When code becomes free, shift focus from building speed to building the right things
With AI coding agents making development dramatically faster and cheaper, the bottleneck is no longer 'how fast can we build' but 'what should we build.' The real work shifts to customer understanding, go-to-market strategy, and product decisions. Marketing and customer acquisition become more important than coding velocity.
When to use
When you're using AI coding tools and finding you can ship features quickly, when you're questioning what to build next, or when you realize the limiting factor is customer insights rather than development capacity. Applies to any founder with access to AI coding agents.
Don't do this
Continuing to optimize for coding speed when you should be talking to customers and refining strategy. Also avoid building features just because you can build them quickly - validate demand first.
1 Founder Who Did This
Uses Amp to rapidly build features but acknowledges 'code is effectively free now, so what we build is becoming more important than how fast we build it.' Focuses daily AI marketing reports on understanding customer behavior and acquisition, not just shipping features.