The Best and Worst Time to Be an AI Builder: Lessons I Already Learned Before Starting to Build My First Independent Product
There is a common narrative in the current AI moment: building has never been cheaper. With tools like Claude Code, a single developer can ship a working demo in a day. The barrier to entry has collapsed. Anyone with a laptop and an idea can produce something that looks like a product by sundown. This is true. It is also the source of the problem. When everyone can build, everyone does. The same structural shift that makes it possible for a college freshman to prototype an AI agent in a weekend also means that every adjacent idea is being prototyped simultaneously by dozens of other people, many of whom have more capital, more domain expertise, and more runway. The best time to be an AI builder is also the worst. ...