Separating capability from purpose in AI-era startups
In a world where artificial intelligence (AI) has become the primary tool, it’s easy to confuse capability with purpose. The prevailing perception suggests that a simple prompt is enough to generate design, logic, and visualization of whatever we imagine, bringing ideas to production and even building innovative products capable of surprising the world.
However, this view is misleading. While the tools grow increasingly powerful and accessible, we have yet to reach (and perhaps may never reach) a point where technology replaces intention. After all, the abundance of tools can never replace the scarcity of true purpose.
It has never been easier to bring an idea to life. Even without thinking about prompts, frameworks, open-source libraries, low-code platforms, and cloud services have removed countless barriers that once defined the limits of software development. A team (or even a single person) can deploy scalable infrastructure in minutes, publish APIs with a single command, and launch interfaces faster than at any other time in history.
But despite all this, tools only make execution faster. Execution itself is still just a product, and a product is not always synonymous with quality. Tools accelerate execution, but they don’t define direction.
Every day, new startups are created, yet every day, more startups disappear. Why? Because even when they launch with the latest tech stack, they lack a clear vision… or the problems they aim to solve aren’t truly meaningful. In contrast, products like Figma, Git, or Kubernetes were transformative not because they had the most tools at hand, but because their creators identified a problem worth solving, thoughtfully designed the execution, focused on the process, and delivered an effective solution.
Before thinking about which technology to use, it’s essential to ask: Who am I helping? What problem am I solving? And why does it matter? Artificial intelligence and modern tools are capacity multipliers, but unfortunately, they also multiply noise; They amplify both what’s relevant and what’s not. A poorly defined workflow will only generate noise faster, while a well-designed process, guided by a strong vision, allows AI to enhance creativity, efficiency, and product quality truly.
Being innovative is far more than simply using AI to ask what you can solve, then having it solve it, and finally pushing it to production. Use AI as your strategic ally. Combine it with the context of your idea. Feed it files, instructions, and constraints. Shape it to follow the blueprint of your product—not to build the entire product for you.
The fact that it’s so easy to use a tool leads people to jump in without first seeking a real idea, flooding the internet and the market with products and content that lack purpose. Now, anyone can produce a virtual assistant, an image generator, or a translator—everything can be labeled AI‑powered using cheap infrastructure. AI models are accessible to everyone, and production speed has never been higher, yet innovation has been lost:
“Suddenly, countless apps appeared—nothing more than a thin layer wrapped around ChatGPT. Companies began rebranding their existing automation features as ‘AI’ without delivering any genuine product improvements,” said John Fitzpatrick, CTO of Nitro and former lead engineer for Siri at Apple, in an interview with Business Insider on May 1, 2025.
The market is saturated with AI‑powered gadgets and services that are, in reality, not useful. They’re designed to generate attention, not impact. Now the challenge is to discern which products truly use AI to solve meaningful problems… and which simply use it as empty marketing words.
“It’s trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist,” noted Charlie Sorrel in Lifewire’s April 16, 2024, review of the Humane AI Pin, highlighting how a product without a concrete problem to address becomes nothing more than market noise lacking real utility.
Abundance will continue to lower the barrier to creation, but without vision, even the most advanced tools only add to the noise. The future won’t be defined by how many AI‑powered products we can launch, but by how intentionally we use technology to solve problems that truly matter. Purpose—not capability—remains the rarest and most valuable resource in the AI era.
