The Era of "Vibe Everything": Why Hard Work Just Changed Forever

Andrej Karpathy recently coined a term that has been stuck in my head: "Vibe Coding." It describes a shift where you're no longer writing the syntax yourself; you're writing the prompt, the intention, the vibe, and the machine handles the implementation.

But if you look closely at what's happening in the startup ecosystem right now, you’ll see this isn't just about code. It's about everything.

We are witnessing the death of the "execution barrier" and the birth of the "Vibe Economy."

Picture the traditional workflow of a founder: You have an idea. You break it down. You hire a designer for the UI. You hire a developer for the backend. You hire a marketer for the copy. You spend weeks managing the handoffs, the miscommunications, and the quality assurance. The friction is high; the cost of failure is massive.

Now, flip that model upside down. In the near future—and honestly, in the experimental present—the workflow looks entirely different. You don't manage humans doing the tasks; you manage the vibe of the agents executing them.

The Anatomy of a Vibe

What does "working by vibe" actually mean? It sounds loose, almost hippie-like, but it’s actually a rigorous technical reality.

When we talk about this new way of building, we aren't talking about typing "make me a Facebook clone" into ChatGPT and hoping for the best. We are talking about a sophisticated agentic loop that mimics the behavior of a senior engineer or a product manager.

Here is what the process actually looks like when you peel back the layers:

1. Intention Setting (The Vibe): You tell the model what you want, focusing on the outcome rather than the steps.
2. Decomposition: The model doesn't just run code; it breaks your complex request into micro-requirements.
3. Tool Selection: It analyzes which tools are needed (Does it need to browse the web? Access the database? Generate an image?).
4. Execution & Generation: It generates the todos, writes the code, or drafts the copy.
5. Verification: This is the crucial step most people miss. The model enters a "review environment" to test its own work. Does the code compile? Does the design break on mobile?
6. Merging: It consolidates the multi-threaded tasks into a single delivery package.
7. Human Confirm: You give the final thumbs up.

This is the difference between a chatbot and a coworker. And when you apply this loop to every department in a startup, things get wild.

Beyond Code: The Vibe Company

Most of the noise right now is about coding assistants like Cursor or Devin. But as a builder, I'm more interested in what happens when this expands horizontally.

Vibe Product Management

Everyone knows the pain of writing Jira tickets. It’s necessary bureaucratic evil. But imagine a "Vibe PM." You upload a transcript of a user interview and say, "The user is confused about the checkout flow. Fix the spec to address this." The agent analyzes the friction points, updates the PRD (Product Requirement Document), creates the tickets, and prioritizes them based on impact. You didn't write a single ticket; you just identified the problem.

Vibe Marketing

Marketing is often just testing hypotheses at scale. A "Vibe Marketer" agent doesn't just write a tweet. You give it the goal: "We need to reach developer-founders who are tired of AWS bills." The agent researches trending topics, drafts 20 variations of ad copy, generates the accompanying visuals (Vibe Design), and sets up the A/B test parameters. Your job isn't to write the copy; it's to choose the voice.

Vibe Testing

Quality Assurance (QA) is usually where speed goes to die. In a Vibe setup, the testing happens autonomously. The agent spins up a browser, clicks through the user journey you just built, takes screenshots of errors, fixes the code, and re-runs the test. It reports back to you only when the light is green.

This leads us to the ultimate conclusion: The Vibe Company.

The Collapse of Risk

Paul Graham often talks about how the cost of starting a startup has dropped precipitously over the last 20 years. It went from millions (buying servers) to thousands (cloud). We are now approaching the asymptote: zero.

When you have Vibe Design, Vibe Coding, and Vibe Marketing, the cost of testing an idea is no longer money—it’s just focus.

I’ve launched products in the past where the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) took three months and $20,000 in contractor fees. If that product failed, it was a tragedy. Today, I can spin up that same MVP in a weekend using AI tools for a few dollars in API credits. If it fails? It’s not a tragedy; it’s a data point.

This changes the psychology of founding a company. When the risk of execution drops, you can afford to take bigger swings on the idea itself. You don't need to play it safe because "failure is expensive." Failure is now cheap.

The Trap: When Everyone Has Superpowers

However, I need to be the "DHH" in the room for a moment and pour some cold water on the hype.

If everyone can build a "Vibe Company," then simply building is no longer a competitive advantage.

We are moving from an era of "How do I build this?" to "What should I build?" and, more importantly, "Is it any good?"

When execution becomes a commodity, Taste becomes the only moat.

I've seen this happen already. There is a flood of AI-generated apps hitting the market that function perfectly but feel soulless. They have no opinion. They solve a problem technically but fail emotionally. They lack the human touch that makes a product stick.

The founders who win in this new era won't necessarily be the best engineers. They will be the best curators. They will be the ones with the best "vibe"—the clearest vision, the sharpest intuition for what users want, and the highest bar for quality.

Practical Takeaways: How to Survive the Vibe Shift

If you are reading this and feeling anxious, don't be. This is the greatest leverage we have ever had. But you need to change how you work today.

1. Stop worshipping syntax: If you are learning to code, focus on system architecture and logic, not memorizing syntax. The AI will handle the syntax. You need to understand how the pieces fit together so you can direct the "Vibe Coding" agent effectively.

2. Cultivate your taste: This is your new capital. Study great products. Understand why a certain design feels good. When the AI generates five options, your ability to pick the winning one is your entire value proposition.

3. Practice "Prompting" as Management: Treat your AI tools like smart interns. If the output is bad, don't just fix it yourself. Ask: "How did I explain this poorly?" refine your instructions. Learning to direct these agents is the essential skill of the next decade.

4. Start a "Vibe Project": Don't wait. This weekend, try to build something small using only natural language prompts and AI tools. Feel the friction. See where it breaks. You need to develop the muscle memory for this new workflow.

The Future is Personal

I used to think that to build a big company, I needed to become a manager of people. I dreaded the idea of moving away from the product to manage HR issues and hiring pipelines.

The promise of "Vibe Everything" is that builders can stay builders. We can run massive, complex operations without becoming bureaucrats. We can leverage AI to handle the scale while we focus on the soul of the product.

The tools are ready. The barrier is gone. The only thing missing is your vibe.

So, what are you going to build?