I felt like an impostor

For years, I felt like an impostor in my startups. I could sell, but I couldn’t build. I tried to learn to code in my (non-existent) spare time. 

Unsurprisingly, it didn’t stick. 

Without the capital to hire developers, I had two options: 

1. Find a technical cofounder, or

2. Raise from VCs (hard without point 1.)

Now, we have another: AI coding tools.

A year ago, they felt like toys - clunky, limited, fun to play with but couldn’t handle serious software creation. 

But as Chris Dixon wrote, ‘the next big thing will start out looking like a toy’.

Now, they’re changing everything.

I know because over the last two weeks, I’ve built two web apps. Not bad for a guy who barely scraped through the Codecademy ‘Hello, World’ tutorial. 

No cofounder, no devs, no $20K agency fee. It felt like magic, like summoning a software genie to do my bidding.

It also felt like a moment of clarity, the day the excuse ‘but I don’t know how to code’ crawled into a hole and died.

Before I paused this newsletter a year ago to go all-in on my second startup, I wrote about how to raise Venture Capital.

Starting today, my newsletter will be for a new kind of founder - one who doesn’t just have ideas and recruit others to build their dreams, but one who wants to leverage AI coding tools to actually ship them. No gatekeepers. No permission needed.

Every Tuesday, I’ll share two things:

1. A tip to make you better at selling (so your product doesn’t just exist, it grows)

2. A tip to make you better at building (so you don’t need permission to start)

It’s the formula Naval laid out beautifully:

If that excites you, stick around. If not, no hard feelings, unsubscribe anytime - it’s been a pleasure.

But if you’ve ever had an idea and felt stuck because you weren’t ‘technical’, know this: that roadblock is gone. The power is in your hands. What will you do with it?

See you Tuesday with the first tip.

Nelson