Why AI Makes “Punching Above Your Weight” the New Normal
Now you can bootstrap for way, way, way longer.
"Punching above your weight" is a boxing metaphor that refers to performing better than what would be expected given your size, resources, or experience level. In boxing, weight classes exist to ensure fair competition. When a boxer competes successfully against someone in a heavier weight class, they're literally "punching above their weight."
In business and startup contexts, it means achieving results that surpass what would be expected given your company's size, funding level, or stage. For example:
A small team acquiring users at rates similar to much larger, better-funded competitors
A startup with a limited marketing budget creating viral content that rivals established brands
A startup developing sophisticated marketing strategies typically seen in mature organizations
When investors say they want to see founders "punching above their weight," they're looking for evidence that you can do more with less and outperform expectations, suggesting you'll be even more effective with additional resources.
The startup world has previously seen small teams do massive things. Instagram had only twelve people when Facebook acquired them for one billion dollars. WhatsApp was bought for $20bn and they had less than a hundred employees. This underdog effect has always existed in startups, but AI takes it to a whole new level.
Think about the impact of AI. Before LLMs, a startup's output scaled linearly with headcount. Now, in 2025, AI gives every founder the power to punch above their weight, making it the most disruptive force in the history of technology. A solo founder can now feel capable of building things that once required 10 engineers.
I've spent the summer deep in AI coding, trying things out to see what AI coding is all about. A year ago, all that felt more like an unrealistic future, that AI would be able to write code that is production-quality.
Here are three key things I’ve observed while building with AI.
1) A new kind of magical pair
No longer do you need to have a team of developers. One developer can run with an idea for a tech startup and get it off the ground on their own, with the help of their magical companion, an AI agent. For example, Claude Code can do so many things: it can design and implement websites, mobile apps, games, marketing campaigns, debugging code, etc. The best combo is for the developer to be a Swiss Army Knife product manager, who knows about business opportunity, markets, ideas, novelty, which aren't the strength of the coding agent. AI can take ownership, AI can come up with ingenious ways of implementing a feature, and it can run all sorts of tests.
The more hours I spent in Claude Code, the more I unlocked its power. Every session felt like playing chess with infinite strategies, and each move taught me new ways to master the tool.
Success with AI starts with a mindset shift. The founder must treat AI as a collaborator that works alongside them, not as a disposable tool for one-off prompts.
2) Orchestration
What shifted my perspective was seeing how developers can design orchestrations that AI carries out flawlessly. The speed and quality of new updates to these tools have been staggering. All this has made me a firm believer in AI coding for production-ready apps and games.
I've become accustomed to having multiple Claude Code instances running and building different parts of the app. The UI and UX is built by one, while the second Claude Code instance is working on game logic, and the third one is building a level editor for the game.
A note on vibe coding: you cannot one-shot a production-grade app. These tools must be learned. As with any creative software, skill comes from practice, not from simply winging it. Success in AI coding requires a thoughtful understanding of system components and their interactions.
3) The codebase question: will it be a hassle to maintain?
One of the biggest risks with AI-generated code is ending up with a codebase that becomes difficult to maintain. Quick wins and one-shot prototypes can impress your friends and make you look like a genius. But without structure and consistency the code quickly turns into technical debt.
To avoid this, you still need the fundamentals of software development: clean architecture, documentation, and regular refactoring. AI speeds things up but does not eliminate the need for discipline. The real breakthroughs come when AI subagents are given defined roles, clear rules, and relevant context. In areas like refactoring, they can work wonders. With so many tools emerging right now to tackle these challenges, these are truly exciting times.
Claude Code is basically getting a new version every day. EVERY, SINGLE, DAY with something new and improved.
Final word
Will early stage VC funding be necessary? Yes, there will still be a need for funding, as AI won't be able to scale your business and the TikTok ads you'll want to buy will still have an upfront cost associated with them.
But do founders really need to raise millions before finding product-market fit? Unless you just want to pay yourself a corporate salary for two years, why not start with personal savings or a few hundred K from angels and get moving?
This summer I built four mobile game MVPs using Claude Code. No big team, no heavy coding. Just ideas, iteration, and testing with real users. Along the way I learned what actually works when you want to get from concept to prototype fast.
Now I’m putting that experience into a premium course for founders who want to move quickly without hiring developers. We’ll cover setting up Claude for mobile development, building your first app in 48 hours, testing with users before you invest heavily, and knowing when to kill ideas versus double down. It’ll include my proven prompts, MVP templates, weekly live debugging sessions, and a private builder community. If you’re interested, join the waitlist here: AI Game Coding Course Waitlist.