As AI makes coding easier than ever before, the challenge might move in a different direction — getting products in the hands of users.
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel raised an interesting point in a recent appearance on the TBPN podcast. Speaking about how Snap is thinking about vibe coding and AI-assisted development, Spiegel didn’t just celebrate the speed gains — he pointed to a structural shift in where the real work of a tech company will happen.
“One of the things we’ve been thinking a lot about,” Spiegel said, “is how do we leverage all these amazing tools to just start building more apps? One of the things that we always love to do is come up with new ideas. In the past we’ve been like, ‘Oh, we got a great idea, but we gotta build it. Oh man.'”
That bottleneck, he suggested, is dissolving. With vibe coding and AI development tools dramatically lowering the cost and time to ship software, the constraint is no longer writing the code — it’s everything that comes after.
“I think what’s going to be really interesting about all these companies — before, so many of their resources were dedicated to engineering. Now I think people are going to be much more focused on marketing, on distribution. And that’s a big shift in the way they do this.”
It’s a deceptively simple observation, but the implications are significant. For decades, the dominant narrative in tech has been that engineering talent is the scarcest and most valuable resource. Salaries, equity structures, and hiring pipelines have all reflected this. If Spiegel is right, that calculus is beginning to change.
The shift he’s describing is already visible in the broader market. Tools like Cursor, Replit, and Claude Code have compressed development cycles substantially, enabling small teams — or even solo founders — to ship products that once required dozens of engineers. Meanwhile, the App Store and Google Play host millions of apps, and organic discovery has become increasingly difficult. The real competitive advantage increasingly lies in audience, brand, and distribution — exactly the domain of marketing. Spiegel, whose company built one of the most culturally resonant consumer products of the last decade, understands this terrain well. His comments suggest that the next era of tech competition won’t be won in the IDE. It will be won in the feed.