With AI, the bar for founders has never been higher

This past week, I visited the House of Lords to speak on a panel about entrepreneurship and the future of innovation.

It was a moment that made me reflect. Not just because of where I was, but also because I was being asked to speak with authority on a subject I once only daydreamed about in cafés and my noisy shared flat.

Startups always begin from the ground up, and you have to decide if this concept, incomplete and still a little blurred, is one to be fought for. You get people to join you, invest in you, and give you their time, money, and careers. And for quite some time, you have to do it all on unstable ground.

Sitting in that gold-plated room this week, I couldn’t help but reflect on how messy my own journey has been. The long, sleepless nights, the pivots, the hard talks, the imposter syndrome. These kinds of things that do not get written up in the press releases or discussed on stage.

The reality is: creating something from nothing takes more than brains and hustle. It takes an almost unreasonable amount of tolerance for uncertainty. And now, the game is changing.

There was a lot of talk at the Lords about AI; how it is changing the future of work, disrupting business, and sparking new ideas quicker than ever before. In a way, AI is the co-founder of this new generation. It is what search engines were back in the early 2000s, and smartphones in the 2010s, but on steroids.

For new founders, this is a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, you have access to tools that once took teams of engineers and months of development time. You can prototype in days, sell in minutes, iterate in real time. The threshold to entry has never been lower.

At the same time, the bar for significance is higher. AI can help you build quicker, but it will not help you build better unless you are asking the right questions. Why this problem? Why at this time? Why do you possess the talent to figure it out?

These are the questions that count in an era where anyone can create a product mock-up or a decent pitch deck courtesy of an algorithm.

Leaving the Lords, I felt grateful – not because the milestone was behind me, but because the journey ahead felt clearer. This mission isn’t about growth for growth’s sake. It’s about remembering technology is only as powerful as those who use it – and the purpose they bring to it.

About Varun Bhanot

Varun Bhanot is Co-founder and CEO of MAGIC AI, the cutting-edge AI mirror that makes high-quality fitness coaching more accessible. Under his leadership, MAGIC AI has raised $5 million in venture funding and earned multiple industry accolades — including being named one of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2024. As a new father as well as founder, Varun shares candid insights on balancing parenting and entrepreneurship in his bi-monthly guest column, Startup Daddy.

Learn more about MAGIC AI