10x with AI.

You can build a company in a day now. That’s exactly the problem.

Author

Michael van Lier
April 30, 2026

You can spin up agents, ship a product, and launch something “real” before lunch. But building a company, a team, something that actually lasts, is still a very different game.

Do you have distribution? Are you solving a real, painful problem? Do you know who feels that pain, and how badly? Do you understand your data beyond dashboards, as actual signals you can act on?

Tools got faster. Building got easier. But clarity, taste, and execution are still hard. That hasn’t changed.

First things first: 10x isn’t speed.

Everyone talks about “10x with AI” as if it’s mainly about speed. We don’t see it like that.

Yes, you can move faster. Yes, you can automate more. But most of the time, the “10x” doesn’t come from just using AI. It comes from setting it up properly, and that part still takes time.

Things break easily. Flows that work once don’t always work again. You tweak one part and something else stops working. So you go back, adjust, rethink the setup.

The real shift isn’t whether you can use AI. It’s whether you actually understand what you’re building, how the pieces interact, and where things fail.

What this unlocks (and how we’ll prove it):

  • Better systems → less fake speed. Moving fast only works if the system holds. Otherwise, you’re just rebuilding the same thing over and over.

  • Deeper understanding → better decisions. The teams that win are the ones who understand the problem before scaling the solution.

  • Setup over shortcuts → real leverage. AI amplifies what’s already there. If the foundation is weak, it scales the wrong thing.

In the loop: speed, systems, and where it breaks

A few moments that shaped the month:

  • House of Founders — from chaos to something real. What started in Cape Town showed how fast you can build when you remove time to overthink. But the real insight wasn’t the speed. It was how quickly things fall apart if the problem isn’t clear. That’s what we opened up on April 29 in Amsterdam.

  • CTO Breakfast — spec-driven development. One team stopped writing code entirely. Specs go in, code comes out, and they keep shipping. The room was split. Some saw the obvious next step, others saw a fast track to chaos. Both reactions made sense.

  • Behind the scenes at Builders. We went quieter for a few weeks. Not because nothing is happening, but because too much is. The way we work is being rebuilt from the inside out. More soon.

Up next →

Ventures in motion: building for 10x

  • Avery — from content to distribution. Weekly conversations with hiring leaders are turning into something more deliberate. Not more content, but a format people start to recognize. Over time, that’s what builds trust. Watch all video’s here. 🎥

  • Cortena — making finance workflows actually usable. A new iteration of the product brings more flexibility into how finance teams operate. Not forcing a single way of working, but allowing workflows to adapt to the company. Curious about our Netflix series? 🍿

  • Trigger — building with the audience. From free tools to feature drops, everything is happening in public. Not just shipping, but evolving based on real feedback. Test trigger for free. 🤑

  • Everday — combining AI with human judgment. Workshops are shifting from pure tooling to interpretation. Mapping skills is one thing. Understanding how that translates in the real world is where the real value is. Visit Everday’s new website. 🤖

👀 What we’re reading (and seeing):

  • 10x for young builders. Early in your career, the real advantage isn’t specialization, it’s proximity to leverage. Being close to AI, tools, and fast-moving environments compounds faster than almost anything else.

  • Collaborative AI engineering — the next 10x. The shift isn’t just better models. It’s how humans and AI systems work together in building software. Less writing code, more designing systems, reviewing outputs, and steering direction.

  • 10x isn’t where you think it is. Speed is visible. Setup isn’t. Most of the real leverage still comes from understanding the problem deeply enough to build the right thing in the first place.

  • Distribution is becoming a product. The teams getting traction aren’t experimenting every week. They’re building formats people recognize and return to. Consistency is starting to outperform novelty.

Final word: 10x is a setup, not a shortcut

AI gives you leverage, but leverage without direction just scales mistakes faster.

The builders who win aren’t the ones using the most tools. They’re the ones who understand what they’re building, set things up properly, and keep adjusting when reality doesn’t match the plan.

10x isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing the right things, with more force behind them.

Forward, always,

Michael van Lier
Managing Director at Builders