If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true

Article

• Steve Blank argues pre-2025 startups are built on obsolete assumptions about engineering costs
• AI has collapsed build costs; bottleneck is now judgment, distribution, and customer insight
• Startups not leveraging AI agents are at structural competitive disadvantage

Discussion

• Many commenters: engineering was never the bottleneck—this argument predates AI by a decade
• Blank’s real example cited as a defense VC market shift story, not a generic AI-adoption lesson
• Psychological costs (willingness to test and fail fast) seen as the new real bottleneck
• Contrarian: startup failure rates haven’t shifted despite 20 years of lean methodology advice

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