Software 3.0: What if AI is The Next OS?

Welcome to Lore Brief, your weekly edge in the age of AI.

This issue is brought to you by Factory, an engineer in every tab.

Software 3.0: What if AI is The Next OS?

I just watched Andrej Karpathy's presentation at YC’s AI Startup School and my mind is blown. It has me rethinking everything.

Here's my breakdown of the most important tech presentation I've seen this year:

That thread covers the key concepts and slides, but let me dive deeper into what this means for you as a business leader.

The Strategic Window is Narrow

We're in a unique moment. Most companies are still thinking in "technical vs. non-technical" terms, while the barrier between those categories has just disappeared.

English has become code.

Your non-technical team members can now create software. And so will your customers. You need to be thinking deeply about what that means.

It represents new opportunities to create things never possible before with smaller teams. And, it means that your customers may do things on their own without you.

You need to be disrupting yourself before you get disrupted. This especially applies to SaaS software, where we’re closer than ever to being able to clone entire products with things like Factory and Devin.

The window to capitalize on this shift is maybe 12-18 months.

Time doesn't move like it used to. In the AI age, you need to be rebuilding your organization to be more fluid to adjust to change as quickly as possible.

Competitive Moats Are Shifting Fast

Traditional software moats like proprietary algorithms, technical complexity and exclusive data are eroding.

But new moats are emerging:

• Interface design for AI interactions (how do you make talking to an AI feel natural?)

• Partial autonomy frameworks (giving users control over how much AI does vs how much they do)

• Agent-ready infrastructure (APIs and docs that work for both humans and AI)

Those that create the most intuitive ways for humans to collaborate with AI will be the leaders in their industries.

Your Immediate Action Plan

Start with partial autonomy in one workflow. Don't try to replace humans entirely. Augment them.

Try things like Lindy and MindStudio for work. Or Factory for code. Just get started and learn.

Ask yourself: Which part of your product could handle 80% of cases reliably, with humans managing the exceptions? 

Ship that first and keep humans in the loop.

The Infrastructure Play

Here's what most people are missing. While everyone's focused on building AI applications, the biggest value will be captured by companies building the infrastructure layer.

Land. Power. Chips. Data centers. These are the picks and shovels of the AI age.

LLMs are becoming utilities like electricity. When the power grid goes down, we get "intelligence brownouts", just like when OpenAI crashes and half the internet stops working.

The companies that solve the infrastructure challenges, compute, reliability, and power will be the kingmakers.

I keep coming back to this, but it’s what I strongly believe. And, I am getting involved in a very big way. I’ll share more on that soon.

Want the complete context?

• Watch Karpathy's full 45-minute presentation: [YC Video Link]

• Download his complete slide deck: [Karpathy's Google Drive Link]

This isn't just another technology trend. We're witnessing the biggest shift in technology since the creation of electricity.

Factory, an engineer in every tab

Factory is a Sequoia-backed startup that has created what I think is the best agentic coding platform out there. Watch this video I recently did with the founder, Matan Grinberg, where we cloned part of Docusign in 15 minutes!

The Next Wave: Turn Your Idea Into a Working App With One Prompt Using Lovable

This week, my co-host Matt Wolfe had a fascinating conversation with Anton Osika, the founder of Lovable, one of the fastest-growing startups ever. In the episode, Anton used Lovable to create an entire SaaS app from a single prompt. Check it out! → Watch | Listen

Things I’m Learning From

• [Link] – Elon Musk: Digital Superintelligence, Multiplanetary Life, How to Be Useful

• [Link] – Sam Altman | The Future of AI

• [Link] – The AI Coding Factory

Things I’m Trying

• [Prompt Watch] – Monitors how your brand appears inside ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity, then surfaces gaps and competitive insights so you can own AI-generated search.

• [Micro] – An AI super-app that treats email as the hub, auto-organising messages, CRM, projects and tasks in a single, self-sorting workspace.

• [Lindy] – Lets you spin up no-code AI agents that handle scheduling, inbox triage and other assistant chores by chaining together your existing apps

That’s it for today.

Consider forwarding Lore Brief to a colleague to help them get ahead in the AI Age.

-Nathan Lands
Connect → X | LinkedIn
Listen to The Next Wave → Apple | Spotify | YouTube

(Disclosure: I may own equity in companies mentioned in Lore Brief.)