Not too long ago, I shared a post by Disesdi Shoshana Cox analyzing how many revolutionary tech companies we should have by now thanks to AI. With a 10x improvement on development speed, the technical aspects of launching an app are no longer a limit to reaching a target market. After four years of open source LLMs, we should have three Air Bn Bs, 1 two Stripes, and three Dropboxes thanks to the power of AI.

So where are they? The biggest new tech companies since the advent of Gen AI are Gen AI companies themselves. Open AI, Anthropic, and High-Flyer (developer of Deep Seek) are being valued at record-breaking sums. But their most noticeable contribution to society is making poorly worded emails the norm, flooding social media with garbage, and ruining internet search quality.

The massive blindspot is that writing lines of code isn't the part of software development that drains the most time. Leaders of companies truly believe LLMs have solved bottlenecks in product delivery--it's the perception that all technical issues no longer exist because you can "just get Claude to do it."

I recently attended a tech conference panel titled something like "No code, No problem" with four startup founders who vibe coded their way through MVP. One founder said he didn't need a CTO because he could use Claude to solve technical problems. I decided to test this 10x magic by buying $10 worth of Deep Seek credits.