Ask HN: Would a startup for young creatives who reject AI be feasible?

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Ask HN: Would a startup for young creatives who reject AI be feasible?

I am a member of my university's game development club, which puts me around lots of talented programmers as well as artists of all kinds, and I've observed that just about everyone disapproves of AI. The sentiment is especially strong among younger people coming into the club. By "disapproves", I mean they refuse to allow AI-generated content in games and see AI use in general as something like a moral failure.

At the same time, I scroll down the YC startup directory, sorting by launch date, and observe that every non-hardware company (and most of the hardware ones) are entirely based on AI. The demographic I described above, young creatives like the ones in this club, has zero chance of voluntarily using one of these products.

It seems to me, then, that as the moat for most AI startups drops asymptotically to 0 with GPT-6 et al. becoming more capable, this market is mostly a blue ocean (to use the business-book term) for anyone willing to put in the work and actually code something people want. From there, network effects would work as well as they have since the dawn of the Internet.

I am exploring the idea of making such a startup (it started out as a side project which I have been working on by myself for almost 2 years), but I am worried about the attitude of incubators, VCs, and investors in general. Would the lack of AI be a nonstarter for most outside investors? I know people started non-blockchain companies in 2021, but the hype around AI seems orders of magnitude more captivating to anybody who might provide capital. I know bootstrapping is viable for some companies, but would that be the only way? I appreciate any advice people might have.

Discussion 26 comments · 11 points · mondobe · 19d
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