Because I learned a second thing at the end of my two days of vertigo: That my idea was terrible.
One of our recurring biases is assuming that our last experience of something, or somewhere, still reflects how it is today. For example, places I haven’t visited in over a decade, since before the pandemic, are almost certainly quite different now. The same applies to software and digital tools, which tend to evolve far faster than we expect.
The same is true of software and digital tools, which often evolve much faster than we think. If you haven’t been playing with AI tools (especially things like Cursor and Claude Code) then you really don’t know what you’re missing out on.
This post was shared with me by Tom Watson, who I did some noodling with on Friday in-person (I know, I know). I like the honest reflections in this post, and it meshes with my own experience building things with the help of a Little Robot Friend.
Within a few minutes of installing Cursor and setting up a handful of developmental studs, I had built a working prototype. Within 24 hours, I not only had a polished app; I was already at the limit of my initial idea, no longer just manufacturing what had been in my head, but trying to come up with new things to manifest. And within 48 hours, I was ruined. The comfortable physics that I thought governed Silicon Valley—that stuff takes time to build; that products need to be designed before they can be created; that computers cannot assume intent or interpolate their way through incomplete ideas—broke, utterly. It all worked too well, too fast.2 I was staggered, drunk on the Kool-Aid and high on the pills, unwell and off-brand. I knew that anyone can now build vibe-coded toys; I did not know that people with a basic familiarity with code could go much, much further.
Though it’s hard to benchmark how far I got in two days, this is my best guess: The app is roughly equivalent to what a designer and a couple professional engineers could build in a month or two. Granted, I didn’t build any of the scaffolding that a real company would—proper signup pages, hardened security policies, administrative features, “tests”—but the product expresses its core functionality as completely as any prototype that we showed Mode’s early investors and first customers. In 2013, it took us eight people, nine months, and hundreds of thousands of dollars to build something we could sell, and that was seen as reasonably efficient. Today, that feels possible to do with one person in two days.
Well, with one more caveat. Because I learned a second thing at the end of my two days of vertigo: That my idea was terrible.
The entire conceit didn’t work. My long-loved thesis, when rendered on a screen, was catastrophically bad.3 I did not want to start a business around my app. I did not want to take notes in my app. I did not want to use my app. I wanted to start over.4 Great chefs can come from anywhere, but not everyone can be a great chef.
Equally interesting is this bit, which talks about what happens when people don’t have to accept the “solutions” created by people who don’t experience their problems:
In other words, a lot of today’s technology is the levered ideas of technologists. It is a book store, run by an engineer from a hedge fund; it is computerized cash registers, from a social media founder and Oracle employees; it is fitness classes, built by a Bain consultant and an MIT grad; it is a note-taking app, built by someone who knows enough Typescript to build a note-taking app. But if these products succeed, it’s often more because of the technology than the idea of the technologist. It’s not that the idea was bad; it’s that the idea was not the transformational advantage. A fine CAD program beats a drafting table. A fine banking app beats driving to a branch. Even my app beats hand-written note cards. And because people who are technologists first, and architects or bankers or writers second, are the only people who can lever their ideas with technology, their ideas win.
Moreover, this isn’t just some accidental selection bias; this is the whole point of Silicon Valley. Flagship incubators like Y Combinator are built on the thesis that a smart kid with a computer and summer internship at Goldman Sachs can outwit all of American Express. That’s not because the kid understands the needs of payment processors better than people at American Express, or has better ideas than they do; it’s because the kid can build their idea.
But what if anyone can? What if lots of people at American Express can build stuff? What if someone who’s been an architect for twenty years can make the design software they’ve always wanted? What if a veteran investment banker can write a program that automatically generates pitch books? What if a real writer makes a note-taking app? What if software is the levered ideas of experts?
Source: benn.substack
Image: Kevin Ku