The AI Product Reality Check

We're living through an AI gold rush. Every week, a new "AI-powered" product launches, promising to change the way we work, create, or connect. Investors are circling, customers are curious, and founders are racing to stake their claim.

But here's the uncomfortable truth: the majority of these so-called products are nothing more than a thin skin around OpenAI or Anthropic's Claude. A prompt or two dressed up with a bit of UI. Packaging — not innovation.

And that leads me to my number one rule when building anything:

don't build your business on someone else's platform.

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The Illusion of AI Products

Most of what's out there today looks like this:

That's not defensible. That's not proprietary. That's a dependency.

If your entire value rests on what another company provides, you don't own the foundation of your business. You're building on sand.

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Why This Is Risky

For founders, it's a trap. You're tied to someone else's roadmap, pricing, and terms. The day OpenAI launches a new feature, your "unique" product could vanish overnight.

For investors, it's a valuation mirage. You're putting money into businesses that lack defensibility — whose core tech is identical to hundreds of others.

For customers, it's disappointing. They're paying for an extra middleman when they could just go directly to the source.

We've seen this story before. In the dot-com era, thousands of businesses popped up as wrappers. When the platforms evolved, most disappeared.

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Where Real Value Lies

Using OpenAI, Claude, or any other model isn't wrong. In fact, it's smart — just as you'd use AWS for hosting or Stripe for payments. But if that's all you're doing, you don't have a business.

The companies that endure will be the ones that add genuine value around the model:

That's where you build a moat. That's where you create something that lasts.

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Is the Value of an AI Business Really Just Its Prompt?

If all that separates your product from the next is a few carefully worded lines of text, then what you have isn't a business — it's a prompt. Useful, maybe. Clever, perhaps. But prompts aren't IP, they aren't defensible, and they certainly aren't a foundation for long-term value.

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Prompt Engineering ≠ Engineering

A lot of the so-called "secret sauce" in today's AI products comes down to prompt engineering. But let's be honest: is it really engineering?

Real engineering is about repeatability, rigour, and scalability. Prompting is inherently fuzzy: the same input can produce different results tomorrow. And the moment OpenAI adjusts its models, your "engineered" prompts may no longer work as intended.

So if your moat is "prompt engineering," you don't have a moat. You have a temporary trick.

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The Bigger Problem: AI Has Become the New "Technology"

Right now, "AI" has become a catch-all label. We've started using it the way we once used the word technology. Everything gets badged under the AI umbrella, even when AI isn't the right tool for the job.

But here's the truth: most of the time, you don't need AI at all.

You need decent technology.

A well-designed workflow.

A system that actually solves the problem.

Not every solution requires a large language model. Sometimes the right answer is a database, a search index, or just better software design. Calling it "AI" doesn't make it more valuable — in fact, it can distract us from the simple, practical fixes that really matter.

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Truthful Storytelling Matters

There's nothing wrong with starting with a simple wrapper or experimenting with prompts. It's how many founders begin. But let's not confuse that with building a defensible product.

We also need to be more careful about the language we use. AI is powerful, yes. But it's not synonymous with technology — and we should stop pretending it is.

The hype will fade. And when it does, only those with genuine substance — whether that involves AI or not — will survive.

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Closing Thought

AI platforms are tools. They're powerful, game-changing tools — but they are not your business.

If you build on them, you're always at risk of collapse the moment the platform shifts.

If you build with them, layering in your own data, workflows, and expertise, then you're creating real value.

Because in the end, the AI product reality check is this: hype won't win — real value will.