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If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true

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Re: If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true

#21

Post by operatingthetan »

thekuanysh wrote: post #14
operatingthetan wrote: post #5

I find the story of a startup founder who entirely missed the developments of the last two years and did absolutely nothing with AI difficult to believe. If that actually happened it's the exception, not the rule. Most startup founders are way more in-tune with AI developments. This makes it sound like Chris (the mentioned founder) is behind marketing people who use LLM bots to post slop on LinkedIn. In that case, ye…

Look around, you're most definitely in a bubble. LLMs are bleeding edge by themselves. Using agentic anything is mega bleeding edge. Having something actually working reliably is a tiny sliver of the bleeding edge audience. We have barely entered early adoption phase. Most AI users out there are Q&A'ing it and they have no idea what agents, tool calling or context compaction are.

I don't follow. Tech startups are bleeding edge. You may be over-generalizing here. I talk a lot of my dev friends, they are all using AI for work. So if Joe Blow at some consulting company is using it, then a SV startup CEO should be too.

>Most AI users out there are Q&A'ing it and they have no idea what agents, tool calling or context compaction are.

Again, talking about a tech CEO not a random "AI user."

Re: If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true

#22

Post by apparent »

Seems like the headline should have been "is now dead on arrival". As currently written, it fails to convey the temporal aspect that is the focus of the blog post.

It also fails to convey that he's actually only talking about startups that were created 2+ years ago, rather than the many AI startups founded in the last 2 years.

Re: If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true

#23

Post by jnovek »

karolist wrote: post #20

The post reads like written by someone who read too much about AI rather than tried to build a startup with the help of AI that they advocate so much. I'm still bounded by system design, UX, pricing and feature decisions, if not by the speed of code output, by the review time for sure. Yes, iterating is faster, but we're nowhere near agentic AI loops spitting out working products. Technically it's possible, but then…

Are you familiar with Steve Blank? What you’re describing really isn’t his MO at all.

Re: If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true

#24

Post by PunchyHamster »

kristianc wrote: post #2

Well of course it is, most startups are dead on arrival. The big pinch of salt I throw in with advice like this though is that startup failure rate hasn't dramatically shifted despite two decades of lean startup methodology, accelerators, and an entire cottage industry of startup advice. It's never the fault of the framework, mind you.

Arguably that mostly says stuff about average VC skill to pick winning idea.

If you have good product idea, the methodology to get there mostly affect profit marigins, not whether it will be success or total failure

Re: If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true

#25

Post by thekuanysh »

operatingthetan wrote: post #21
thekuanysh wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look around, you're most definitely in a bubble. LLMs are bleeding edge by themselves. Using agentic anything is mega bleeding edge. Having something actually working reliably is a tiny sliver of the bleeding edge audience. We have barely entered early adoption phase. Most AI users out there are Q&A'ing it and they have no idea what agents, tool calling or context compaction are.

I don't follow. Tech startups are bleeding edge. You may be over-generalizing here. I talk a lot of my dev friends, they are all using AI for work. So if Joe Blow at some consulting company is using it, then a SV startup CEO should be too. >Most AI users out there are Q&A'ing it and they have no idea what agents, tool calling or context compaction are. Again, talking about a tech CEO not a random "AI user."

- Fair enough but tech CEOs aren't necessarily technical, developers or keep up-to-date with the tech on the daily like HN crowd.

- The AI jump happened in Q3-Q4 2025 with Opus 4.5 so it's been six months or so? Not long enough.

- Most developers out there use AI for their coding work, not for re-envisioning business models.

Re: If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true

#27

Post by kayson »

> Now, before you build a physical prototype, you can simulate more design variants, create digital twins, and stress-test assumptions earlier and much cheaper than before.

Hahahahahahahaha no you can't. The rise of LLMs has done little to nothing in this area because it's very much compute-limited. Digital-twins and other ML-based strategies predate ChatGPT by a long shot. There are definitely places in hardware design where LLMs and agentic workflows will help, but that's largely because the existing tooling is utter garbage, and now the industry has a fire under its ass to make things automatable so they can build their own agents.

Re: If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true

#28

Post by sobellian »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #24
kristianc wrote: post #2

Well of course it is, most startups are dead on arrival. The big pinch of salt I throw in with advice like this though is that startup failure rate hasn't dramatically shifted despite two decades of lean startup methodology, accelerators, and an entire cottage industry of startup advice. It's never the fault of the framework, mind you.

Arguably that mostly says stuff about average VC skill to pick winning idea. If you have good product idea, the methodology to get there mostly affect profit marigins, not whether it will be success or total failure

Execution is very important. Startups almost never start with the "right" idea.

Re: If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true

#29

Post by operatingthetan »

thekuanysh wrote: post #25
operatingthetan wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow. Tech startups are bleeding edge. You may be over-generalizing here. I talk a lot of my dev friends, they are all using AI for work. So if Joe Blow at some consulting company is using it, then a SV startup CEO should be too. >Most AI users out there are Q&A'ing it and they have no idea what agents, tool calling or context compaction are. Again, talking about a tech CEO not a random "AI user."

- Fair enough but tech CEOs aren't necessarily technical, developers or keep up-to-date with the tech on the daily like HN crowd. - The AI jump happened in Q3-Q4 2025 with Opus 4.5 so it's been six months or so? Not long enough. - Most developers out there use AI for their coding work, not for re-envisioning business models.

I know a 60-ish year old serial startup CEO who never coded. Now he's running teams of Claude Code agents which he used to build a healthcare platform by himself which he is now selling. He's already wealthy, just doing it for fun. This skill set is the bare minimum for a startup founder today.

Going to VCs with a 2 year outdated deck with no AI functionality or plans or tool use is unimaginable.

Re: If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true

#30

Post by coffeefirst »

karolist wrote: post #20

The post reads like written by someone who read too much about AI rather than tried to build a startup with the help of AI that they advocate so much. I'm still bounded by system design, UX, pricing and feature decisions, if not by the speed of code output, by the review time for sure. Yes, iterating is faster, but we're nowhere near agentic AI loops spitting out working products. Technically it's possible, but then…

Yeah… also, it’s just weird. Interfaces are important, they contain information and affordances, everything should not become a chatbot.
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