As the tech industry refocuses from generating media and content with AI to the lure of building an app – and, by assumption, a billion-dollar business – with one chat prompt, "vibe coding" has become its own ecosystem. If your plan for a successful business is to first spin up an app, here's why you should reconsider, and what you can do instead with AI:
1. REFRAME: Shift from "creating a product" to "solving a problem."
OLD SCHOOL: I have an idea for an offering, and I'm going to create it! Press pause. Successful businesses start with a customer, not a product. What long-lasting tech companies have taught us is whoever solves their customers' problems, obsessively, wins, at least over those who start product-first. If you have an idea for a product, don't start building the app; use that insight to ask:
- Whose problem would this product solve? These are your potential customers.
- Who would make money off of that problem being solved? These are your buyers. They may be different from your customers.
AI MOVE: Before you vibe code an app, use your AI platform to explain your product and ask who the customers and buyers might be. Then ask AI to build personas for each and interview them. Where are they trying to go? What's standing in the way? What have they tried and paid for to solve that? What would they pay for now?
2. LOOP IN THE HUMANS. After the personas have gotten you clearer on what questions and answers help you understand real problems, reach out to real human beings in those customer and buyer roles. Asks the same questions, listen, learn return to AI.
OLD SCHOOL MOVE: Hi, I just built this product for you. What do you think of it?
AI MOVE: [after speaking to human beings] I spoke to these human beings, and this is what they shared with me about their goals and frictions trying to reach them. What are some ways to solve this, in addition to [my product]? What's the simplest thing I can bring to them to test my hypothesis?
3. BACK TO THE HUMANS. Next, you return to your test pool about 1-2 possible options. For the customers, you want to know if they would use it, how they would use it, what it would have to do to solve their problems, and if they would switch from how they're solving it right now. For your buyers, even if it's the same group, you want to see if they will join a waitlist or even pay in advance for the solution. Now you're seeing if you have a business opportunity.
OLD SCHOOL MOVE: I just launched my completed product on Product Hunt – will you try it out for me?
AI MOVE: NOW you "vibe code" a prototype, at least, or an MVP (minimum viable product) at MOST. And you bring that back to your testers. You listen, learn, and return to AI.
Or, you take those first questions, enter them into Korgi, and spin up a "vibe project board" in less than 60 seconds...and let AI manage and advise you through this process from Step 1 – using your own apps and drives.
