Who’s Building This?
Author’s Note: Hey everyone. Long time no see! I’ve been deep, deep in the AI trenches, but I’m popping my head up for a moment to share what I’m seeing and experiencing. The future is going to be wild... but those are stories for another day.
“Who’s Building This?”
Short answer: “Why not you?”
Seriously.
If you’ve been on Twitter for more than 5 years, you’ve seen this question all the time. Person X had a new idea and wanted to see if it already exists. They’d post a quick summary of the idea/wish and ask, “Who’s building it?”
Given how crazy fast AI is these days, this is the wrong question to ask.
Or better yet, it’s the wrong person to ask it to.
A day ago, a colleague asked, “All apps for X, Y, or Z suck. Do you know of anyone building one for your local machine?”
Instead of Googling, I prompted Claude Code.
30 minutes later, I had a working demo.
Was it perfect, no? But it was 80% there and personalized to me.
The issue? I speculate that we as humans still haven’t internalized this reality. We’ve seen and experienced this, and yet our reflex is still to ask and Google vs just prompt and build.
When Delegation is Slower Than Doing
Another example. A client of mine was having some communication issues on QA’ing a specific feature. The backend team wasn’t clear on what the front-end was asking for. Rather than another 1-hour meeting, I created an app in 30 minutes that pulled the backend data and displayed what was working and what wasn’t.
Instead of asking “who on the team can build this?” I just did it. It was faster to build than communicate it.
This is trend will only amplify and accelerate. Soon, it’ll be a normal behavior for everyone outside the software industry.
Who’s building a workout track app for pregnant moms? You can.
Who’s building a family vacation planning app? You can.
It’s just a matter of trying.
Make it your first instinct vs your last resort.