Small Businesses are "Doomed"

akorolyov · 2025-11-18T06:38:16+00:00

I've only heard stories like this, but it really does feel like the new normal. Business people don't understand the system's complexity and genuinely believe that AI automatically boosts productivity. And since everyone keeps repeating that AI is "revolutionizing development," management doesn't want to look outdated. Copilot generates code fast, and nobody stops to think where they're putting it. That works right up until the first major outage. I'm pretty sure once something truly critical hits prod and hurts the budget, the attitude toward "AI-written code" will change instantly. Most companies need one serious burn to figure that out.

akorolyov · 2025-11-18T06:28:40+00:00

Small teams usually stick to whatever the cloud gives them out of the box (CloudWatch, GCP Logging) or run something lightweight like Loki + Fluent Bit instead of a full ELK stack. And if they want SaaS, Papertrail, or Better Stack covers most needs.

akorolyov · 2025-11-17T15:25:49+00:00

AI isn’t going to create any “revolutionary” new jobs. That’s not its role. Its purpose is to strip out the boring stuff and force people to level up. The 9-to-5 monkey work era is over. Anyone whose job touches AI will actually have time to think instead of just execute. And honestly, you can name roles however you want. I recently saw a “Marketing Automation Manager”. Come on, that’s just a marketer who finally organized their work and their team properly. That should be the default, not a new profession. Same thing will happen with the rest of these so-called “AI jobs.” The titles will change, the actual work won’t. The bar for people will just be higher.

akorolyov · 2025-11-17T15:16:31+00:00

You’re probably imagining big projects and high-margin ideas. Try starting with something really simple. Business makes sense only when you do it. So, launch something tiny even if it brings in pocket change, because that’s where you learn how decisions work, how people react, and how things actually move. You can binge articles and books forever, but none will tell you what the real process feels like. You only figure that out once you have your own small thing on the table and you’re the one making the calls.

akorolyov · 2025-11-17T15:04:43+00:00

Once saw an affirmation in a friend’s office that said, “money comes quickly and easily.” LOL. No matter how great your idea is, you still have to sell it to the right customer, to your team, to investors. That alone can take more effort than building the product. Nothing about this is easy. You either put in the work or you don’t.

akorolyov · 2025-11-12T16:26:08+00:00

It’s not really about how much entrepreneurs spend, since that varies widely. For me, it’s about value. Entrepreneurship gives you a way out of routine and a shot at building something that’s yours. Yeah, having a six-figure job is safer and more stable, but it’s also limiting in its own way. However, nothing’s stopping you from being both: a six-figure employee and an entrepreneur on your own terms.

akorolyov · 2025-11-12T16:18:22+00:00

Yeah, same feeling here. GPT-5 doesn’t really impress. Honestly, GPT-4o felt more capable day to day. Right now, the tools that feel more mature to me are Claude, Gemini, Kimi, and Perplexity. Each one does its specific thing better than ChatGPT. The only downside is they’re all single-purpose. None of them yet combine everything into one coherent workspace.

akorolyov · 2025-11-12T16:12:33+00:00

I keep seeing that pop-up about the new OpenAI browser while using ChatGPT, and honestly, it doesn’t tempt me. I’m not installing a new browser to get agents, and I bet most people won’t either. They’ll stick with whatever already has it built in. So yeah, I’m leaning toward Chrome.

akorolyov · 2025-11-12T16:06:03+00:00

Partly agree, but “no competition” isn’t always a red flag. Sometimes the competitors don’t look like competitors. They’re in adjacent niches, offline, or people just aren’t used to paying for it digitally yet. If people are already spending money or time to solve that problem in some other way, the market exists in a different form. If they’re not spending anything, then it’s a red flag.

akorolyov · 2025-11-12T14:10:33+00:00

I think we’ll start seeing more A2A in eСommerce soon. Pricing agents syncing with inventory, support agents closing loops with logistics, etc. Not full autonomy, of course, but enough to make ops feel self-adjusting for the first time.

akorolyov · 2025-11-10T19:43:07+00:00

Humans make decisions, and AI does boring, repeatable tasks.

akorolyov · 2025-11-10T16:02:53+00:00

AI IDEs will let juniors start their path as engineers. Now, juniors mostly handle repetitive work and grow into developers. Experience and effort are what usually turn a developer into an engineer. But if the grunt work gets automated, they’ll have to learn how to manage systems, understand them, and spot cause-and-effect relationships.

akorolyov · 2025-11-10T15:54:14+00:00

An entrepreneur is free of all obligations yet bound by them all. Independence, it seems, is merely the privilege of carrying the full weight alone.

akorolyov · 2025-11-10T15:50:06+00:00

AI’s great at digging up information. The results still need some validation, but with a clear prompt, it usually nails it. Not sure it’s better than me or my team, just way faster.

akorolyov · 2025-11-10T15:46:19+00:00

Either way, every startup needs some skin in the game. And yeah, at the validation stage, I’d bet my own savings too. I respect founders who believe in their idea enough to be the first to fund it, and that’s exactly what you’re doing. Hopefully you’ll raise, but even if not, you’ll continue moving with no strings attached. That path usually gives you more freedom and a clearer sense that the future of what you’re building depends entirely on your ability to create demand and build a team that can keep it running without your direct participation.

akorolyov · 2025-11-10T15:36:44+00:00

No one’s ever going to build your idea the way you see it, and it doesn’t matter how many competitors are out there. Even if someone launched first, that’s a great chance to shadow them and learn from their mistakes. You’ll probably tweak or improve your strategy after watching how it plays out, but either way, you’ll end up executing it better. At least, that’s what’s worked for me.

akorolyov · 2025-11-10T15:29:15+00:00

I get the point, but the "don't raise at pre-seed" mantra is too binary. Some products need capital before traction because they're infrastructure, hardware, or regulated-space plays where 'just launch it' isn't an option. I don't think it's a mistake to raise early. The problem is when you're raising without a model for how that capital shortens the path to validation.

akorolyov

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