The Startup Ideas Podcast
The best businesses are built at the intersection of emerging technology, community, and real human needs.
“It's not going to be what you build as much as what you don't build”
What It Means
With AI making everything buildable, success will come from choosing what NOT to build rather than capability limits
Why It Matters
Reframes product development from technical capability to product focus and user experience
When It's True
When AI capabilities continue growing and building anything becomes technically feasible for individuals
When It's Risky
If AI development plateaus or if users consistently prefer feature-rich over focused products
How to Apply
Practice saying no to feature requests
Focus on solving one problem extremely well
Use constraint as a competitive advantage
Regularly audit features for actual user value
Example Scenario
“Developer can build 20 features using AI but success comes from identifying the 2 features users actually need daily”
Related Knowledge
Personal Software Development Framework
Build software primarily for yourself first, then find others who share your specific needs rather than trying to build
Contextual AI Computing
AI that understands the full context of user activity over time rather than requiring explicit prompts for each interact
pick a daily habit to serve narrow wedge use case
Successful mobile apps focus on specific daily behaviors within narrow market segments rather than broad solutions
Vibe coders should build single killer features rather than complex multi-feature platforms
Success probability increases with focused scope - if you can't make a simple tool with auth, payment, and email work, y
I build for myself. I think we're entering into this era of personal software
Build software for your own specific needs first, then find others who share those needs, rather than trying to build fo
Things that are technically out of bounds for you...are very much possible as a solo engineer
AI tools now enable individual developers to build complex systems that previously required entire teams