Resistance is Futile

Over the past few weeks, I have spent time walking several of my current and former board members, as well as some of my former leadership teams, through the current state-of-the-art in agentic development. Not because they need to learn to code, but because they need to understand why their entire business models might be obsolete in 18 months.

After over 25 years as a CEO, having lived through the internet, mobile, social, and fintech revolutions, I thought I'd seen every disruption. But when I returned to coding eight months ago, building 60+ apps that would have cost well over $10.8M in engineering spend, for less than $10,000, I realized: This isn't just another tech shift. It's the end of the software business as we know it.

When I demonstrate how I routinely now deliver hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of equivalent developer productivity in 48 hours for $25 in compute costs, the room often goes silent.

When they push back with the same tropes of "well, that is not production code", I point out that two of my apps are now heading into production in G2000 companies; furthermore, these are companies in sensitive & regulated industries. These apps are at the heart of two exciting startups. AI is being used to create production code today in companies such as Microsoft, Salesforce, Oracle. Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and Facebook. Don't for one moment cling to the notion that it is not production-capable. That comes down to how you use AI, not if you use AI.

One director finally asked: 'So... why do we have 150 developers?'

It's a good question. When one founder + AI agents outperforms a 10-person team at 1/100th the cost, every assumption about scale, hiring, and capital needs needs to be rethought.

Time is of the essence. Many boards are now planning for 2026. AI is revolutionizing next Tuesday. That disconnect will kill companies.

I often point out to the skeptics that their competitors aren't just adopting AI, they're being rebuilt by it. Reimagined by it. Reinvented by it. Rejuvenated by it. If a board doesn't understand agentic development, they're already behind.

Again, I'm not suggesting every board member learn to code. I'm saying they need to understand how AI agents work, what they can build, and why traditional planning cycles are now measured in weeks, not years.

So, talk to your boards about this... show them the art of what's now possible. Because the companies that thrive won't be the ones that merely adopt AI, they'll be the ones whose leadership truly grasps its potential.