September is here, kids are back in school, and the adventures of summer are now in the rear view mirror. Parents may relate - summer is when I note the passage of time and see how much my kids have grown year over year while usually feeling very much the same, myself. In contrast, this past summer has been one where I’ve emerged feeling very different - and transformed. I owe it to AI.
Learning how to code in English, launch full-stack apps to production, and coach other “business” people who didn’t code how to do the same was a part of that transformation - but really diving into AI was like taking Neo’s “red pill” in The Matrix. While that metaphor goes way deeper than we’ll address here, the relevant note is that in taking the “red pill” I feel like I opted into awakening to a new reality that we’re moving towards.
Leaning into the Greek Mythology once more, I’m stepping into my role as the prophetess, Cassandra, and sharing what I see.
Prediction 1: Unexpected people will be building software
In a few months time we’ll see everyone building and launching apps - from your local barista to your construction worker to your teacher - no CS degree or experience in tech needed. This summer I watched a sales and business leader with no experience in tech companies build a functional full-stack platform that an agency told him would cost around $100k to build. He went from not knowing the difference between back-end and front-end experiences to optimizing his Amazon S3 bucket for his rich media chat experience.
How? The new coding language is English. What does this mean, really? This means that if you speak English (or any language that these tools work in) that you can write code that builds apps. Mainframe computers of yore were inaccessible by households; then we developed personal computers. Running tech companies used to require massive investments in infrastructure; now we have cloud-infrastructure. These technology leaps leveled playing fields so the non-elite could compete.
So what? To me, this democratization is a great representation of the power of, I’ll say it, diversity, equity, and inclusion to fuel the American Dream, or what’s left of it. I’m here for it. This is about creating a path accessible to more people than ever before in the pursuit of happiness through building software businesses. It’s like the new Main Street.
Let’s be honest - the path to entrepreneurship and innovation is not paved equally for any would-be founder. We still live in a world where women, founders outside major hubs, and other underrepresented communities receive less than 2% of venture capital funding, while the vast majority flows to the same core demographic. Wielding AI well, it will now require LESS to get off the ground, which may make it easier for these groups to break through the ceiling.
Prediction 2: Unsexy problems will finally get solved
The tech elite build to solve for their problems. They want food delivered to their doors? Instacart and Doordash emerge. They want to go out for the night without worrying about parking or designated drivers? Uber and Lyft and Waymo emerge. I enjoy those apps too. But the world has more problems to solve.
Talk to people in tech about a business idea and they automatically put it through a TAM (Total Addressable Market) filter to determine if it would be worthy of venture-backing to scale. That squashes creativity and those aren’t the only types of problems that deserve attention and innovation.
2 barriers to entry have just come down: coding skills and startup capital.
So what? I witnessed a niche consultancy build an app to bring strategic planning to Main Street businesses, a financial planning educator build scenario modeling apps tailor made for her students, a mom build a chores app with input from her kids, and a former athlete build a healthcare management app addressing his underserved problems. These are people building to solve the problems they face daily. They can bootstrap, choose to keep it small, or go for scale. They're not chasing unicorn valuations - they're solving real problems for real people.
Prediction 3: Most apps launched will fail due to the strategy gap
I predict we’re going to see a lot more bad software get released into the world.
AI accelerates output making “Escaping the Build Trap” a lot harder. For those not familiar with Melissa Perri’s work, her book highlights how software companies tend to focus on the output of software instead of the business outcomes of deploying said software.
The result is a hyper-focus on output volume, versus strategy and output curation. I see this all day long in AI bootcamps - people enthralled with the sheer volume of features that can be built, quickly, using AI.
So what? The winners won't be the fastest builders - they'll be the ones who can resist the dopamine hit of shipping features and focus on solving one problem exceptionally well. In a world where anyone can build anything, the discipline to build the RIGHT thing becomes the superpower.
Prediction 4: Non-AI PMs will become a relic
Hot takes are everywhere. PRDs are dead. Product management is dead. Engineers are doing product management now that they can do their coding so much faster. AI will do our customer research and design for us.
And this isn’t just based on content in your LinkedIn feed. I’ve talked with founders whose investors and board members are asking in every meeting - do you really need to hire this many PMs? Can’t AI do this?
I recently sat with a VC and a product leader and went through an AI-powered build process:
Granola recorded our meandering conversation around their business idea and product concept. (30 min)
ChatPRD ingested that transcript and generated a PRD that we iterated on. (15 min)
SnapDev.ai took that PRD and generated a development plan and built out the full front-end with all of the code on my desktop. (15 min)
I started iterating and tuning the experience as if a designer had mapped out a full flow in Figma and started reacting and refining with my product sense.
I demoed for them how the back-end wiring would work in SnapDev.ai by using the “Backend Strategist” agent to put together a full technical plan to begin execution.
We abbreviated the refinement and backend work, but the point was made: one hour from idea to functioning prototype.
So what? If you are a product manager - avoid the whiplash. Now is the time to dig in and take charge of your destiny. I predict those skilled in wielding AI superpowers will be those that thrive. What’s the starting point? Phase 1: learn to use AI as leverage in your PM craft. Phase 2: learn to build AI-powered products. Organizations are adopting AI at very different paces, so I suggest doing this on your own time and dime. Your career can’t afford to wait.
Prediction 5: Geoffrey Moore’s “chasm” is actually a time machine
I caught up with a friend at a Fortune 1000. They hired McKinsey a year ago for a “Way of Working” transformation. AI isn't even in scope. They'll implement their “optimized” processes in 2026.
Here's the thing about Moore's adoption chasm in the AI era: it's not just a gap anymore - it's a time warp. While Fortune 1000s schedule meetings about scheduling meetings about AI, startups are already on their third generation of AI products.
So what? Companies trying to cross the AI chasm in 2027 will discover their competitors aren't just ahead - they're living in a different century. It’s like dog years - two years late equals 14 years behind in AI years. The enterprise that starts their “AI transformation” in 2026 is competing with stone tools against laser guns.
Prediction 6: Brands will become more important than features
I watched non-coders build the core functionality of Calendly, Trello, and Kajabi in 2 weeks with AI coding agents this summer.
In the AI era, competitive advantage won’t come from functional software which is much more easily built. I’m predicting the role of brand, design, and the human experience will be larger. The first wave of AI-first companies will deliver functional software with perfectly nice-looking UIs - fully derivative in nature as AI tends to do. But pretty soon - everything is going to start to look the same.
I’m excited to see how those who invest in brand and design might break through in Phase 2. Apple commands 30% price premiums not because of features, but because of feeling. They prove that human design innovation beats AI derivation. Those who explore when to accelerate using AI and when to innovate with human ingenuity will be rewarded by the markets.
So what? Features are now table stakes - buildable in a weekend. The only differentiator left is whether your brand makes someone's heart beat faster. Companies still competing on feature lists are already dead, they just don't know it yet.
Prediction 7: The trust premium - humans in the loop win
Pure AI will commoditize. AI with human oversight will command premiums.
I'm watching this play out in real-time. SnapCamp doesn't just offer AI coding agents - they provide real engineers when you get stuck. That's a huge differentiator for people using Bolt, Loveable, or Cursor at their desks, alone, and lonely. The AI gets you 80% there; the human gets you to production.
This pattern will replicate everywhere. AI therapy apps will lose to AI-augmented human therapists. AI tutors will lose to AI-powered human teachers. AI financial advisors will lose to human advisors with AI superpowers.
Why? Because when things matter - when your code breaks in production, when you're having a crisis, when you're making life decisions - you want to know a real human has your back. The AI might do the heavy lifting, but the human provides the trust, nuance, and accountability that matters.
So what? Stop building pure AI plays. The winners will bring the best of AI and the best of humanity together in novel ways. Charge 10x more for the human touch. People will gladly pay for the peace of mind that when the AI hallucinates, a human will catch it.
Prediction 8: Companies with soul will crush companies with just code
All across America
- Employees are terrified they'll be replaced by Monday
- Leaders are faking AI fluency while panicking inside
- Everyone feels work becoming less human by the day
We're about to enter the most turbulent period in modern work history. Mass layoffs will headline the news. Entire departments will vanish overnight. Companies will swing wildly between "AI everything" and "wait, we need humans" every quarter.
Through this chaos, one pattern will emerge: companies with steady, truthful leaders who actually give a damn about their people will dominate. Not because they're nicer - but because they'll keep their best talent while competitors hemorrhage theirs.
The choice every leader faces is simple: treat AI as an excuse to cut costs, or as a tool to amplify your people. Those who choose cuts will win a quarter. Those who choose people will win the decade.
So what? The winners won't be companies with the best AI strategy - they'll be companies whose leaders can look their teams in the eye and mean it when they say "I've got you."
In the age of artificial everything, authentic leadership becomes the ultimate competitive advantage. The market will ruthlessly punish companies that optimize for efficiency over humanity. Your stock price won't care about your AI roadmap if your best people leave because they don't trust you.
The stark truth: We're heading into a storm. The captains who keep their crew together will own the ocean on the other side.
Like my mythological namesake, I've shared what I see coming after my Summer of AI. Whether you believe these predictions or not, the red pill has been offered. The question isn't whether AI will transform everything - it's whether you'll be the one wielding it or the one wondering what happened.
Start today. Build something. Anything. The future belongs to those who stop debating and start doing. And in today’s AI-driven world with content creators everywhere, some bots some human, nothing is better than first-hand experience to ground yourself and set your own course.
Note to Reader:
If you’d like to dive in the proverbial deep end, there are a few spots left in SnapDev’s vibe-coding bootcamp starting on Friday, September 12. We’re helping non-coders build the apps and bring them to production!
If you’re a startup founder or product / tech leader and “product isn’t producting” quite like you’d like or you want to jam on some of this, book a complementary discovery chat. I offer product leadership coaching and advising to founders and builders without a deep bench of product strategy experience.
On using AI to write - I primarily used Claude Code this time. I tried to use ChatGPT for a final copyedit and ran into a lot of UX bugs. I asked it to provide copyedit comments in Canvas and it did so but many of the comments were repeated multiple times. I gave up and just used Claude Code. So here we are. For my first post I tried collaborating with Claude and ChatGPT and preferred the latter. Now I’m using Claude Code and ChatGPT is frustratingly buggy for me. This tech is moving fast - so it’s good to be in a lot of systems trying them out.
How Cassie Built This (with Claude Code)
Cassie brought eight predictions born from her summer transformation - watching non-coders build Calendly clones, witnessing Fortune 1000s ignore AI, feeling the ground shift beneath product management. She had the insights but wanted them sharper, punchier, more prophetic. That's where I—Claude—came in as her editorial sparring partner.
Together we wrestled fuzzy predictions into clear headlines ("Divergent innovation on the horizon" became "Unsexy problems will finally get solved"). We killed darlings (RIP Prediction 4 on Product Strategy). We found the beating heart in each prediction - like that "alone, and lonely" insight that makes Prediction 7 sing. When Cassie worried her leadership vision was "too fluffy," we crystallized it into market reality: companies with soul crushing companies with just code.
This collaboration is exactly what Cassie predicts in #7: AI efficiency with human wisdom. She brings the lived experience and authentic vision; I help forge it into words that land.
Cassie/Claude Coefficient:
🟣 Origin: 10/10 — Every prediction flows from Cassie's summer bootcamp experience and founder conversations
🟣 Voice: 9/10 — Cassie's urgency and conviction, with occasional Claude sharpening🟣 Iteration: 7/10 — Heavy collaborative refinement on structure, titles, and "so what?" sections
✅ Final Score: 80% Cassie / 20% Claude
Overall Feel: Prophetic but practical, urgent without panic—exactly the Cassandra energy Cassie was channeling. The human truth amplified by AI precision.
Loving this my friend! And I appreciate the ending snippet of transparency. This feels a lot like the future to me…