There’s a cartoon that I have in my head. It’s not even remotely funny, but it keeps popping up in my mind. It’s of a CEO and some subordinate standing in an office, she says: I will tell you what I want done, it’s your job to find someone who knows how to do it.

It makes me think she is ordering the build of a new product. But what I then think is: hopefully the 'for whom' and the 'why' have been given some thought before the 'what' was concocted.

Because they often aren’t. A marketing team follows a system, but at some point in the decision chain, especially if the person in the chain is the master link, like the CEO in the cartoon, it’s all about intuition.

And intuition often forgets the important stuff.

A 'what' is the easy part. A baby learning language points to a thing and makes a sound. A 'what' is a noun.

Add 'why', you have a sentence. If you are asked 'why', you might say, because x is not y. Cause and effect. This 'what' I just made causes x to become y.

And 'for whom'? Oh, for me. I happen to dislike x-es, like y-es much more.

Now we have a fully formed complex sentence. “I made this ‘what’ because I want x to become y”.

What if your ‘what’ is for somebody else? For many? A lot of different 'why's? How can you get them to align?

You might want to separate them into like-minded 'for whom's. Persona’s. Your marketing system kicks in.

Building a product is simple. It’s as simple as making a sentence. Subject verb noun. Cause and effect. A complex sentence. Yet, in the enthusiasm that goes with the vision of a 'what' in your mind, the sentence can stay unfinished. The 'for whom', and 'why' missing.

Building a product is hard. Experts build systems for it. But also simple. You build for people, because people need some x-es to become y-es.

We in the software industry are in a wondrous position within this junction of history. Our industry is the first to profit from the acceleration that AI can bring. What took days, weeks or months just a short time ago can now be accomplished in seconds, minutes, hours. The 'how' has been conquered.

That we are the first makes sense, because we work in the stuff AI is made of. Hardware industries will follow suit, and before long, the ‘how’ will no longer be a thing to build a career upon.

Expect to see an abundance of new products. First software, with the hardware industry hot on our heels. A lot of people will have a 'what' stuck their heads that couldn’t get out due to the time, effort and money constraints of traditional product development. For us in the software industry, with vibe coding, those constraints are approaching zero. But abundance quality does not make. Expect to see much of low value.

With the 'how' out of the way, it’s up to us to solve the hard stuff. We can make products in abundance, but for whom, and why? And what?