Week 3 after Amazon: AI and software development momentum

𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐬 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐬. 𝐔𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐬 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐞𝐬. In tech, we often celebrate those who move fast. But speed alone can be deceptive. It can quietly mask what matters most real understanding. Mukund Jha recognised this long before AGI, agentic coding, or apps built in minutes became the norm. Back in 2005, he told a friend, simply, “I want to work at Google.” It wasn’t ambition on display. It was clarity. The kind that takes time to arrive at. He wasn’t trying to be the loudest voice in the room or the smartest one. He just kept showing up. Day after day. With patience. That patience practiced consistently became his advantage. Four years later, he joined Google as an intern. Not because of luck, but because he had been preparing long before the opportunity appeared. Google didn’t just give him a brand name. It shaped how he thought. Build for people. Build for the long term. Pause before creating. Understand deeply before you ship. What followed wasn’t a straight line. There were missteps, uncertainty, ideas that didn’t land. But the mindset stayed the same steady, thoughtful, grounded. Then came Emergent in 2025. A platform where a builder explains an idea, and AI brings the entire app to life from backend to deployment in minutes. Today, the numbers get attention: • 2.5M builders • 3M apps • $25M ARR • Google backing it again But the real story lives underneath. →In the years of learning slowly. →In choosing depth over urgency. →In building confidence quietly. When AI can create apps in minutes, it raises a bigger question: What happens to craft? To responsibility? To the thoughtfulness behind what we release into the world? Here’s what feels true to me: Speed reveals gaps. Understanding fills them. Real innovation isn’t about rushing. It’s about reflection. About depth. About caring enough to build responsibly. Emergent isn’t just a 2025 success story. It’s the result of two decades of patience, clarity, humility, and quiet resilience. Maybe the next shift in technology won’t be faster tools. Maybe it will be wiser builders. 💬 What’s something you learned slowly but it changed everything for you? #Leadership #InnovationMindset #Founders #AI #IndianStartups #BuildingWithIntent #Leadership #InnovationMindset #IndiaTech #Founders #AI #IndianStartups

Just wrapped up the Google for Startups – Startup School: Prompt to Prototype, a 2-week hands-on program by Google for Startups in partnership with Scaler. Over the past few days, I got to deep-dive into: • Prompt engineering & the PTCF framework — turning vague asks into precise, repeatable prompts • RAG, NotebookLM & research workflows — grounding AI in real documents to de-risk product decisions • Creative asset generation — copy, visual direction, and the cross-modal loop for original, on-brand designs • Mastering Google AI Studio — controlling model behavior, structured outputs (JSON), and cost vs quality trade-offs • Rapid prototyping with the Build tab — from screenshot-to-clone and live previews to fast iteration • Deployment, security & scaling — GitHub workflows, Google Cloud Run, and safeguarding API keys & public URLs The biggest takeaway? AI doesn’t replace builders. It amplifies people who can think clearly, structure problems, and ship fast. Grateful to Google for Startups, Scaler, and the mentors for designing a program that focuses on execution, not just content consumption. Excited to apply this learning to real projects next 🚀 #GoogleForStartups #StartupSchool #PromptToPrototype #AIProduct #Prototyping #BuildersMindset #ContinuousLearning

Your product might secretly be a demo. And your users are about to find out. "Vibe Coding" (coding without knowing how to code) is great for demos. It is terrible for production. The difference is bankrupting startups. Founders fell for the marketing: ❌ "Architecture can be outsourced to autocomplete." ❌ "Code equals product." The Reality Check: AI tools made prototypes fast. But Integration, Governance, Security, and Reliability stayed hard. The Math of the Crisis: -> 10,000 startups experimented with AI coding. -> 8,000 require architectural rescue. -> $30k-$150k monthly burn during the rebuild. The Lesson: AI lets everyone build software. Now everyone learns what it costs to make software actually work. Budget for Senior Engineers the moment you get traction. Or pay the tax when your customers leave. #Startups #CTO #FullStack #ArtificialIntelligence #Engineering

“A clear moment that this mindset wouldn't work at an early-stage startup came after we spent months building, and launch day arrived, almost nobody showed up organically for a few weeks. That was the wake-up call: shipping isn't the finish line when we didn't have demand. After that, we shifted to doing customer conversations earlier and running small distribution tests, including waitlists, partnerships, and community posts, before over-investing in product.”

For years I've preached the lean startup gospel: validate before you build. Don't write a line of code until someone's willing to pay for the thing. I still think that's mostly right. But I'm starting to wonder if AI has changed the equation a bit. When building an MVP used to take months, spending weeks on validation made obvious sense. The cost of building the wrong thing was enormous. You'd burn through runway, demoralize your team, and end up with something nobody wanted. But now? My mate can spin up a working prototype in a few hours. The cost of building has collapsed so dramatically that you can afford to be further down the line before you start gathering real feedback. You can still be lean. You just get to be lean with an actual product in hand rather than a landing page and some hopeful copy. Of course, this creates its own problems. It's tempting to just keep building and never actually talk to customers. "I'll just add one more feature" is still a trap, whether it takes you three months or three hours. But the calculus has shifted. And I think we need to update our mental models accordingly. #LeanStartup #ProductValidation #BuildInPublic

From coding guru who won gold at olympiads to building a $10 billion company - Scott Wu's story is crazy. He’s the founder of Devin - the first AI software engineer. Here's how he built one of the most valuable AI startups in the world: 1. Competed at the highest level Scott started coding young and gave it everything, winning Gold at the International Olympiad in Informatics. He was ranked as a grandmaster on Codeforces (top 0.01%). 2. Started building real products as a teenager Joined Addepar as a software engineer in high school. Got exposure to real world fintech systems. 3. Built his first startup at Harvard Co-founded the networking platform Lunchclub in 2017. Served as CTO and made Forbes 30 Under 30. 4. Spotted the real opportunity Around 2022, Scott noticed: LLMs could write code, but couldn't debug, understand large codebases, or manage deployments. 5. Started building an AI software developer He recruited former olympiad winners and competitive programming elites, and built Devin - The world’s first AI software engineer. 6. Launched explosively The March 2024 demo went viral. Their company Cognition quickly hit $1M revenue, but what next? 7. Grew enterprise-first Most dev tools sell $20-$50 per seat. Devin sold: "This agent completes X% of your engineering work." That justified HUGE annual contracts with companies like Goldman Sachs. Revenue hit $73 million. By 2025, Cognition hit a $10.2B valuation, backed by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund. Scott's story shows that the best founders don't chase trends. They build expertise in what they enjoy, then wait for the right moment to strike. Do you think AI agents like Devin will replace software engineers? #ai #software #founders #startups

Just read about 'vibe coding' - where founders are building startups with 95% AI-generated code. Apparently 25% of Y Combinator's latest batch is doing this. Honestly? Part of me wishes this existed when I started my first company. I spent countless nights debugging instead of focusing on product-market fit. But there's something that doesn't sit right with me about the 'Accept All' mentality. When you're building something people depend on, do you want to blindly trust code you didn't write and barely understand? The pendulum will probably swing back to a middle ground - AI-assisted development where founders still understand their stack but use AI to accelerate. For all the non-technical founders out there though... the barriers to entry just got a lot lower. The playing field is leveling. What do you think - would you build your startup on 95% AI-generated code?

Not another consumer app fund. IAN Group just closed $100M and pointed it at deep tech-semiconductors and defense. The timing feels very intentional. As a CS student watching the funding landscape, this shift from consumer apps to deep tech is fascinating. We're seeing capital flow toward problems that actually matter. The Alpha Fund targets: • Semiconductors and defense tech • AI and biotech solutions • Climate and agri-tech innovations • Companies at Technology Readiness Level 4+ What caught my attention? They're backing first-generation founders from tier-II and tier-III cities. This democratizes access to serious funding beyond the usual startup hubs. For someone building technical skills in software engineering, this signals where the industry is heading. Deep tech requires strong foundational knowledge and problem-solving skills. The focus on India's technology sovereignty makes sense. We need homegrown solutions for critical infrastructure and defense capabilities. This $100M deployment could reshape how we think about building startups. Less about viral growth, more about solving real problems with solid technology. What technical domains do you think will see the biggest breakthroughs from this kind of focused funding? #DeepTech #VentureCapital #TechInnovation 𝐒𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞: https://lnkd.in/gx8RSf96

In the latest episode of The Playbook, we explore one of the most talked-about shifts in modern software development: vibe coding — a natural-language, AI-assisted approach to building software that’s gaining traction across the tech world. Tune in as hosts Mathieu Galipeau, ing, P.Eng and Alex Moreau unpack: - What vibe coding is and isn’t: how the latest tools are turning ideas directly into prototypes - The opportunities it unlocks: speed, creativity, and accessibility for founders, solo builders, and small teams. - The risks and realities: from reliability and security to where human insight still matters most. Whether you’re building your first MVP or leading a team into the next era of AI-augmented development, this episode offers clarity and perspective on what vibe coding means and why it matters. Watch: https://ow.ly/buF250XMxvL Listen: https://ow.ly/Q2UA50XMxvM #VibeCoding #ArtificialIntelligence #SoftwareDevelopment #ProductInnovation #TechLeadership #AIinBusiness #FutureOfWork #Startups #DigitalTransformation

There’s one Indian founder Google just can’t stop investing in. First, they hired him. Then, they backed his startup. And now? They’ve funded his next one too. Who is this guy? His name is Mukund Jha — and he’s quietly reshaping how software gets built. His new company, Emergent, is not another “no-code toy” pretending to be engineering. It’s closer to this 👇 👉 A full-stack engineering team inside your browser. And the numbers are wild. In just 5 months: • 2.5M+ users • $25M ARR • 3M+ real apps shipped That’s not normal. Even by Silicon Valley standards. Here’s the real reason it’s taking off: Most no-code tools help you design demos. Emergent helps you launch real companies. You can: – Build AI agents & MCP workflows – Ship native backends + LLM features – Create web and mobile apps – Deploy, scale, and iterate — all in one place No tool hopping. No engineering team. No “handoff later”. Think of it like this: Canva unlocked creativity for design. Emergent is unlocking creativity for software. If you’ve been sitting on a startup idea because “I don’t know how to code”… That excuse just expired. 👇 Comment “emergent” and I’ll share the tool link so you can try building something today. #GenerativeAI #NoCode #AIStartups #IndianFounders #BuildInPublic #AIEngineering #StartupTools #FutureOfSoftware #AIPlatforms #TechInnovation