It’s the open secret of the current tech gold rush: half the "revolutionary" AI startups you see on LinkedIn are basically just a fancy CSS file and an OPENAI_API_KEY hidden in an .env file.
We’ve entered the Era of the Wrapper, where "building an AI product" has often devolved into just "calling an endpoint." But while hitting an API is a great way to ship an MVP in a weekend, it’s a terrible way to build a company that lasts until next Tuesday.
The problem? You don’t own the brain.
If your only value is a prompt, a competitor can copy your entire business logic in 30 seconds.
If OpenAI or Google decides to add your "niche" feature (like PDF chatting or grammar fixing) into their base model, your startup vanishes overnight.
You’re paying retail prices for intelligence and trying to sell it at a premium. Eventually, the math stops working.
Insightful engineering isn't about calling the model; it’s about what you do before and after that call. To build something real, you have to move from a "Wrapper" to a "Native AI" application.
Users don't care about your API key; they care about the outcome.
If your project is just a middleman for a JSON response, you’re a commodity. But if you’re using that API to orchestrate complex, multi-step tasks that save someone four hours of manual labor, you’ve built a product.
The goal isn't to hit the API; the goal is to make the API invisible.
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