Stephan Engl

99% idea, 1% execution

technology making

Six dark metal hand tools of different shapes and sizes mounted vertically on a pale wall.

Ideas are cheap. Execution is everything.

That was the startup rule.

Everybody is a builder now. Generating code and designs are no longer the barriers they were. More gets built, faster. Including slop: things made because they can be, not because they should be.

The question moves from Can we build it? to What should we build for whom and why? Or, more simply: does this problem need a better answer?1

Execution still matters. Yet when everybody can build, choosing what deserves to be built becomes the difference.

  1. Marty Cagan and Bob Baxley, “Product, Design and AI”, Silicon Valley Product Group, 24 March 2025 – distinguishes product discovery from product delivery and argues that generative AI can accelerate both while judgment about the right thing to build remains essential.