How AI & Vibe Coding Is Disrupting the VC Playbook | Wooster Han - Hashed

All right. Hello everyone. All right. Hello everyone. It's great meeting you.

My name is Worster. I'm a head of communications at Hasht. Um, so for those who haven't heard of Hasht, we are uh we're a crypto VC. Our office is based in Seoul, San Francisco, Bangalore, Singapore and Abu Dhabi. Um, so before we start, like I'd like to take a note that I'm pretty sure everyone here has heard of what VIP coding is.

Um, people have been saying a lot about uh a lot about a lot about pessimistic and dystopian views on how VIP coding will change the society as a whole. Um and we've been making voices both on the policy level and on the builder level on how things will change and uh how we can kind of cope and bring more optimistic future. We as hash we're more of a technical optimist. Um so we think the technology will eventually enable um the social benefits as a whole. So um what I'm going to talk about here today is uh somewhat something more hopeful per se um on how Vive coding is changing the scene for the founders and builders um and as a backer and a investor of those founders um how we should really cope with it.

So Vive coding isn't really just about making software faster. It's also about um building companies differently and that really translates into um the cycles for startups will change eventually and the VCs should change accordingly. So this is the gist of my presentation here today. So this is the whole point that I I'll be making today that VC will no longer be the gate of capital. it will be more of um a hyperconnector.

Um and this sounds very obvious but um this is a really difficult thing to do as uh you know as my my career cycle in the VC making the right connections um at the right timing for the right people is something that you would always need to see the landscape and you would have to meet and excavate good networks as you go by. So that's why I'm here at Denver um to meet with great people of you um and really hear you out and see how we can really work together on that. Um so essentially for Vive coding it really breaks down the barriers of execution really really dramatically. So what it does is um money is no longer a scarce resource for the founders. That means why would they need to raise from the VCs if they don't need to uh raise money to build a product?

Um so my point is writing checks is not enough. It's not a strong mode for VCs anymore. So historically this has been the cycle for startups. Um founders come with ideas, they'll raise money to hire team um and they'll build a product and test on the market and most of the cases you're not really sure if they will succeed in the market test on the validate level. Um that's why VC has always came with the risk.

Um it's a good idea but after the execution you don't really know what to turn out in the market like everything's based on the hypothesis. With five coding, what allows is now the founder doesn't really need to hire new teams. They they just build, they validate. If they don't get any, you know, optimistic feedback from the market, they can go back idea build again. So this is a constant loop of executions that the founders should be doing and that loop is way much quicker.

They can literally do it within hours with five coding. um if if they find a sweet spot for that and they there's a high possibility of scaling after that. Um so what this is really telling is now the f founders can really ship usable products. Um they run experiments and they get market feedbacks before fundraising. Um that now really translates into uh how VCs really should cope with it.

Um so why this is happening now? Because as I said execution cost collapsed. Um you pay 200 bucks on clawed code and you just build product within like days. You can spend like hours and you will sell something really feasible um that requires a lot of designing work or like coding work. Everything is compiled into one execution um you know process.

So it compresses dramatically the time from concept to shipping which means um you know the iteration it's not it's not about building nowadays. It's it will be more about faster iterations of products and keep going on build test learn and that cycle is getting quick quicker. So the bottleneck used to be an implementation for the startups back in the days. Um they came up with a great idea. The output has always been not always been but a lot of cases uh we've seen a lot of cases where the outputs were quite poor um compared to the initial vision.

Um we would say now the decision the now the bottleneck is more about decision- making. It's about what to build, what to cut and what to measure. and that we're really um categorized on what the good characteristics of a founders would be and that has always been um but my point is now that's even stronger. So if building is easier and if money is not a scarce resource anymore. So what's scarce?

And as I said it, this is just my opinion that judgment, direction and validation will be more scarce resource from the founders that will be looking for. um AI would make it easier to build but it at the same time it also increases the responsibilities of the founders to find the right bets the right right directions and the right people um to to uh with a some sort of subset of discipline. Um, and if everyone can ship, so how would they really differentiate their product from other people who might have an access to the same code or really easy to copy the copy the products um there will be a lot of like differentiating factors for that. Um but for today like um I'll be just going on more of a high level stuff where the founders really need to have more insights on seeing what's really in the market. So supply is easy and demand is hard.

This is where we would really get into as a VC. So um AI really scales production but not really the demand. Um you can make great product right? um you can have all the functions, all the content that you can build. Um how would you guarantee that your product will really reach the target audience that you would be targeting?

Um or how would you make sure those audience will constantly use your product? How would you repeat that process? Um and that goes beyond production. It goes beyond more of um go to market where you need a lot of distribution channels um the right people and the right marketing and um these all includes you know a production of a product itself um but not just coding or writing softwares. So this is really where um you know the VCs really come in.

say old old VCs used to have an advantage um in paying checks, writing checks and nowadays this is not I would say great founders don't really need money they need a good backers um so they are having a trusted access to the resource that they need to build um and that's not about engineering um so the two points it's one is a signal quality that is required from the VCs um saying there will be a lot of polished demos that would come out. So a lot of products will actually look very attractive um compared to before. So how do we go through that noise and really find what's real? The second is once the founders really met the right um angle and they hit the sweet spot and they we're seeing the potential to scale, how how do we actually going to help um other than injecting capital? So VCs should really become a super connector.

Um obviously capital allocation is a key business motor for VCs to um to make profits but you know it's not the end of an investment cycle. We have to work as a second team with the founders so they have confidence in um knowing what to do with the product that they have built. They need to know um how to reach to the audience. They need to know who the customers really are. And that's not just about the general B2C customers.

It includes businesses with the government or even with the institutions. So three elements uh verify trust is essentially connections that comes with credibility. We know uh which angle of network that we should inject based on the stage of the product. Um and obviously the connections that we provide should really come with a real output. So we started a new acceleration program at hasht.

Um it's called vibe labs. Um this is a lot different from other accelerating programs where they start with an idea. They we you know we kind of coach peaching. Um a we kind of kind of go on track on the production process but that production process is so quick nowadays that we don't really need to track. Um so what we are planning to do this is going to be our 8 weeks program uh based in South Korea.

So um we will be tracking and helping founders to ship the products. They can ship products every day. Um testing the market and we'll validate the data together and if it doesn't work they can go back and ship again. So we're kind of what we're trying to see is how fast a founder can actually adapt to the changing environment in the scene and how fast he would would he or she be able to um cope with the market feedback and kind of sync that with the product. So what we're trying to see here is not the product that the founders would make.

We're trying to see the quality of of what character the founders can actually perform very well in the era of V coding. So, so um two questions uh for VCs. I would say um this is a rhetorical statement that venture capital should really become more of a venture trust network um to really help and grow with the founders. Uh for founders um you know it's not really just about products um but it really comes with the validation and um the ability to build connections. So, um, thank you very much.

Uh, the time is up and, uh, if you're interested in the Vibe lifesar acceleration program, this is, uh, the QR code and we'll be expanding to Singapore and Abu Dhabi this year on this program. Thank you.