Introduction · Page 5
Why now
For you only
For most of software history, building was the expensive part. You needed engineers, months, and a budget before anyone could see a working screen. That is over, and two real numbers make the point.
Foti Panagiotakopoulos, founder of GrowthMentor, built the first version of his product in 2019 for roughly the price of a brand new BMW sedan, about $50,000, and it took seven months. Yannis Karagiannidis, a marketer who is not a designer and not a developer, built a working product called PrintPigeon on Lovable for $38 in credits, in three days. He liked the tool so much he later joined the company. Different products, different years, and the shape of the change is still hard to miss. The MVP got about 99% cheaper and faster.
You can call this an AI bubble. I think it is one. But remember the dot-com bubble in the early 2000s. Plenty of companies went under, and we still have the internet. Vibe coding tools are going to stay with us in one form or another, so it is worth catching the wave rather than arguing with it.
Why does this matter to you, the person about to facilitate? Because the case you will make to your manager, your room, and your sponsor rests on this one fact: a working prototype now costs a day and pocket money. Every objection to the day ("we can't build that fast", "we need engineering capacity", "prototypes are expensive") comes from the old price list.
Building used to be the expensive part. It is now the cheapest way to think.