AI-Driven Product Building: Fast, More, and Focused

I'm spotting a couple of cool trends with founders building their first products right now: 1) they're building super fast, and 2) they're building a whole lot more.

Back in the SaaS days, we were all about the lean startup — quick, sprint-long experiments to test hypotheses with users, basically learning as we went to refine the product. The main goal was to learn fast, crank out a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), and hit product-market fit without wasting time or over-engineering.

Honestly, that approach needs a fresh look now that we're in the age of AI and “vibe coding.”

For one, execution is way quicker now. Founders can build fast and build more, thanks to AI, without stressing about huge engineering costs. But “execution” isn't just coding. Before you build, you have to nail down what to build—that's Product Discovery. And guess what? That's faster now too, thanks to LLMs and NLP. For example, LLMs can instantly analyze and make sense of tons of text from customer calls, CRMs, ticketing systems like Zendesk, and other data. They can do things like sentiment checks, figure out the most-requested features, spot gaps, identify pain points, and more. For B2C, this seriously speeds up getting to market and distribution. For B2B, though, you still have extra stuff to figure out like distribution, getting multiple stakeholders to sign off, and change management.

Second, with AI and vibe coding, you can simply build more without blowing up your development budget or needing to hire a bunch of new engineers. The cost of building extra stuff is lower, making it feasible. But hold on—someone still has to do the product discovery, write the specs, prioritize features, and test/maintain the code. Building too much too soon, before you have those necessary market signals, can still be a big waste.

So, while there's less risk building fast and building more in the AI age, you definitely shouldn't skip or ignore product discovery and go-to-market strategy. Those are still absolutely key to giving your product the best shot at adoption.