[operatingthetan]

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, yes their startup is most certainly DOA.

[thekuanysh]

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.

[operatingthetan]

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."

[thekuanysh]

- 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.

[operatingthetan]

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Going to VCs with a 2 year outdated deck with no AI functionality or plans or tool use is unimaginable.

[thekuanysh]

Yeah I get what you're saying. Sounds like this guy is driven, smart and savvy then? Definitely a bleeding edge minority who goes where the puck is.

As to my original point I'll go and say that 95/100 of business owners out there in the world don't have any idea about Claude Code, Codex or anything of that caliber. It's too early. By the time that group gets to it there'll be tools tailored to their needs, not a terminal-based coding agent messing up filesystem.

[operatingthetan]

>95/100 of business owners out there in the world

You keep returning to this which is a strawman of my argument. From the start I have been talking about technical startup founders, which is also the subject of the blog post.

[procflora]

Your startup CEO acquaintance sounds like a real piece of work. Hope he rethinks such an unethical decision!