As someone who chats with startup founders for a living, I've always admired the "builders." I have a lot of respect for their technical ability to dream up an idea and code it into existence, but it's not something I could ever do.

Even the thought of coding gives me painful flashbacks to my college statistics course, in which we learned the programming language "R," and let's just say I did not find it enjoyable.

So when I came across the term "vibe coding," my immediate thought was, "great, more tech bro lingo." But after going down a rabbit hole, I discovered something that really resonated with me.

The term was coined by Andrej Karpathy, co-founder of OpenAI and former head of artificial intelligence at Tesla, who on X in February, "There's a new kind of coding I call 'vibe coding', where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists."

"I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy paste stuff, and it mostly works," he wrote.

Simply put, vibe coding is coding with the help of artificial intelligence. Today, AI-powered code generation tools like Replit and Cursor are making it possible even for non-technical people and those without experience with software engineering to create functional apps or websites.

Startup founders aren't the only ones using it — Big Tech is also outsourcing some of its coding to AI. Last week, CEO Satya Nadella said that as much as 30% of the company's code is now written by artificial intelligence.

I learned how to 'vibe code' in 2 days

One fine morning in April, I discovered a two-day "vibe coding" boot camp in my area which advertised that class takers could "go from zero to one, creating functional apps in just 48 hours." That was my chance to get on the other side and see what the hype is all about.

The class, called "," took place in person in an office-turned-classroom over a single weekend. We were simply asked to bring our laptops and a project idea.

I showed up about half an hour early on Saturday morning to get myself set up, which involved three simple steps:

1. Download and sign up for the free version of
2. Download
3. Sign up for the free version of

The boot camp, which costs $300 Singapore dollars (about $233), is run by Sherry Jiang, co-founder and CEO of fintech company , and Agrim Singh, co-founder and CTO of AI-powered hardware design assistant . Both Jiang and Singh say that their own startups were largely built using the same AI tools and methods that they taught through the class.

Here's an abridged version of how the weekend went.

The classes on both days began with a quick slideshow on what we'd be working on that day. On Saturday, we focused on narrowing down a project idea into a clearly defined product, then prototyping it. On Sunday, I worked on actually building out our product and integrating AI into them.

I used , a large language model, to help clarify and narrow down my project idea into a clean product requirements document. I decided to create a negotiation training tool. From there, I used to prototype and develop the user interface of the tool. Then, I used to build out my product and integrate AI into it.

All that may sound complicated or overwhelming to the unfamiliar, but the process was quite feasible in practice. Surprisingly, the most difficult part for me was picking an idea.

I bounced between different options, ranging from an instant paperwork translator to a Tinder-for-dogs (to help match dogs for playdates). Ultimately, I settled on a web-based AI-powered negotiation trainer that helps teach users how to negotiate in different settings and situations, and with different personalities through written and spoken drills — which I successfully built out by the end of the weekend.

In hindsight, I realize I should have gone with the second option: Tinder-for-dogs.

Major takeaways

I was amazed to find that the process did not involve coding at all. I learned that vibe coding is more about patience and prompt engineering — or knowing how to prompt or instruct the AI tools — than it is about coding.

Much of the class was about learning how to write out our prompts for the AI tools. "AI is the dumbest smart thing out there ... you have to be super specific," Singh said to a class of about 30. As long as you can read, write and follow instructions, you can probably vibe code, I learned.

"Just being able to write code is, I think, no longer going to be a huge differentiation in this current day and age. But if you are a really good software engineer, your productivity is just going to 10x," said Jiang. As a result, startups may not need to raise as much money as hiring costs may also decrease, she added.

"For people who are not technical today ... I think that AI is just the biggest unlock. So we're going to have many more people who are going to be able to build apps," she said. Aspiring entrepreneurs who have felt held back by their lack of technical knowledge can now at least get a boost from AI.

AI will be a great "equalizer" that will allow many more people to create companies, especially if they have an expertise in a specific area, Jiang added. For example, teachers can create an app for students, and diving instructors can create a global diving community app.

"I see a ton of these people making like, $10,000 to $20,000 a month off of an app they vibe coded, when they didn't know how to code months ago," said Jiang.

While competition may also increase as more people can create startups today, Jiang predicts that it'll also be an opportunity to create niche apps that are hyper-focused on specific users.

But a question remains: do you need to know how to code in order to launch a solid product to the market today? Jiang says "it depends what you build."

It's important to acknowledge the limitations of vibe coding, which is best suited to very simple, lightweight, straightforward consumer apps — not anything very technical that will require "heavy enterprise security" or anything of the like, Jiang noted.

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