Activity isn’t productivity
The more I talk with creators, the more I notice a certain type of person. They got caught up in the AI hype, learned all the vocabulary, they sound eloquent, and they’re completely convinced that if you’re not doing what they’re doing, then... you’re behind.
They’re proud of the workflow they’ve built. They have multiple agents running all day, even while they sleep. The agents do market research and follow all kinds of plans. Honestly, I’m not sure why they’re so busy or whether anyone is reading the outputs of that effort (I think I heard someone telling me that the outputs are not for us, they're for other agents...)
But when I ask what they’re actually building, the answer is often either one product tackling ten critical areas at once, or ten different products at the same time.
That’s where I get confused. How do people this smart end up confusing productivity with doing a lot of things?
Focus has always mattered in the startup world. If you’re not focused on the right problem, that’s a problem. AI doesn’t change that. It just makes it possible to lose focus much faster.
Trying to beat the odds with volume
The reasoning seems to be that spreading your effort improves your odds. If only one in ten startups works, you build ten startups at once. Or you build one product that tackles ten critical parts of a business at the same time. Either way, the assumption is that something has to work.
I don’t think it works that way. As I understand it, that one in ten number came from a different market, when fewer people could create and launch products this quickly. Now there are far more people making things, including a lot of slop and slightly different versions of products that already exist.
Maybe the number is closer to one in a hundred now.
And whether you’re building ten products or trying to solve ten big problems with one product, you’re still splitting your focus. The bigger issue is that many of these people seem completely focused on creating products, not on finding customers. They’re not testing their ideas with real people or checking whether anyone needs the apps they’re making. At least, that’s not the part I hear about.
I hear about agents, automation, research, and ten things cooking at once. What I almost never hear is the word customers.
The people getting real value from AI
Then I meet another kind of person, and I think these are the real AI champions.
I went to a coffee shop where the owner told me he used to pay for an app that handled employee check-ins and checkouts for the baristas. He made his own app with AI, so he no longer has to pay for that service. He can also change it whenever he wants.
He was proud of it, and he should be. That’s a real result. It saves him money, gives him more control, and solves a problem in a business that already works.
He didn’t come from a tech background. He just knew enough to work with prompts and create something useful for his business. The app works, and he’s getting a clear benefit from it.
The MVP matters more than the structure
I’m not against using AI to create products. Of course you can make an MVP with AI. Make it, put it in front of people, and see if there’s a market for it.
When someone tells me, “I built an MVP with AI, I’m trying to get customers, and I already have a few,” that’s much more interesting to me than hearing about an elaborate agent harness working every night on ten different ideas that are supposedly going to change the world.
The same goes for someone creating an entire imaginary company out of agents, with a marketing role, a sales role, a tech role, and even a board of directors. Most of that structure isn’t needed, especially when there are no customers yet.
To me, the real AI champions are the people using it to solve a specific problem in a real business. They’re also the people creating one focused product, testing it with actual customers, and learning whether it has any value. That’s where I can see AI making a real difference.