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OpenFor Webinar Productize Recap

July 25, 2026 · Originally posted on LinkedIn

Best 90 minutes I've spent on a call this month, and I barely used what I'd prepared.

On July 21, Openfor.co, Inc. and the Founder Institute Japan had me on for a fireside chat about Productizing and Automating with AI. Founders joined from several continents, one of them asking his question from his car.

Most founders I meet are convinced they have an AI tool problem.

Six questions stuck with me from this chat, and not one was about "which model should I use?" They were all coming from founders and business operators: practical and related to operating decisions. Questions about AI vs human ownership, about cost, about what survives when the tools change.

The room kept asking strong questions, so I've compiled a few of them with my answers in the attached carousel:

- What should stay human, and what should be automated?
- AI isn't as affordable as people make it out to be. What actually saves tokens?
- How do I find the stable core of my product, the backbone that survives?
- Tools go out of fashion. How do I keep a system that doesn't rot?
- When should a step be plain code, and when should it be the model?
- What does productizing actually mean? Is it a specific tool?

Thanks to Erdinç Ekinci 🙋‍♂️ and Yu Li Shein for the invite, to Sushmita Khattri for the behind-the-scenes, and to everyone who showed up with a real question instead of a polite one.

What would you have asked?

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