{"id":33196,"date":"2025-05-02T05:13:56","date_gmt":"2025-05-02T05:13:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/?p=33196"},"modified":"2025-05-02T01:14:27","modified_gmt":"2025-05-02T05:14:27","slug":"zero-to-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/zero-to-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Zero To One"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The AI wave has dramatically altered the physics of startup 0->1.<\/div>\n
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Previously, two smart builders would spin up an early product (or sometimes just a Figma prototype) and get it in front of potential customers, then iterate their way to satisfied users.<\/div>\n
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The trouble now is that MVPs have become a commodity. Even I can hack together something half-decent in Replit or Lovable! And when that MVP does turn into a real product, satisfied customers alone don\u2019t seem to protect startups from brutal competitive pressures, even in seemingly niche categories. Afterall, if your customer is willing to replace humans with an agent, they\u2019re not going to hesitate to replace that agent with another.<\/div>\n
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Some founders are now leading early customer conversations with something that can\u2019t be vibe-coded. Something that feels 10x scarier than pulling up a product demo that might not load. And something that directly addresses the top hair-on-fire problem for an average exec in 2025.<\/div>\n
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They\u2019re leading with a future forecast – a clear, credible vision of how their customer\u2019s world is about to change. Despite the conventional wisdom, they\u2019re turning (part of) the fundraising deck into the sales deck. And it seems to be working!<\/div>\n
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Our customers like many of us are consumed by deep uncertainty. How will AI impact our industries, companies and careers? And how quickly? If you have the subject-matter depth (and bravery) to credibly answer those questions, you have an unfair advantage. Your future will resonate with the early customers and design-partners that matter\u2026 the ones way more likely to build an org structure and team that will still be relevant in the era of GPT-6.<\/div>\n
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Yes, you\u2019ll still need a wedge. Yes, there will be copycats. And yes, your future may need to evolve. But if you\u2019re co-creating the future with the right design partners, your early customers will be a lot harder to steal.<\/div>\n
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Due to the fact that my new investing career depends on it, I plan to spend quite a few cycles exploring all the impacts AI is having on the 0->1 stage of company building. So far, I\u2019m seeing a few things stand out:<\/div>\n
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– Leading with a credible future forecast really matters<\/div>\n
– Picking the right design partners is more important than ever<\/div>\n
– LLM-powered customer simulation can speed this stuff up<\/div>\n
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If you\u2019ve seen other trends, smart experiments or stuff that is working at the intersection of AI and early-stage company building, I\u2019d love to hear about them.<\/div>\n

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Mike Heller<\/a><\/b><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
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The AI wave has dramatically altered the physics of startup 0->1.<\/p>\n

Previously, two smart builders would spin up an early product (or sometimes just a Figma prototype) and get it in front of potential customers, then iterate their way to satisfied users.<\/p>\n

The trouble now is that<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

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4\/23\/25, 3:07\u202fPM<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
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WordPress\u2019d from my personal iPhone, 650-283-8008<\/a>, number that Steve Jobs texted me on<\/span><\/div>\n

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The AI wave has dramatically altered the physics of startup 0->1. Previously, two smart builders would spin up an early product (or sometimes just a Figma prototype) and get it in front of potential customers, then iterate their way to satisfied users. The trouble now is that MVPs have become a commodity. Even I can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}