Who has the advantage in this early AI game? Is it the newbies with AI savvy? Or the experienced experts with the same AI abilities?
These early days of AI are very exciting, but it’s still a frontier world, changing every week, with imperfect results.
It’s not for the faint of heart, looking for a simple and easy advantage.
Vincent Serpico, veteran CTO and founder of Founders Workshop, is on the front lines of the AI revolution in 2025, reshaping software development and business operations.
With more than 30 years of experience building software apps, Vincent is now dedicating himself full-time to AI coaching and workshops for teams and companies to create high-leverage impact quickly.
He sees the shift from SEO to GEO, the rise of ChatGPT apps, and why domain expertise is the ultimate competitive moat for SaaS founders navigating this new economy.
Now leading Serpico.ai, Vincent is seeing how entire applications can be built without writing code, using natural language and iterative management. It’s not one-click easy, but it’s possible now.
It’s still early and changing fast. Vincent recommends daily AI learning and testing to determine what works best, with human-in-the-loop workflows to ensure that agents and AI workflows produce accurate results.
Here’s what he says about who can gain the most leverage from practical investment in AI learning and systems:
“If you’re not an expert in something, AI will probably make you two to three times better than you currently are. But if you are an expert in something, AI will make you 10x better.
“If I want to use AI in real estate, I could do it, but a guy who’s been a real estate agent for 30 years will do much better if he understands AI skills like how to prompt and context engineer.
“So we’ll see hiring domain experts and paying them outsized salaries because they’re utilizing AI and producing five, six times more than they could without it.”
So in most cases, you still need to be smarter than the AI to get the best results—and make sure they are correct.
That takes a lot of savvy AI supervision and the ability to know what great results look like.
Key takeaways from our podcast discussion:
- Agents as Labor – AI agents perform multi-step workflows like employees, delivering productivity gains with human-in-the-loop oversight.
- Domain Expertise Moat – Deep customer and industry knowledge matters more than raw coding speed in the AI economy.
- Vibe Coding Skills – Non-coders can now build apps with natural language prompts, managing AI like junior employees.
- Practical AI Adoption – Founders should start with small use cases and build workflows before tackling complex projects.
- Great Arbitrage Period – Founders who embrace AI now gain massive leverage over competitors who resist change.
Check out this useful interview with Vincent Serpico on the Practical Founders Podcast.
