The limiting factor is no longer code. It's clarity.
Over the past year I've been building AI-assisted systems across venture, product, and personal workflow. What has changed is not some abstract leap toward AGI. It's the compression between intent and execution. Using Claude, GPT, Rork, and Vercel — if I can clearly define a system, I can usually build a functional version of it within days. The tools are beginning to understand intent well enough to extend my thinking, structure ambiguity, and scaffold architecture.
What I Built: Investing Stack
Venture is full of pattern recognition and structured judgment, but most of it lives in messy notes and fragmented memory. I built systems to formalize it:
VC Meeting OS
Ingests transcripts, generates structured memos, detects companies and tasks, creates a searchable knowledge layer across meetings
Automated DealFlow Pipeline
Structures sourcing, frames diligence, surfaces competitive context, standardizes decision signals
Fund vs SPV Simulator
Models DPI, carry waterfalls, fee drag, and outlier scenarios to visualize real economics
VC Benchmarking App
Aggregates vintage performance data to pressure-test allocation decisions (most popular tool)
Testing Outside Venture
I applied the same approach outside venture to test whether this leverage was real or just domain familiarity:
One Day App
Daily cognitive anchors for reflection — live on the App Store
Brain Teaser Tap Game
Color and word recognition game — live on the App Store
Adaptive Kids Math Game
Adjusts difficulty dynamically based on performance — live on the App Store
What This Actually Means
None of this is about replacing judgment — it's about amplifying structured thinking
Models help clarify inputs and outputs, expose edge cases, and reduce iteration time
They do not remove the need for taste, economics, or first-principles reasoning
We are not at general intelligence, but we are close enough to general construction
If you can define a system clearly, you can often build version one yourself.
The bottleneck is no longer technical capacity. It is imagination, intent, and the ability to think in systems.
Explore the tools built from this approach at Value Add VC. Originally published in the Trace Cohen newsletter.