Beyond Vibe Coding: What It Actually Takes for a Non-Engineer to Ship Production AI SaaS
About this session
Everyone's talking about vibe coding. Almost nobody's talking about what happens after the demo works. I've spent decades in digital product development, led engineering teams, and worked hands-on in AI - but I've never been a software engineer. Over the past year, I've built a production governance-focused AI SaaS platform solo: agentic workflows, edge functions, auth, evaluation and guardrails included. AI took me roughly 90% of the way. This is a practical account of how: the tools and stack I chose and why, how I structured the build so AI could do the heavy lifting, how I worked out what I didn't know - and where AI-assisted development delivers versus where it fails. I'll also share why building solo, free to explore and rebuild without coordination overhead, was often faster than a team would have been - and what that means for how product, engineering and design will work together.
Speaker
Key takeaways
- A practical toolkit: the stack, tools and workflow for shipping production AI SaaS as a non-engineer
- How to find your blind spots: techniques for knowing what you don't know when AI writes the code
- Why solo building can beat a team on speed, and what it signals for how product, engineering and design will work together