Author :
Diana Sharma, Co-founder and Mission Director, Mission Ready
On Wednesday, Alan Kan and I ran a session at The Annex in Wynyard Quarter. We went in with one question. If AI can build software now, why are so many founders still waiting for someone else to build theirs?
The room gave us a better question. Thank you to everyone who stood up, voted, argued with us and stayed to keep talking.
We asked everyone with an idea for a product or business to stand. Most people did. We asked them to stay standing if they never built it. Many stayed up. We asked them to stay standing if they couldn’t find someone to build it for them. A lot of people were still on their feet.
That is the old playbook. You know the problem because you’ve lived it. Someone else knows how to build. Your first job is finding them. We think that search has stopped more New Zealand ideas than any funding gap. It has been longest for women, Pasifika founders and people changing careers later in life.
We asked three questions. Would you give away half your company to get version one built? No hands went up. To someone you met at a meetup three weeks ago? Still none. What if you could build it yourself in a month? Hands everywhere.
A few years ago, the first question would have had takers. The room already knew the deal had changed.
Alan typed a single prompt. It asked for an app that scores a founder’s pitch and gives investor feedback, with free sign-up and unlimited checks. A few minutes later it worked.
Then he asked what might be wrong with it. What does it cost at scale? Is the API key exposed? Who is using it? Where does the pitch data go? Is the feedback any good? He didn’t know yet. The AI hadn’t raised a single one of those questions.
That was the point of the demo. Building a prototype is now within reach of almost anyone. Whether it becomes a product depends on technical judgement. That means knowing how it holds up with real users, what it costs to run, where the data goes, and when the AI has got something wrong.
Most of the questions afterwards were about one thing. How do you build that judgement? Some of you were planning to go out on your own. Others wanted to build something new inside the organisation you already work for. The question was the same.
Our answer is mentoring. Judgement develops over time. It develops fastest in conversation with people who have more experience than you. Talking a decision through is how you find your blind spots. It is how you test assumptions you didn’t know you were making. It is how you upgrade the mental models you bring to the next call.
Before real users or real money touch what you’ve built, try answering these.
If you can’t answer one, that is a good conversation to have with someone who can.
We built the Tech Solopreneur Accelerator around that conversation. Over ten weeks you build your own product. Each week you meet one to one with a technical, a product and a business mentor. Every decision becomes a conversation about why you made it. That gives you a concentrated ten weeks of developing judgement that usually takes years.
You finish with a tested MVP, a validated business model and an NZQA Level 6 micro-credential. No technical background is needed, and your idea stays confidential. Notion, Airwallex and Customer.io back every founder from day one, and Rebel Scholarships are available.
The founding group starts online on Monday 19 October. If you’ve been carrying an idea for a while, we’d love to help you build it.
Thank you to the Auckland Startup Week team for having us as a Foundation Partner.
Find out more at missionreadyhq.com/become/tech-solopreneur.
Talent is everywhere. Now, so is the opportunity to build.