Ask HN: Would a startup for young creatives who reject AI be feasible?

There absolutely is a market - anti-AI sentiment among creatives isn't going away. Like any other "purity" branding, it's a real commitment and severely limits your future ability to pivot.

I don't know of anyone in the VC or traditional incubator communities who has an appetite for this. And the groups who are an ideological fit don't have the funds to be worth pursuing.

It's a niche. Like most niches, there's the opportunity to prosper, but yeah - bootstrapping (or angel-bootstrapping if you're lucky and have a personal connection) is pretty much the only way to go here.

You would be foolish to completely avoid AI, but you are also right to be careful. AI is best used for boring stuff that's non-critical, and for stopping you from having to reinvent the wheel.

For example for a game, you could use AI to finish a sprite sheet based on a couple frames you provide, or to give you a pathfinding algorithm.

AI is a resource, and a startup has a better chance of success the better it leverages the few resources it has.

Thanks for the perspective! I tend to consult ChatGPT with high-level queries as a replacement for Google, and I get a lot of mileage out of combining that with plenty of good old documentation-reading.

Since the release of GPT, I have found that the hassle of efficiently using keywords to search for hidden information on Google has been replaced by GPT search. AI should become a powerful assistant, but we cannot give up our own abilities.

I think for kids coming out of university, going against the grain might be one of the most valuable things you can do. The essential skills of critical thinking, problem solving, intuitive and linear thinking, and improvisation are not going anywhere. AI is a very impressive technology but it also is one that steals valuable mental exercise from its users. I can't say that eschewing AI will lead to a successful startup but I have a good feeling that connecting with other people who want to do things the hard way and then doing it will be an extremely valuable experience this early in your tenure. If this AI trend does continue, this will give you and your friends a leg up on those who didn't put in the hours.

Very insightful and encouraging words, thank you!

I'm curious about provenance. What you're describing sounds kind of like Etsy and while there are still genuine things to be found there it's mostly flooded with mass-produced stuff. The more of a premium "hand-made" artifacts attract, the greater the incentive to counterfeit them.

Good point, and one I've thought about a lot. Right now, I think we're at a stage in the hype cycle where, for the overwhelming majority of founders, appealing to AI hype is much easier than lying to appeal to anti-AI sentiment. If and when this changes, it might manifest as an incentive for companies to be transparent with their source code (either fully open-source or at least "source available" or auditable).

When people offer services to "convert reference images to pixel art", to me it registers as an impossibility. If its automatic conversion (of any kind, AI or not), how can it be considered "art"? No wonder creatives of all kinds are either angry or apathetic about it.

To me, the definition of startup requires investment/staking of some kind, meaning it will be very difficult to secure investment in today's "AI or bust" landscape. Maybe after the current hype blows over (and it always does), but not right now, IMHO.

Just my 2c (honest take, maybe even load bearing).

I think (good) VCs will always first and foremost look for the quality of the idea, the potential value returned and solidity of who's pitching it (solidity in terms of ability to deliver, passion, be willing to make sacrifices and learn, etc). And I think VCs are realizing now that there are a lot of people that are not trusting AI so the market attractiveness a product that says AI front and center is not granted.

So yes I don't think that everything needs to have AI by default.

Anti AI startup is definitely feasible but it also depends what you mean by anti AI , the thing is most people who know what they are doing and mostly tech people refuse the use of AI because it feels like they're cheating. But most consumers donot care about that , they just care about convenience. The hype around AI is definitely captivating because of so much it is able to do, Anti AI definitely stands out because of so much AI stuff going around but the startup needs to be still good, For example: if you just make a game company saying you never use AI that's not very convincing for anyone to play the games. People don't care about whether you used AI or not most of the time , they care about the game. But if you start a company claiming to make a AI less smartphone with extra privacy that's something people might like because AI is literally EVERYWHERE right now. I'm not very good at examples but you get my point

I don’t agree about the “people don’t care that your game doesn’t have AI” part. Games that have AI disclosure have significantly worse sales on Steam than ones who don’t.

Yea I do agree but most of the gamers who actually stream games mostly only care about how good the game is. If it's AI but has a solid storyline and gameplay then it would most probably be a success compared to a game which was created by just "Make a cool game " prompt

It may not be true that “most people who know what they’re doing” aren’t using AI. It’s infiltrating into every big company, thousands of very skillful people are all-in blasting out tons of code and work with it. I’m not saying that’s good or bad, just stating the view from industry is: heavy use often encouraged.

Yes but that's for efficiency, they don't just say "make a cool game" they tell the AI exactly what to do so it doesn't break anything , that still need skill and you still have to check the code for bugs , I was referring to people who just put a single prompt and expect something good to be made from it

Non-AI-assets: yup, this is sensible. AI is a signal of being unconcerned about being seen as a cheat, absence is good.

Non-AI-code: forget it, you won't be able to avoid it in your libraries, and you won't write the whole engine from scratch.

It's possible to write a whole modern engine without it, but you won't, you'll spin wheels chasing features and never ship.

Fair point about game development. I'm definitely looking more towards creative tools (like music production apps) because making a game engine is just a Herculean task. I've found that velocity is good (i.e. one meaningful feature every day or two) in the early stages of building for the web without AI.

This is a very flimsy argument to say a vibe coded one-shot Claude app is equivalent to actually hand-made Django app hosted on a Linux system that runs systemd which used Claude PR reviews.

People don't care about your entire dependency chain, see how little the most valuable FOSS libraries recieve in donations or sponsorships compared to end-user apps. They care about how well put together your own app is, which we know AI use changes for the worst (which some argue is worth it for momentum).

As long as your dependencies aren't outright dysfunctional (see rsync debate), it's concensus to disregard AI use there.

Someone recently rage quit one of the linux distros because the maintainers decided to accept LLM generated code (if it was good).

Other distros ban use of LLMs. Not sure how that's going to go down given Linus seems to be willing to use them for the kernel.

I don't think it's avoidable (unless you stick to a pre-LLM game engine), but it's clearly an error to underestimate quite how much people really loathe this stuff.

YC is not the general public. You can still build games without AI or having Ai being the main focus. Make it wacky, crazy or something someone would not expect. Have better storytelling. Better yet design a game for something that no one would expect but has great game mechanics and storytelling

The purity angle is the whole product, so the first pivot kills it. That's why it's a bootstrap play, not a VC one.

Starting a startup is a great idea. However, your concerns are certainly valid. But investors will invest as long as what you’re doing is worth investing in—they generally don’t care whether you use AI or not; it’s more about the quality of your work and how much money investors can reasonably expect to make from your startup. It’s like borrowing money: investors see the value of your startup and invest with the intention of either getting their money back in full after a certain period at an agreed-upon interest rate—so-called debt securities—or acquiring shares in your startup that give them voting rights in your decisions and a certain percentage of your revenue. Either way, as soon as your startup gains value, larger investors will come on board. The value of your startup depends on how many securities you issue or on your revenue. Bottom line: Investors will generally come as long as you stick to not using AI and your work is of high quality—which I have no doubt about based on your description. Good luck with your idea.

I’m an elevator operator. You tell me what floor you’d like and I press the button or control the switch.

I also make casual conversation about the weather and yesterday’s sports highlights, which automatic elevators can’t do.

Can I join?

I have no problem with creative destruction, elevator operators died out for a reason. If there was a group of people who rejected automatic elevators for some reason, it stands to reason there would be a company to snatch up that market. (case in point: no-touch Shabbat elevators for Orthodox Jews)

I work both in the creative arts (currently phd candidate in music and CS, run a jazz night, author of open source music hacking tools) and in the bowels of the tech investment world (diligence practitioner for a company that assesses for PE investment).

Two things: Whether the anti AI slant would work is a marketing question. I happen to think it will, but we are all famously terrible at answering marketing questions until it's hindsight. The only way to know is to start small and find out if your slant resonates.

IMHO, this will absolutely, 100%, need to start bootstrapped and have a plan that involves NEVER giving up more >= 50% ownership. Which can definitely be done, and I've even helped PE firms invest (minority) in these companies. I've seen some fantastic ones. Investors expect you to just do whatever seems like the easy money now, and they are all fucking breathless over AI everywhere right now, to sometimes an astonishingly stupid degree.

I am worried about the attitude of incubators, VCs, and investors in general. Would the lack of AI be a nonstarter for most outside investors?

In general, they don’t care about AI or not AI.

They care about the possibility of 100x returns.

This means they care about the possibility of exponential growth.

Most businesses grow linearly at best.

Good luck.