sergioschuler

Yes, start over the PART where the AI got stuck. Not the whole code base from scratch, for sure.

I spent 3 months "vibe coding" with Lovable as a non-technical PM.

It's both magical and infuriating.

My conclusion is that non-technical people CAN build simple prototypes, websites and internal tools, but would struggle to build production-grade products without any technical expertise. Think of current AI as a junior dev with outstanding syntax knowledge but terrible judgment.

Here are some things I learned in the last 3 months that seem to work well:

1. Treat it like a software development intern (write PRDs, user stories, acceptance criteria)

2. Work in tiny increments—big changes confuse the hell out of it

3. Use the "Uncle Bob" persona for cleaner architecture

4. Always refactor when prompted (but test before/after)

5. Don't be afraid to revert and start over—code is now the cheap part

Insight about the future of product: When writing code becomes cheap, many experiments that would've been discarded can now be released. We're transitioning from discovery-heavy processes to rapid iteration in production. Engineers won't vanish—they'll take on more PM responsibilities. And PMs/UXers need to learn some engineering to ship independently too.

The best advice I can give you: if you're a product person still sitting on the sidelines, what are you waiting for? Start building.

Location: Berlin/Germany

Remote: Yes (preferred)

Willing to relocate: No

Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sergioschuler Email: s[at]producleadership.io

I am a product leader with 12 years experience in consumer facing products, both B2C and B2B. The ideal company for me is ambitious, data driven, >100 employees and growing or almost entering the growth stage.

For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto by Murray Rothbard

It presents a clear vision of a society without government

Yeah, I loved Freehand. Damn you Adobe!

Great book!

Atlas Shrugged is indeed mind blowing. The reason is because you can actually see this sort of thing happening (depending on where you are, in my case, Brazil).

It gave me a new respect for entrepreneurs.

I wrote the article on Medium. I was in contact with 2-3 ex-students of that course. None of them received refunds several months after my article (I imagine I received the refund because I started the "movement").

I have failed (about 50k people saw how I failed and what I learned here: http://www.sergioschuler.com/startup-lessons-learned-from-my...) and now I work for a pretty normal company, as their digital marketing head (not as impressive as it sounds, but I enjoy it).

I am building something very simple on the side (libertarian tshirts, since the idea is growing here in Brazil) and I still crave to solve problems.

Just a digital marketer here (and twice failed entrepreneur). Still looking for the one that will solve a real and profitable problem.

Your evaluation certainly have merits and a lot of it we confirmed when speaking to clients later. Just one thing to make clear: I have 5+ years of team management/leadership development and I used a similar tool I created and evolved (in paper form) to improve a loooot of teams. So the tool works - BUT you are correct, it is a pain to apply and you probably need consultancy to get out of the team management hole if you are not a skilled manager.

Maybe your MVP could have less features?

Now the whole Bluehost is down.

Look at http://thefoundation.com/three-students/, those guys do that over and over again.

Believe it or not, it happens, just look at the cases at the foundation

Nah, troll harder next time.

Will try, thanks!

My vision was to get rid of lame managers. Certainly a useful vision.

I replied the same thing above: tech business are usually not about tech, they are empowered by tech. A company that uses phones to sell their products is not about "phones", they are about the product and the phone is just a tool. For me, the web was just a tool.

A lot of non-tech co-founders exist and they succeed, so certainly not absurd.

To be frank, I think that is exactly what I used. I just didn't judge was important enough to mention.

I believe this is a marketing problem (from the developers). See, I am a non-tech founder, I don't understand why X is cheaper than Y. If I perceive the same benefit, I will get the cheapest one.

(This is hypothetical, but not so much: I understand a bit of tech and even so I don't have so much clue on how to judge a developer besides what he shows me he had done).

I understand where you are coming from. I agree it is essential for any business that uses the web. But if you have the wrong product, no matter the amount of SEO, you will get nothing out of it.

What I want to say is that SEO is important, but not more important than finding the pain and the product.

I disagree because most "tech business" are empowered by tech, they are not ABOUT tech. My business was about team management/leadership, we just used tech as a means to an end. We could have done the same thing with consulting, but decided to get scale using the web.

It is like saying a given business which sells through the phone is about phones. Phones are just a way of doing it.

Nothing. It is just sitting there.

Any alternatives?

I forgot that one! I have even a saying for this learning "be local before being global".

BAM!

Hardly, no, one mistake that I didn't mention (because I am still processing it) is how long we took to have v1 (more than a year). This was a mix of my incompetence, too many features and also an inexperienced developer (in fact we changed developers once too).

So, yeah, a looooot of the time was put into building the product, refining it, getting bugs out of the way, testing it again, finding the same bugs...

Then there was marketing. Finding more clients, because we believed finding more people meant someone would buy the product.

PS: I was not completely full time, the developer was. In those 2 years, I have been freelancing (one needs to eat).

Look at http://thefoundation.com/ , they have some cases about this kind of approach.

In fact I am learning how to program, so I agree with your points - but I don't think it is for every one. There is plenty of space for non tech founders.

BUT I do believe it is easier if you do know how to code.