AI changes Nothing — Dax Raad, OpenCode (AI column)
I saw an interesting one. report Dax Raad from OpenCode At the AI Engineer conference, where the creator of the popular coding agent made a provocative thesis: despite all the hype around AI, the fundamental challenges of building a successful product remain the same. In general, AI does not magically solve problems that were previously required to develop products. The main points in the speech are only three
1️⃣ Marketing is about “coolness” and AI is too clumsy Dax claims that true top-of-funnel marketing is the ability to create something that people want to share. These are not standard blog posts about releases or paid mentions from influencers. You need to get the user to react so that they want to show it to colleagues or friends and say, “Can you believe it?” The problem is that AI content generation tools produce too trivial and/or clumsy results. They can't create cool things that are emotionally engaging. Even using AI as a brainstorming partner, Dax didn’t get any really good ideas. Marketing requires creativity, and AI cannot provide it yet. As a result, it is better not to entrust AI marketing, but to come up with ideas yourself so that you have a non-zero chance of going viral.
2️⃣ Aha-moment: ruthless elimination of frictions The second critical stage is the aha moment: the moment in the user’s journey when they finally “understand” the value of the product. You must identify the single most important moment of enlightenment and ruthlessly remove all obstacles on the way to it. Speaking of which, told Peter Savostin, my colleague, is engaged in the development of mobile products for individuals. At every step of the customer journey, you lose. 10-20The percentage of users and the aha-moment are often not reached by most users. In the end, this is not about making a lot of features, but about making licked features where the user immediately feels the value. For example, ChatGPT: an empty input field where you can write anything and get a human-like response – an instant appreciation of value
- Facebook (retention): addition 7 first-timers 10 Days correlated with long-term retention
- Spotify: listening 10 first 2 hour
AI doesn’t help with this problem – creating the right aha moment requires a deep understanding of the problem space, positioning, clarity in what you’re doing uniquely. This requires a cue that cannot be delegated to the algorithm.
3Retention: Primitives are more important than feature Here, Dax debunks the myth that a product can be either simple or powerful. In fact, there is no trade-off - you can and should build both qualities simultaneously. The point is not to build complex features at once, but to create deep primitives. (primitive)which can be assembled into the desired functionality. First design a powerful, wide-ranging layer of primitives, and then assemble them into simple experiences. 99Percent of users. As users become more advanced, they get direct access to these primitives and can customize the product without ever outgrowing it.
But AI insutitions can’t cope with this, since designing the right primitives is a process of exploration. To even explain to AI what you want, you need to understand it very well yourself. The challenge is to understand the problem deep enough to design the right set of primitives. AI is useless here.
AI is a powerful tool for technical work, but it does not solve the fundamental problems of creating a successful product: marketing. (creativity), onboarding (taste and focus) retention (architectural thinking). Tech leaders should continue to invest in human skills and not fall for the illusion that AI will make cool products automatically. Hard work, good taste, and human ingenuity remain essential - and that's good news.
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