At the same time, I scroll down the YC startup directory, sorting by launch date, and observe that every non-hardware company (and most of the hardware ones) are entirely based on AI. The demographic I described above, young creatives like the ones in this club, has zero chance of voluntarily using one of these products.
It seems to me, then, that as the moat for most AI startups drops asymptotically to 0 with GPT-6 et al. becoming more capable, this market is mostly a blue ocean (to use the business-book term) for anyone willing to put in the work and actually code something people want. From there, network effects would work as well as they have since the dawn of the Internet.
I am exploring the idea of making such a startup (it started out as a side project which I have been working on by myself for almost 2 years), but I am worried about the attitude of incubators, VCs, and investors in general. Would the lack of AI be a nonstarter for most outside investors? I know people started non-blockchain companies in 2021, but the hype around AI seems orders of magnitude more captivating to anybody who might provide capital. I know bootstrapping is viable for some companies, but would that be the only way? I appreciate any advice people might have.
I don't know of anyone in the VC or traditional incubator communities who has an appetite for this. And the groups who are an ideological fit don't have the funds to be worth pursuing.
It's a niche. Like most niches, there's the opportunity to prosper, but yeah - bootstrapping (or angel-bootstrapping if you're lucky and have a personal connection) is pretty much the only way to go here.
For example for a game, you could use AI to finish a sprite sheet based on a couple frames you provide, or to give you a pathfinding algorithm.
AI is a resource, and a startup has a better chance of success the better it leverages the few resources it has.
So yes I don't think that everything needs to have AI by default.
Non-AI-code: forget it, you won't be able to avoid it in your libraries, and you won't write the whole engine from scratch.
It's possible to write a whole modern engine without it, but you won't, you'll spin wheels chasing features and never ship.
People don't care about your entire dependency chain, see how little the most valuable FOSS libraries recieve in donations or sponsorships compared to end-user apps. They care about how well put together your own app is, which we know AI use changes for the worst (which some argue is worth it for momentum).
As long as your dependencies aren't outright dysfunctional (see rsync debate), it's concensus to disregard AI use there.
Other distros ban use of LLMs. Not sure how that's going to go down given Linus seems to be willing to use them for the kernel.
I don't think it's avoidable (unless you stick to a pre-LLM game engine), but it's clearly an error to underestimate quite how much people really loathe this stuff.
Two things: Whether the anti AI slant would work is a marketing question. I happen to think it will, but we are all famously terrible at answering marketing questions until it's hindsight. The only way to know is to start small and find out if your slant resonates.
IMHO, this will absolutely, 100%, need to start bootstrapped and have a plan that involves NEVER giving up more >= 50% ownership. Which can definitely be done, and I've even helped PE firms invest (minority) in these companies. I've seen some fantastic ones. Investors expect you to just do whatever seems like the easy money now, and they are all fucking breathless over AI everywhere right now, to sometimes an astonishingly stupid degree.
I also make casual conversation about the weather and yesterday’s sports highlights, which automatic elevators can’t do.
Can I join?
In general, they don’t care about AI or not AI.
They care about the possibility of 100x returns.
This means they care about the possibility of exponential growth.
Most businesses grow linearly at best.
Good luck.