Issue #50 of The Two But Rule | Discover how AI revolutionizes career paths for senior product managers in tech, offering fresh perspectives on innovation and growth.
Ha! I'm that 50+ high-tech product manager that had to start a software company by writing the code myself. (But, you already knew that.) I'm going to have to try the approach you took. I asked AI for a few code ideas and it gave me back code that used proprietary APIs from fee-based web services, which defeated my purpose of writing everything from scratch so that I have the flexibility to enhance the functionality myself instead of relying on a vendor's web service. However, if there is a collection of cheap web services to put together to solve an existing itch as an add-on to an existing community where the cost to start and support isn't huge, this could be a boon. Of course, I have a built-in fear that someone could come along and use GPT to recreate in an evening what took me 2 years collaborating with intelligent customers to build. Having been on the bleeding edge of technology my whole career, I find myself reticent on exploring this as I might find something that flushes what I thought was a huge barrier to entry down the drain. Ignorance is bliss. I need to embrace fear of the unknown. Got any pointers on how to do that? 😂
Avoidance is a powerful thing. But yeah, baby steps. Same as you did before, just do something fun, then more fun, then a little more. It's a journey. The barrier to entry thing, I feel, is usually overblown. There is huge opportunity in laziness. Sure, someone else can come along and build what you built. Of course they can. But if you stay focused on clients/customers/users and serving them, they usually stick. And if you are the most open to innovative thinking about how to serve the signals those customers are giving you, then being able to implement them faster with current AI tools will keep you ahead...even allow you to pull further ahead. Folks that focus on barriers to entry, in my experience, can only explain what that is in hindsight, after a brand has captured the zeitgeist. Beforehand, very very few pre-user startups can make a good case for having a claim that really stands up on their "barriers to entry" slide.
John this a great article, as you did in your career great ideas and it was not easy to get it going., without a tech team, I had/have a few as well. I will connect with you on LinkedIn.
Ha! I'm that 50+ high-tech product manager that had to start a software company by writing the code myself. (But, you already knew that.) I'm going to have to try the approach you took. I asked AI for a few code ideas and it gave me back code that used proprietary APIs from fee-based web services, which defeated my purpose of writing everything from scratch so that I have the flexibility to enhance the functionality myself instead of relying on a vendor's web service. However, if there is a collection of cheap web services to put together to solve an existing itch as an add-on to an existing community where the cost to start and support isn't huge, this could be a boon. Of course, I have a built-in fear that someone could come along and use GPT to recreate in an evening what took me 2 years collaborating with intelligent customers to build. Having been on the bleeding edge of technology my whole career, I find myself reticent on exploring this as I might find something that flushes what I thought was a huge barrier to entry down the drain. Ignorance is bliss. I need to embrace fear of the unknown. Got any pointers on how to do that? 😂
Avoidance is a powerful thing. But yeah, baby steps. Same as you did before, just do something fun, then more fun, then a little more. It's a journey. The barrier to entry thing, I feel, is usually overblown. There is huge opportunity in laziness. Sure, someone else can come along and build what you built. Of course they can. But if you stay focused on clients/customers/users and serving them, they usually stick. And if you are the most open to innovative thinking about how to serve the signals those customers are giving you, then being able to implement them faster with current AI tools will keep you ahead...even allow you to pull further ahead. Folks that focus on barriers to entry, in my experience, can only explain what that is in hindsight, after a brand has captured the zeitgeist. Beforehand, very very few pre-user startups can make a good case for having a claim that really stands up on their "barriers to entry" slide.
John this a great article, as you did in your career great ideas and it was not easy to get it going., without a tech team, I had/have a few as well. I will connect with you on LinkedIn.
Thank you
Boris
Here's the video our friends at ai.invideo.io made from this story. (Never ceases to amaze me.)
https://youtu.be/vGZRjpVUgVU?si=-QZ-oGIvsSKzPVCL