Why tech founders are moving their AI solutions into the physical world

Welcome to The Current.

This is where we gather real founder conversations to track what’s on their radar right now.

1. Rise of the validated solo founder
   For years, tech consensus said building a startup entirely alone was a fast track to burnout. Now, solo builders are quietly proving that wrong, hitting major revenue milestones with nothing but modular AI workflows and zero co-founder drama. Instead of hunting for co-founders because an old playbook says so, operators are protecting their ownership for as long as possible. When AI handles the heavy lifting, staying solo becomes the ultimate leverage.
2. Escaping the tech echo chamber
   Building software tools for other volatile tech startups has become a bloodbath. Instead, founders are walking away from overcrowded trends to build simple, high-margin software for traditional, offline businesses. Legacy operators and traditional enterprises don’t care about tech hype or flashy social media milestones. They have stable budgets, high loyalty, and zero interest in shiny tech updates and just want a daily headache solved.
3. Building outside the browser
   If a weekend project can completely clone your software app with a few prompts, code alone isn’t a unique edge anymore. True defensibility is moving back out into the real world. By anchoring intelligent software directly to physical hardware, countertop systems, or on-site machinery, founders are building a physical presence that a pure software copycat simply can’t replicate.

At Waffle, where we build a smart POS and loyalty ecosystem for traditional merchants, we leveraged AI automation early on and gave every engineer access to paid tools. Beyond that, it was about building documentation habits so AI could pick up the work. Then we started sending our ‘forward-deployed engineers’ straight out to our customers because AI handles the heavy lifting.

It’s no longer about how fast you can build; now it’s about deciphering what is the right thing to build. That shift allows us to act on our ‘users first, relentlessly’ philosophy, freeing up our teammates to focus on the kind of critical thinking that needs empathy and a human touch.

Having the space to focus on that human element is exactly why we walked away from crowded tech trends. Not a lot of people are building for the offline businesses driving 70% of the GDP – like your local businesses and mom-and-pop shops. Our mission is to give these offline merchants technological superpowers so they can focus on what they do best and run their business, rather than spending their days meddling with technology. For us, building in this traditional, offline space is incredibly meaningful, simply because it actually allows us to be more human while building technology.

And when it comes to the physical tech moats, we have hardware such as our POS terminals and self-ordering kiosks. But we’ve learned that the ultimate moat isn’t hardware at all; it’s the people on our customer success team running the show every day. We believe ‘after-sales is sales’ – because going above and beyond to truly understand a merchant’s pain points, help with menu engineering, or fine-tune a loyalty campaign builds authentic friendships that no copycat software can ever replicate.

The Bottom Line
“Focus on the Three Ps: People, Product, and then Profits. Now that AI is here to handle the heavy lifting, double down on the people – both your teammates and your users.”

“Once you have the right people foundation in place, you naturally get the feedback you need to build the right product. And when the people take care of the product, the product will always take care of the profits.”