After ~10 years of software engineering, ~8 years messing around with AI and security research, ~6 years in product & leadership roles, ~3 years as a VC-backed startup CEO, and 1000+ hours of vibe coding — I feel like everything I've done so far was leading up to this moment.
We're at a point where one person can build an entire company using AI — not just a demo, not just an MVP. Like, a real company.
Some people call it "vibe coding."
Honestly? I don't love the term. It feels like it downplays what's actually happening.
Because if you really want to build something serious, you'll quickly find that Vibe/PM-Prompting isn't enough.
You also need:
- 🧑💻 Dev-Prompting
- 🏗 Architect-Prompting
- 🔧 DevOps-Prompting
- 🛡 SecOps-Prompting
- 🧠 Executive-Prompting (today's post)
This is the first in a series where I'll break down the mental models, prompting flows, and techniques I've developed after 1000+ hours of AI-native building.
1. The Shift — From Roles to Departments
To explain what I mean by Executive Prompting, let me take you back almost 20 years.
I worked behind the bar. I loved it — late nights, energy, creating great experiences.
Then I became a waiter in a chill daytime place. Same idea — reading people, adapting, creating flow.
At some point I thought:
"I should open a restaurant."
But here's the thing:
Being a bartender or a waiter doesn't mean you can run the place.
You also need to understand:
- The kitchen
- Dishwashing
- Finance
- Marketing
- Pricing
- Hiring
- Training
- Vendors
- Interior design, even
You don't need to do it all — but you better know how it works.
2. The Problem — Prompting as a PM Only Gets You So Far
Now replace that restaurant with your startup.
When you're coding with AI, you're not just the PM writing prompts.
You're also:
- The engineer
- The architect
- The designer
- The QA
- The DevOps
- The AppSec
- The legal guy
- The growth person
- The marketing and sales expert
- The everything
Let's say you start with a prompt like:
"Build a dashboard for monitoring AI agents"
The AI will probably give you a decent starting point — maybe a basic UI, some token stats, a backend endpoint.
But that's just the beginning. That's Vibe-Coding.
If you're actually trying to build a product — not just a feature — you'll quickly find yourself spinning up multiple parallel prompt flows, each handling a different part of the business.
For example:
- One flow is about monitoring logic — what are we tracking? Token usage? Latency? Errors?
- Another one is for frontend UX — how should this data be presented?
- Another covers infra and scale — can this handle thousands of sessions?
- A fourth handles security and compliance — are we logging PII? Do we need encryption?
- And one more for OSS vs SaaS strategy — what's open-source? What's paid?
You're not asking the AI one magical prompt that "does it all."
You're acting like an exec — giving each "team" its own responsibility, its own prompt flow (and much more than just a prompt, more on that in later posts) — and making sure they align with each other.
That's Executive Prompting.
3. The Mindset — What Executive Prompting Really Means
It's not about being perfect — it's about being aware.
You're still a solo builder. But mentally, you're running a company.
So here's how I think through every major feature or flow:
4. The Checklist — Thinking Like an Organization
🧠 Product Strategy
→ Who is it for? What's the outcome? What's the business impact?
👨💻 Engineering
→ Is it clean, testable, modular?
🏗 Architecture
→ Does this integrate with the rest of the system?
🔧 DevOps
→ Can we deploy this safely? Is it observable?
🛡 Security
→ Are we creating attack vectors? Is anything exposed?
⚖️ Compliance
→ Are we collecting sensitive data? Do we need to care?
📈 Growth / Marketing
→ Can this drive real value? Is it measurable?
🧯 Support / Ops
→ What happens when this breaks? Will we even know?
Of course, all of this is most relevant when you're a true solo founder. But the same approach can be adapted as your organization grows — even if some (or all) of these departments already exist. The real shift isn't just about covering more ground — it's about rethinking how these teams collaborate and stay aligned in the agentic era, where humans and AI agents are building together.
5. The Insight — Building Without the Meetings
And here's the most beautiful part:
You can actually use AI to operate as your entire team — with real expertise — across all of these domains.
You can spin up "departments" that:
- Know their roles
- Execute with context
- Interact with each other
- And stay aligned
All of this… without a single sync meeting.
(No more "align on how to align before we align.")
We're entering a world where the org chart is virtual — but the business is real.
You just need to know:
- What departments your business needs
- What they're responsible for
- And how they should collaborate
That's what I'll break down in the next posts — with real, hands-on examples from my own builds.
Follow if you're building with AI.
We're just getting started.