I always wanted to build consumer products. But I started my career in 2016 and the past 10 years were frustrating for me. It felt like the window was closed for truly great products. Everything big was already built. New hits seemed to be driven by short-term hype, not long-term added value and utility.
Most consumer founders ended up building studios spinning out dozens of apps until they’d found one that would stick. Iterating on the UX and finding a virality hack was the end game. Fun at the beginning, but not really fulfilling. The visionary product founders turned to deep tech. If there is no foundational tech shift, let’s push the boundaries and make it happen. It can work, but it’s slow, risky and the opportunity cost is brutal.
Everything changed recently. There is a new foundational tech shift. The consumer window just re-opened, and it changes everything for consumer companies.
After the shift, our first heroes were the researchers. The people enabling the new capabilities. They founded the AI labs that are now empowering an entire new ecosystem.
Now comes phase 2, and it’s now time for Product Engineers to shine. Those are the engineers with craft, product intuition, and vision who want to build state-of-the-art products. Those are the AI applied pioneers who love to read research papers, not to push the research forward, but to instantly spot the product opportunities.
It’s now time to build new applications and amazing products that are fundamentally useful and deeply change people’s lives and habits, not just hope for a product to get viral or addictive.
The meta of the past 10 years for building consumer companies is not the right one anymore. We believe it’s time to start with a vision of the future we dream of, and work backwards to make it happen.