AI tools can lower the barrier to launching a startup, but scaling them still requires technical expertise, GitHub's CEO has said.
Speaking on the sidelines of VivaTech in Paris, Thomas Dohmke said over the last two years, he's observed companies go from needing convincing to use AI to "a lot of FOMO" in the market.
AI coding assistants can now help non-technical founders create a startup with a small team and no external funding, he said during a Q&A at Station F, a startup campus. But as more startups use vibe coding tools to build products using natural language prompts, it's harder to stand out among investors.
"The investors would ask, 'Why would I invest in you instead of the 10 other people?'" Dohmke said, adding that bootstrapping startups predominantly built with coding assistants wouldn't necessarily have "as much value."
He added that a "non-technical founder will find it difficult to build a startup at scale without developers," because they "can't build a complex system to justify the next round."
"The value of your startup isn't defined by what you can develop using cheap measures," Dohmke said. Startups would still need a deeper understanding of how their systems operate, he added.
GitHub, which was acquired by Microsoft for $7.5 billion in 2018, has over 150 million users worldwide who create and share code on its platform. The company's Copilot tool provides coding suggestions and explanations for human developers.
Vibe coding has raised questions about the demand for software developers and the skills that are most valuable in the AI era.
In an April "EO" podcast, Dohmke said he had "never seen anything more exciting" than today's AI-driven engineering boom. However, he stressed that "every kid, every child, should learn coding" because knowing when to rely on one's own code still matters.
Speaking at VivaTech, Dohmke said software engineers still need a "willingness to learn" about how to use AI prompts when coding and when to use an AI agent.
"If I figure out how to write a prompt for something I can do myself, it's a waste of time," he said. "It's about the prompting skills, but also knowing when not to use the prompt."
