Andrew Miklas: Make AI Your Product Strategist, Not Coder
ycombinator AI is great at writing code, but product success depends on deciding what to build. We think...
Most people talk about AI like a supercharged junior dev. This YC reel flips it. The hoodie, plain background, and simple text scream: the hard part isn’t code, it’s choosing what to ship.
Turn AI Into a Product Co-Founder
Use AI to rank problems, not write features: feed it support tickets, interviews, and sales calls, then ask for the top 5 painful, valuable, and frequent problems to solve this quarter.
The Psychology Behind This Reel
- Founder-in-a-hoodie framing says, “I build things; I don’t hype tools.”
- Red YC-style wall makes it feel official, so the contrarian message lands.
- On-screen line “Over the last” opens a loop your brain wants closed.
Who’s Already Doing This
Y Combinator uses a calm talking-head reel to sell the idea that AI should guide what founders build, then points viewers straight to the YC Spring 2026 application.
Notion positions its AI as a thinking partner for product specs and research summaries, not just an autocomplete engine for code, reinforcing the strategy-over-keyboard story.