My feeds and messaging apps have been buzzing lately with what I'm calling the "AI builder renaissance." Everyone seems to be jumping on tools like Lovable, Cursor, Bolt, and Windsurf - and running into the same challenges I faced last September.
The kids are calling it "vibe coding" (perfect term, honestly), where these AI tools help you rapidly prototype and build mini-apps that get to the 80-90% completion level. But then what? The final stretch becomes either unmanageable or you find yourself spending days troubleshooting minor issues. Sound familiar?
These AI co-pilot tools will undoubtedly improve over the next year, but we're entering a new phase in the builder/digital product ecosystem. The landscape is shifting rapidly.
What’s most fascinating is how this shift is creating what I call ‘builder clans’ or ‘Squads 2.0’ - collaborative groups of individuals with complementary skills helping each other reach that final 10-20% of completion.
The main challenges with creating AI products (in order of importance)
- Marketing and sales - still the highest hurdle.
- Cross Platform, Scaling, Polish, and Devops - we're waiting for aiAWS and all the agents.
- Design / Taste - getting harder to differentiate. Being unique, strong ux, and off v0 grid is key.
- Building / Development - becoming increasingly AI-assisted. And as AI pilots continue to advance, the remaining 5-10% of challenges people face will likely be overcome in the near future.
I've seen this pattern myself with my AI assisted fitness app project. Working with Claude, I quickly built something sophisticated that felt like magic, spending more time troubleshooting than vibe coding. But then hit a wall when Strava updated their API policies. The project that started as an exciting multi-weekend AI hackathon eventually stalled out, facing the same 95% completion hurdle I'm seeing everywhere now. Last week I wrote about my journey and a few lessons.
The ease of AI development can seduce you into building features just because you can
What’s turned my personal frustration into optimism is seeing how communities are responding - not by giving up, but by coming together.
What's interesting is how this pattern is evolving into something bigger. Beyond just the continuous co-pilot improvement of tools (which is inevitable), we're seeing people actively collaborate and support each other. Developers are stepping in to help non-technical designers troubleshoot cursor bugs, designers adding v0 interface polish, marketers helping developers with video storytelling, and so on, creating a more interconnected community of builders helping builders. Bug fixes aren't the main draw.
Builder clans are emerging
Squads 2.0, similar to the pods, DAOs, or guilds we
As someone that nerds out on the future of work, venture studios, and the product studio model, I believe this collaborative approach represents its next natural evolution. This community-driven framework could potentially rival traditional innovation funding models like YC, VC, and PE by distributing both opportunity and expertise more organically.
This collaborative model could potentially rival traditional innovation funding approaches for several reasons. As AI democratizes building capability, the differentiator becomes less about technical execution and more about customer understanding, marketing, and speed.
When individuals, small teams, startups, and large companies all have access to similar AI building capabilities, we move away from winner-take-all scenarios. The advantage shifts to those closest to customer problems and most agile in execution - often the independent builders, startups, and small teams.
For large companies, this means reconsidering how they engage with talent. The future likely involves more outcomes-based collaboration rather than traditional employment. Companies will need to partner with independent builders who have direct customer relationships and domain expertise.
This shift may also transform pricing models away from flat fees or per-seat arrangements toward performance-based compensation tied to specific outcomes. Everyone, from solo builders to established companies, will need to focus on specific customer problems rather than building monolithic solutions.
In this new ecosystem, collaboration becomes the competitive advantage. Like restaurants in a thriving culinary district, builders can create more value together than they could alone, each bringing specialized expertise while benefiting from the collective draw.
What makes these builder squads different is this quiet undercurrent of trying to break free, getting ahead of the AI wave before the big companies “wipe us out”. But it’s not just that. There’s this raw excitement, that “new car smell” of endless possibilities. At the core, though, it’s builders helping builders reach financial independence and then moving as a unit. These small communities, armed with AI tools, are both a form of cope and a way to fight back, searching for a way out, sticking around for the camaraderie, and trying to navigate the drastic shifts in the workforce and career panic that AI is throwing at us.
The same community principles can be applied anywhere, and I believe startups or large companies will need to emulate more partnerships and collaboration that align with missions or categories. Again, this happens today, but I think collaboration between companies and 1-to-1 humans is going to be much bigger than it is today.
Based on what I’ve observed in these emerging builder communities and my own experience, here’s my playbook for navigating this new landscape:
How to win
- Be mission or category driven.
- Focus on a category and a single ideal customer.
- Build and ship adjacent products relentlessly for this ideal customer.
- Assume everything you build today will be obsolete or unusable within 12-18 months. Focus on the next bullet.
- Sales, marketing, and partnerships are everything. Create and redefine your category in public, where failed products become essential chapters in your builder's evolving story arc.
- Don't Stop. Your customers and fellow builders will discover you (or you'll find them and collaborate).
Draft v1 - deck notes go here
It’s nearly impossible to predict the future of AI, but if you follow the above recommendations, I think you’ll be on the right track.
Assuming we have a drastic flood of new apps or digital products, we’ll surely need a new type of app store, something to replace Product Hunt, which might be the new Digg, to keep track of and play with all these new experiences.
Are you building with AI within a builder squad seeking financial independence? I’d love to chat with you.
(This is a first draft and I welcome all feedback. Thanks!)