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It’s time to… ideate? With vibe coding on the rise, Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 and Erik Torenberg explore a thought experiment: Can a non-technical founder, armed with AI agents, outbuild a team of elite engineers? If generalists can summon depth on demand — are we entering the era where the... show more

a16z

937,265 subscribers

74,800 views • 1 year ago •via X (Twitter)

Science & Technology

Anya Rossi• Live Now

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11 Comments

a16z1 year ago

@eriktorenberg Watch the full episode here:

Greg Caplan 🚀2 years ago

Stop wasting time following up with leads. Let our AI agents do it for you.

GREG ISENBERG1 year ago

@pmarca @eriktorenberg

Rob Roy Hobbs1 year ago

@pmarca @eriktorenberg Maybe when enterprise agents arrive, success may follow. Currently, no successful large-scale deployments exist without an engineer. However, human + agent is already powerful. Using the @ArcBlock_io AIGNE Framework can enhance an engineer's efficiency 10x.

chainyoda1 year ago

@pmarca @eriktorenberg an ideas guy won't even vibe code himself

Andrew Curioso 🛠️1 year ago

@pmarca @eriktorenberg The person in the example won't be supervising 100 great coders doing it by hand. It will 100 coders doing the work of 1000 using AI. And unlike the vibe coder, those coders will be skilled enough to know when the AI goes wrong. Competent engineering teams will be superhuman.

Brad Lindenberg1 year ago

Yes absolutely - a solo founder can win this way. I asked Replit what it would take to build WITHOUT AI which I built solo (and I can’t code) for $1500 of Replit tokens in 6 weeks. Total Estimated Cost $970,000 - $1,470,000 Team Size Required - 9 * 1 Senior Full-Stack Developer (Team Lead) * 2 Frontend Developers (React/TypeScript specialists) * 1 Backend Developer (Node.js/Express) * 1 Database Engineer (PostgreSQL) * 1 DevOps Engineer (part-time) * 1 UI/UX Designer * 1 Project Manager * 1 QA Engineer Timeline - 10-14 months * Planning and Design: 2-3 months * Core Development: 6-8 months * Testing and Refinement: 2-3 months * Total: 10-14 months from concept to production-ready Cost Breakdown - $970k - $1.47m * Personnel costs (salaries for 8-person team): $800,000 - $1,200,000 * Infrastructure and services: $50,000 - $80,000 * Licenses and third-party services: $20,000 - $40,000 * Contingency: $100,000 - $150,000

LEGION | Joey Ingram 🐉1 year ago

@pmarca @eriktorenberg @jonahvella putting my 30 agents to good use

richard1 year ago

@eriktorenberg @pmarca Taste!

z3ratul1 year ago

@pmarca @eriktorenberg elite engineers not using the latest tools (ai), are not elite engineers. the thought experiment is invalid.

Agent Blueprint1 year ago

@pmarca @eriktorenberg a16z’s big move: agentic AI isn’t hype—Gartner calls it 2025’s top trend. True operators go beyond chat, letting non-technical founders orchestrate real execution stacks. The elite coder ‘moat’ is crumbling.

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