Etzioni on AI: Startup speed is not a strategy

The world of AI startups has fetishized “speed” and whipped itself into a frenzy. Sure, the feature that took a quarter to build back in 2023 takes a mere AI-fueled weekend in 2026, but many AI startups are running on FOMO, caffeine and tokens without a clear strategy.

A startup is a marathon, and a team that attempts to sprint the whole way will burn out before the finish line.

Sam Altman’s Startup Playbook puts the speed creed in one line: “I have never, not once, seen a slow-moving founder be really successful.” I was singing from the same hymnbook earlier this year. In my column on ten commandments for AI startups I wrote that “velocity is the new moat.” Then everyone got fast, and I stopped singing.

Here are the five arguments usually made for that creed.

The window is closing. Each model release opens a gap that the frontier labs close within a release cycle or so. But if the labs will close it anyway, speed merely buys you a nicer funeral. The argument supports picking a different direction, not running faster in this one.

Competitors are everywhere. AI makes building cheap, so clones show up in weeks. True, and that’s the reason velocity isn’t a moat. When building is cheap, defensibility matters more than being first. Peter Thiel’s last-mover argument from Zero to One is stronger today than when he wrote it. In his words: “It’s much better to be the last mover—that is, to make the last great development in a specific market and enjoy years or even decades of monopoly profits.”