What is vibecoding? And, why you should care

Vibecoding is so in right now.

I wrote an article in Kyle Poyar’s Growth Unhinged last week about vibe coding that seems to have gotten a lot of traction. Elena Verna wrote about vibecoding instead of buying SaaS. Lenny’s latest podcast? Also about vibecoding. Google’s CEO was vibecoding. All in the past week.

So what is vibecoding?

And more importantly—does it matter for founders?

Y Combinator often says great startups come from people living on the edge of the future, while everyone else is comfortably stuck in the present. Vibecoding is that edge. So yes, it matters.

Don’t want to vibecode your outbound email? Try Skyp! The waitlist is up to 141 companies, but readers of this newsletter get to skip the line (see what I did there?)

What is vibecoding?

In the parlance of our times, “vibecoding” means using AI to write code. There are different interfaces, but usually you’re chatting with the AI telling it what to build–and it builds it.

Vibecoding is different than actual coding. Unlike the olden days–last year!–the AI writes the code for you. It is real, you can see it and edit it but you don’t need to write it. The most amazing tools even set up the environment for you so that you can just chat and see your project live on the internet. For an experienced developer, vibecoding is a return to first principles. For a non-developer it is game changing.

Developers become much, much more productive. They can build things by telling the AI what to build–making everyone an engineering manager. They can use the best coding language for the task–even if they don’t know it well. And they can just be more productive.

When I learned to code, you had to remember everything yourself–variable names, constants, functions, objects, so much more. For a large program it was a lot to keep in your head. Then coding programs color-coded everything; it was obvious what was a variable, or constant, or function. Then they created autocomplete: hit “tab” and the coding program would insert the variable name you were about to type (but had actually forgotten, and were about to have to scroll up to find). Dramatic improvements to productivity. But nothing compared to vibecoding.

Now the vibecoding tools can autocomplete across multiple files–writing functions before you even realized you needed to write them. Or just write the entire files for you in the first place.

Vibecoding can also do painful tasks like migrating a database almost instantly. What would have been a stressful half day of work is now finished in minutes. What might have been several meetings is now simply a no-brainer, done without even needing one Mountain Dew.

For someone who isn’t a developer it can make you downright dangerous. You can now write code that’s at least average. You can build anything–without even knowing what language you’re using. Seriously. Anything. Sold yet?

How do you vibecode?

I don’t always vibecode, but when I do I use tools like Cursor, Bolt.new, Lovable, v0, or Replit. For me its mostly Bolt and Cursor. Google’s CEO was using Replit. You can also use ChatGPT or Claude to write the code, and then cut and paste it wherever it needs to go. The difference is that the apps above will set up the environment for you, and manage everything–in other words, just make it work.

Not to go off on a tangent, but these companies are on 🔥 – Lovable just hit $60mm in ARR last week, after hitting $50mm just weeks before; rumors are Cursor is at around $400mm ARR, up from $200mm in March (yes, 3 months ago). Bolt was at $40mm ARR in March, which at the time was well ahead of Lovable… so the vibes are great. And worth paying for. But how do you do it, besides paying $20ish a month?