The AI Speedup

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Today, speed is everything. I've been building software for decades, and what I see now is remarkable. Let me share a recent personal project that illustrates how dramatically AI is changing what's possible.

My SmugMug Replacement Story

When my SmugMug photography website renewal came due with a price increase, I decided to build my alternative rather than pay more for a service that wasn't delivering enough value. Previously, this would have been a significant undertaking, potentially months of work to create something with comparable functionality.

Instead, I sat down with my preferred Python framework (Flask) and leveraged Cursor (an AI-powered coding assistant).

Within five hours, I had built a photography gallery website with 70% of SmugMug's functionality. That 70% of functionality was all I needed, and I built it in five hours—not weeks or months. Five hours.

Was there a trade-off between my time and what I could have paid to keep it where it was? Sure. My time is generally worth more than the price of the service, but I was more curious about what I could do and how quickly I could do it than I was about whether it was the best financial decision For example, 5 hours X my hourly rate is worth much more than Smugmug’s annual rate. But that is 5 hours spent for savings over the next Y years.

Check out the new gallery site — Images by Eric D. Brown.

What This Means for Business Leaders

This dramatic speed increase isn't just about my pet project. TI represents a fundamental shift in competitive dynamics across industries.

Consider what this means:

1. Competitive moats are evaporating for businesses whose primary value was specialized functionality that took time to build. When a passionate user can recreate your core product in hours, your business model needs serious reconsideration.

2. The "good enough" threshold has never been more achievable. My gallery doesn't have 100% of SmugMug's features, but it has the 70-80% I use. This pattern will repeat across industries…customers will increasingly ask why they're paying premium prices when they can get most of what they need far cheaper.

3. Development costs and timelines need radical revision. The projects your team estimated at 6-12 months last year might now be feasible in weeks. Are you adjusting your expectations and planning accordingly?

Strategic Implications for Leaders

If you're sitting in the C-suite, these changes demand your attention in several ways:

Reassess Your Value Proposition: If your product's primary value is functionality that can now be replicated quickly, you need to find new ways to differentiate. Superior design, better integration, exceptional support, and a stronger community might become your new competitive advantages.

Rethink Resource Allocation: The companies winning in this new environment will reallocate resources from basic development to innovation. When the baseline takes less time to build, you should push further ahead with your development resources, not pocket the savings.

Reconsider Make vs. Buy Decisions: The economics of build-versus-buy decisions are changing dramatically. Solutions that were previously too expensive or time-consuming to build in-house might now be entirely feasible. This could mean significant cost savings and greater customization.

Review Your Portfolio: For larger organizations, AI-powered development may mean you should be spinning up more experimental products. The cost of failure drops when ideas can be brought to life quickly.

The Bigger Picture

AI is creating similar speed advantages in content creation, data analysis, design work, and countless other domains. The organizations that adapt fastest to these new capabilities will have a tremendous advantage.

What used to take months now takes days, and what used to take weeks now takes hours. This compression of time-to-value is transformative.

Are you ready for this acceleration?

If you found this post helpful, consider sharing it with another executive grappling with AI, technology, and data. If you want to explore AI and other Technology strategies, grab some time on my calendar, and let's chat.

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