Ideas are both more and less valuable than ever
Getting started is easier than ever for non-technical founders
How can these two things be true at the same time? Well, historically, non-technical folks have had a tough go of it if they had an idea they wanted to explore.
I’m not even talking about building a full-fledged minimum viable product (MVP) – just getting to something tangible and interactive, that could spark the interest of potential cofounders, investors or clients on the potential value.
Technical folks, like me, have long had an advantage here, because we often have the ability to prototype our ideas without the costs that come from hiring a third party to do the work. [Sidebar #1: this can also be to our detriment and lead to us not validating our ideas early enough.]
Things have shifted dramatically over the past few years though. It is now possible for anyone out there to convert an idea into an interactive proof-of-concept (POC) with just a paragraph of text typed into an AI platform.
Crafting that paragraph is still a bit of an art, with its own quirks, but this will likely unlock a torrent of new value delivered to both first-time founders and their customers as the barriers to entry fall.
To be clear, a POC is not an MVP. Technical resources are still necessary to accomplish the V in MVP for a product with any level of complexity. Real users will require you to have a real understanding of what’s happening behind the scenes in order to sustainably scale and support them, but AI tools are enough to kickstart the P in POC.
After all, a picture is worth a thousand words and anything that quickly enables validation and can drive interest in an idea can justify the additional effort needed to build an actual MVP from a POC.
This means some great ideas that would never have been built before will likely come to light, creating real outsized value. At the same time, there is also likely to be a lot of low value boilerplate products that will arrive like a tsunami of noise.
We’ve seen this play out in prior cycles, e.g. the mobile app stores for iOS and Android now have over 1.5 Million apps competing for our attention, even as most folks use less than 30.
[Sidebar #2: WhatsApp had 50 employees when it was bought for $19B, Instagram just 13 when it was bought for $1B. It is both exciting and terrifying to think about what is possible today given the tools we have now.]
Even so, just like mobile apps are not by themselves a product (unless you’re Apple or Google), for most folks neither is AI (unless you’re OpenAI, Google or Anthropic).
I am very excited by what I have seen some non-technical founders deliver, including some consulting clients that I have worked with to get them from early concepts to full-fledged products with live users, integrated payments, forward looking roadmaps and ramp plans.
If there’s an idea that’s been living rent free in your head for some time, now’s the time to start exploring. The barriers have never been lower, especially for those historically underrepresented as founders (women, people of color, LGBTQ+, etc).
I am now myself a founder, building MicroSaaS products, self-funded from income I make partnering with startups and non-technical founders looking for product consulting support. If you’re interested in working with me, book a free discovery session here.