From what I've seen, anyone giving you definitive answers is blowing smoke. I've seen teams go for AI, do it well, and succeed. I've also seen teams go for AI, f it up, and all get fired as the company shuts down.

The question is whether the key value of your product can benefit from the strengths of AI? If not, don't go there. If so, you then need to determine if your team can actually deliver an AI-driven vision that enhances the existing value prop. Again, if not, don't go there. If so, do it.

But from your description, your CEO is not asking those questions - they are asking, "How do we get more funding?" Which tells me that your CEO doesn't give a crap about building a product, they are just trying to make money and get some nice bullet points on their resume about the size of a company they led.

That puts you in the position of choosing whether you want to go on a VC-driven startup ride just to have the experience, or whether you want a product-driven role. People have their reasons for both directions, but if you want a product-driven role, you are out of alignment with your CEO and probably shouldn't work for them.

Draw up the product roadmap such that you can claim maximum AI-ness while including as little of it as possible in the actual product. Sounds like the CEO doesn't have any technical objections to not using AI, he just wants the ability to raise on AI branding.

Include as much non-AI work as you can in the AI teams' projects, pitch an "AI efficiency initiative" that minimizes new spend on AI with the justification of other teams picking up the slack, talk up whatever ML you're already doing, etc.

“Made in America” == “Assembled in America out of offshore parts”, only with AI?

(Also, huh - I wonder if that’s actually directly doable; “assembled by AI out of programmed outputs”?)

It seems like it's worth taking some time to steel-man the AI argument, even if your CEO hasn't made it very well.

E.g. If you don't work on AI now, and AI models keep improving, how likely is it that a competitor who integrates AI well will eat your lunch? If it's >50%, it seems worth it to shift some focus to AI regardless of the series C round.

This post from a few days ago has some great tips on how to integrate AI _well_: https://koomen.dev/essays/horseless-carriages/

Unless you own the business, you work for your investors.

If investors only want AI, then you will either be forced to do that (whatever it means), do something else but make it look to them like AI, convince them they're wrong, or quit.

Things are a little more nuanced if your existing investors side with you but all new investors are AI-driven. Then you don't have to quit, but you do have to run the business without new outside capital. This may or may not be possible. If not, you still have to quit.

At a smart business, you work for your customers. If you're at a company that works for your investors, you're going to have this problem over and over again. In fact, you might as well give up on the idea of planning and decision making based on what would be best for the product and your customers.

I agree, having a boss sucks. Unfortunately raising investment from other people is not a way to escape it.

Note that starting a business with your own capital is not a way to escape it either, since you still have to answer to customers.

The ceo likely has more voting shares alone. The issue for a cashflow negative business is attracting new money.

It is exceedingly rare that voting shares play a role in any of these decisions. When you need cash to pay salaries, the decision lies in the hand of the stakeholder with the cash, not the shares.

>> The argument seems to be that they've realized the only way to achieve the next round of funding is to be "AI-first".

Sounds like the CEO is more interested in selling the company than building the product. IMHO that's a bad sign. It's also notable that you're aware of AI and use it to some extent. That means you have understanding of what it can and can't do. So why then is the CEO telling you how to do your job?

Work with them on a product roadmap?

I've seen folks wanting big changes and we sit down and draw things up and surprisingly it looks like the old roadmap. Everyone is happy and I don't say anything about the similarities, and most importantly we're on the same page ;)

Sometimes when leadership asks for big changes, even when they say big changes, you might find if you get into the details it's not THAT big a change.

In the meantime don't let your mind run too wild assuming and worrying about what they might be asking for. I do that too, it's a developer thing I think, we start considering possibilities or even misused terminology and we get into a loop ;)

Trends come and go: What's important is that your CEO isn't underinvesting in the product.

I once was in a company during the "everyone is going to replace their laptops with tablets next year era." The CEO pushed heavily for mobile, and underinvested in the actual product.

A year later, all of our customers were still using their laptops. We were sold to a private equity firm, the CEO was pushed out, and (almost) everyone who worked on the failed mobile product was out of a job.

In your case, I'd try to decide if your CEO is just following a fad. If so, next year they will follow a different fad. Are you critical to your business? If so, you'll be critical to your business with or without AI. If not, figure out how to make yourself critical to your business without being vulnerable to this year's fad...

(...And perhaps ask ChatGPT for advice. If you can't beat it, join it.)

I imagine there are a lot of stories like that from the "everything needs to be a mobile app" era.

So many companies invested vast engineering resources in building out iOS/Android apps only to later find that their users only interact with their tool once every few weeks, which wasn't often enough for them to earn a place in that relatively tiny list of a few dozen apps that any one individual actually uses.

For many users with cheaper phones asking them to install your app is asking them to pick which of their photos they're going to delete to make space for it!

I had to think of the Dilbert comic strip where the pointy haired boss wants an SQL database and asks Dilbert what colour it should have.

Turns out someone already made a version with AI as the desirable technology du jour.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/1dckq74/so...

Right now, there are too many shovels, but not enough miners. That is to say, very few concrete use cases, but a lot of tool vendors.

Most AI "deployments" I have seen, are glorified knowledge search engines, or query engines. There are some content/code assistants as well. It is also the least intrusive way to be "AI - First". There is too much noise, too little value , but yet a significant pressure to be an "AI company". Most startups are feeling this (including the one I work at).

Unfortunately, VCs are always blinded by the next cool thing to invest in. So I think of it as a marketing feature that you have to build, rather than any real roadmap thing.

> There is no product roadmap for what this looks like

Think about it like a research project. The company or its culture may not be prepared for that, but that's what it is.

Talk to your product owner and get the scoop. Maybe they're cooking up some new features that could really benefit from AI? Keep in mind there's always a buzzword du jour game being played to maximize VC investment. Help your company play that game and help them drive toward answering the questions you've asked. It's win-win from your perspective.

The problem here is that your company is on the "get the next round of funding" train instead of on the "get revenue from customers" train. It's a bigger problem then irrational love of AI. You will consistently sacrifice the product and your customers in favor of whatever people think will get you the next round of funding. If you manage to solve your current funding crisis by convincing some investor that you have an AI plan, don't worry, you'll have another crisis in a few months.

Keep in mind that your company is the product. And the customers are Wall Street.

Your product is not really the product. So the only thing that really matters is how your company is perceived to those who could potentially buy it and give your C-suite an exit.

> The argument seems to be that they've realized the only way to achieve the next round of funding is to be "AI-first".

This is the argument for virtually every company going AI-first: it's just a way to scam VCs.

It seems crazy but it really works.

Is it really scamming VCs, if they're the loudest cheerleaders for AI?

I mean yeah but in a way it's kinda like a legalised pyramid scheme

Who will be responsible for figuring out what AI features to build? I think it is reasonable to look into it, seriously, with the point of view of "can we disrupt ourselves before being disrupted." This doesn't mean putting a significant engineering team behind this, but, to put a significant effort in figuring out what is it you could build, and what an ROI on that would be.

You've two outcomes from this, either you do find a disruptive AI angle and move a sufficiently-large part of your team to it, or you don't, but figure out a minimal effort that would satisfy the "investor positioning angle". The third option, to do nothing or aggressively push back against AI and the CEO's desire, would potentially yield to no Series C or a down-round, which is something that you, your CEO, and your customers would not like.

Bear in mind there is not always a strong relation between "what will improve the product", "what will attract customers", and "what will attract funding". A big part of the CEO job is to manage all of those at once.

As the engineer you need to support all three, while being the voice of realism (internally). But don't get confused when they conflict -- they always conflict to some degree.

Your CEO is correct that ~80% of VC funding is currently focused on AI. So you have only 2 options basically. You either don't raise VC funding (which means hitting break even, rule of 40% performance). Or, you go all in on AI

If it's not an AI story for your business you need exceptional metrics. Like growing from 8M to 24M in a year for a C round.

My bad, 71% to be exact: https://x.com/jasonlk/status/1913286165408735255?t=IC_fuRNG9...

If you trust the CEO's leadership, work hard. The CEO has to worry about runway, not engineers.

If not, I'd say make a data-backed case for another course of action, or find another job.

Most CEOs I've worked with would be open to hearing a well-reasoned argument for another course of action.

Also presenting a good case can be a nice career move even if it's not adopted.

Its normal. Too see it look at the financials. Don't look at the tech alone. Otherwise analysis is incomplete.

"useful, in-demand product features" have to generate revenue greater than cost. If its too low or execs think there are better ways to grow the firm then these decision happen all the time.

I believe real value lies in solving customer problems - not just investor problems. This technology has significant upside when applied thoughtfully. That said, without proper validation, prematurely sidelining proven solutions to chase AI initiatives—especially without clear problem definitions - can be risky. It sets the stage for a bubble that may not withstand tougher times.

imho, I would like to think tough times are ahead of us - that in my mind, neutralizes my 'tech optimism'.

Relevant anecdote from Bill Gurley's talk: https://youtu.be/7PkWc-IDTHk?si=p8AUBHqXa76HuA6A&t=3228

"If the the average CIO is committing 10 or 15% of their budget to AI. If you're not in that you're getting shrunk."

Without knowing more it’s hard to come up with specifics. There are different ways to play the AI game, from framework/architecture, model, data, fine tuning, to simple integration. You can do as simple as writing a mcp server to interface with your products and call it AI enabled.

I would keep a more open mind and think about how you can contribute to the CEOs vision. As a lead dev, how can you incorporate AI into you and your team’s workflow? If you don’t agree with a tech CEO pushing for the latest tech adoption I would do some soul searching.

Tell him not to lead by news headlines. Try to explain what AI can't do. You could also be unscrupulous and make a lot of promises to milk this AI thing until the wheels fall off.

This is normal. It doesn't even have anything to do with AI.

add AI to the products and features you want to ship, don't add AI to the ones that don't.

You want to start with at least an AI Roadmap that outlines whatever you want to do, and sprinkle in some AI love.

Sounds like you are VC back. It is likely your VCs pressuring the CEO.

Just put some of your normal features behind a button with a sparkles emoji on it. No one will know.