How to Build Software in the AI Era Without Wrecking Your Startup

In partnership with

You build fast.
You feel like a genius.
You’ve got an MVP live by Friday and your team’s buzzing.

And then... your app faceplants in front of your first real users.

That’s the vibe coding trap. And it’s claiming more startups by the day.

Last week, I sat down with Jared Neutel, founder of an 8-figure dev agency with 200+ engineers and one of the few people who’s been scaling AI-assisted software before the LinkedIn influencers caught on.

Between us, we’ve seen everything from brilliant founders with busted apps to vibe-coded prototypes that couldn’t handle a gentle breeze, let alone real traffic.

Here’s the pattern we see over and over:

• Founders get hypnotized by AI’s speed.

• They skip the boring stuff. Security, scalability, structure.

• They end up with tech debt, lost users, and investor embarrassment.

And the core problem?

So Jared and I decided to unpack what’s really happening in this new era of AI-built software, and why most early-stage products are setting themselves up to fail.