E6: I Tried Vibe Coding for 6 Months and Nearly Destroyed My Products (Why AI-Assisted Development Is Not What You Think)

I fell hard for "vibe coding" - using AI to build apps based on vibes rather than understanding. Spent 6 months with Cursor and Claude, paying $200/month. Built 3 projects. One succeeded, two failed spectacularly.- Project 1 (Success): Rebuilt our dormant mobile app in 2 days using Figma designs and Claude. Looked perfect, worked great, solved a real problem.- Project 2 (Disaster): SimpleDirect Chat - added 10 features in weeks, hundreds of commits, now my own dev team won't touch the codebase. It's commercially unviable.- Project 3 (Nightmare): Ghost blog redesign broke everything. 72pt fonts, broken margins, hours of failed fixes.The wake-up call: The T app hack - a popular dating app built with vibe coding got completely compromised because of basic Firebase vulnerabilities. Driver licenses stolen, addresses leaked.What I learned:Vibe coding is amazing for prototypes and demosIt's dangerous for production and commercial appsWhen everyone can code with AI, only 1-5% of companies will capture 90-95% of revenueYou're not just competing with other builders anymore - you're competing with AI-enabled teamsThe brutal truth: Democratizing coding doesn't democratize success. It makes the market more concentrated, not less.Why this matters for founders:If you're vibe coding production apps, you're building on quicksandThe best developers using AI will dominate, not replaced by AISimplicity becomes your competitive advantage when complexity is cheapMy new approach: Stopped vibe coding. Focused on empowering actual developers with AI tools. They understand every line of code and can take it to the next level.For CS students worried about AI: You won't be replaced if you're genuinely good at your craft. You'll be 5-10x enabled.Disagree with my vibe coding take? Email [email protected] - always open to being wrong.New episodes Monday/Wednesday/Friday at 9am EST. Weekend bonus when inspiration strikes.Daily insights: @TheGeorgePu on Twitter/X Full episodes: founderreality.com Email: [email protected]