how to make x, how do I turn that into a
business?" Anthropic knows that, and releasing a playbook
like this is a way to make people who haven't asked that
question think to ask it.For a non-technical person with a
small business they don't know how to operationalize, an
agentic workflow is a game changer. You might go from only
getting 30% of your work time to build and improve your
actual product to 50% or 70%.Can you imagine having a
knitting business, and suddenly being able to gauge
interest for different colors with a website selector
you'd have no idea how to automate? Or needing to close
your shop for an upcoming holiday, and having Google and
Apple Maps and your website all updated to reflect your
closed dates cleanly, without having to fight through
every UI? An engineer goes "bah", a baker goes "I just got
to sleep two more hours".I truly think that people in the
tech industry do not understand how hard technology is for
people who aren't in it.
|
> ElProlactin
> I truly think that people in the tech industry do
not understand how hard technology is for people who
aren't in it.When it comes to AI, a lot of them don't
want to understand because it threatens their
livelihood.
|
> watwut
> Can you imagine having a knitting business, and
suddenly being able to gauge interest for different
colors with a website selector you'd have no idea how
to automate?This does not sound like an issue small
craft businesses have, but something programmer think
is a thing.
|
> > Schiendelman
I think you're thinking of the value in "creating
a selector", which is not my point.Businesses need
to gauge interest and experiment with options.
Knitting colors was my example of that, since I've
got some personal experience helping a knitting
business.If you're a nontechnical craft business
owner, the work of figuring out what questions to
ask to grow your business is absolutely
nonintuitive, and it's one of the things LLMs are
best at. The fact that it can also modify your
website or listing or what have you is an
additional benefit; I chose to use that specific
benefit to make the concept potentially more
legible to the HN audience.
|
jgilias
Claude, make me rich. Make no mistakes.
|
thunderbong
Link to
PDFhttps://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6889473510b50328dbb7
0ae6/...
|
stymaar
"please give your funding round to help us pay for our
bills"
|
Rebuff5007
I've been at a few VC / startup events recently and I was
stunned to see the number execs frothing at the mouth
about finding a 1-person-ai-driven-billion-dollar-startup.
This "playbook" is probably not going to help.
|
> dakolli
Someone make a guide on how to turn these VCs into
marks I can scam with a bullsh*t AI native product.
|
jdw64
When I see notes like this, I wonder whether every success
story can really be summarized and patternized this way.
If you're building an AI based startup, what exactly would
be the point of differentiation? That seems to be the
difficult part
|
alpineman
Copypasta for LinkedInfluencers and VCs
|
dakolli
AI psychosis at it's finest.
|