Your writing has genuinely inspired me to start building again—not just another product, but something that can create a new behavior, a new community, and potentially a new category.
I’m building it from Dubai, a city that constantly reminds you that ambitious ideas can become real when the environment encourages founders to think bigger.
The world-building doors are open again.
And this time, I’m walking through them as a founder.
I've watched a few AI-native consumer teams try to build "worlds" and the ones that stuck weren't the most technically impressive, they were the ones that shipped a boring, narrow version first and let the world grow from actual user behavior instead of designing the whole universe upfront. Character.ai's early traction came from a few obsessive use cases, not a fully realized platform. Curious if you think the current wave of founders has learned that lesson or if we're about to see a repeat of the metaverse-style overbuilding.
Not sure whether AI will enable the same scale of product success that we saw with the examples you provided (except for the obv ones like ChatGPT). Twitter, Facebook, Robinhood etc. were revolutionary because there were no apps before. The jump to AI-native apps seems merely incremental to me and will favor the incumbents, especially.
This one hit home, Josh.
Your writing has genuinely inspired me to start building again—not just another product, but something that can create a new behavior, a new community, and potentially a new category.
I’m building it from Dubai, a city that constantly reminds you that ambitious ideas can become real when the environment encourages founders to think bigger.
The world-building doors are open again.
And this time, I’m walking through them as a founder.
I've watched a few AI-native consumer teams try to build "worlds" and the ones that stuck weren't the most technically impressive, they were the ones that shipped a boring, narrow version first and let the world grow from actual user behavior instead of designing the whole universe upfront. Character.ai's early traction came from a few obsessive use cases, not a fully realized platform. Curious if you think the current wave of founders has learned that lesson or if we're about to see a repeat of the metaverse-style overbuilding.
Looking forward to more of your posts.
We're building a space where founders and investors can cross-pollinate ideas. Founders Castle https://discord.gg/qqs9ENFhG
Not sure whether AI will enable the same scale of product success that we saw with the examples you provided (except for the obv ones like ChatGPT). Twitter, Facebook, Robinhood etc. were revolutionary because there were no apps before. The jump to AI-native apps seems merely incremental to me and will favor the incumbents, especially.
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Welcome to team John