Technology executive Simon Mitchell argues that Artificial Intelligence has permanently dismantled the traditional, capital-heavy model of building tech startups, decentralizing the industry away from established hubs like Silicon Valley.
Simon Mitchell is a British technology product leader based in Tbilisi. Operating across SaaS, Crypto and Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) sectors, his ventures have reached millions of users across 27 countries and generated over $10 million in revenue without paid advertising.. His companies have secured backing from heavyweight industry players including Silicon Valley’s 500 Global, Buildspace, and WM Capital.
While speaking with BM.GE, Mitchell argues that the operators who will define the next decade of tech are not those who manage teams but those who can personally converge product strategy, design, and engineering into a single, AI-amplified discipline.
"In the past, you would have had to hire a team of developers, designers, product managers," Mitchell explains. "Today, with the abilities of tools like Claude and OpenAI, a founder can start a business in a weekend. An idea can be prototyped within days and tested with customers very quickly - and iterating on it, which used to take months, can now be done in a week."
Mitchell notes that the economic implication is significant. Companies previously had to budget upwards of $50,000, for example, just to assemble a development team before a single line of code was written. Today, Mitchell asserts that AI tools have driven those initial development costs down, leveling the global playing field and allowing founders in emerging regional markets like Georgia to start and launch international technology companies in a single weekend.
Beyond that, the speed at which a founder can now validate - or invalidate - an idea is itself the strategic advantage. "As a founder, I've had many bad ideas that didn't work out. The ability to figure that out faster means you not only save an incredible amount of money, but you also save an incredible amount of time."
Mitchell is careful to distinguish between what AI makes easier and what it leaves unchanged. "So many people are putting out what I would call AI slop," he says. "They get an idea, put it online, and say 'here's my app.' They haven't understood the psychology of what the user is looking for, or how the product actually solves their problem. If a product doesn't solve a core human problem, nobody will use it, talk about it, or share it."
This is where Mitchell's concept of growth-oriented product design becomes central. His ventures have scaled without paid acquisition - no social media ad spend, no performance marketing budgets. The growth, he argues, was designed into the products themselves. The discipline involves understanding viral loops, referral mechanics, and how quickly a new user reaches the moment where the product's value becomes undeniable.
"It's not approached from a marketing perspective," he explains. "It's a product development challenge. How do you design the product to be fun to use, and then gamify it through small wins or moments where the user gets a dopamine hit - like earning a badge or unlocking an achievement?"
Based on his operating experience across eight countries - from the US to Malaysia to Norway - Mitchell identifies a universal truth beneath the regional variation: “opportunity is everywhere”, - he claims, and the barriers to accessing it have never been lower. According to him, the differences are only cultural and structural. Mitchell argues that neither of those regions is structurally better or worse for building global companies in the AI era.
Tbilisi is, in his view, a case study in underestimated potential. Mitchell moved to Georgia seven years ago, at a time when, according to him, the startup ecosystem was almost nonexistent. Since then, he has seen the country shift from a destination for digital nomads to a regional base for international companies.
He points to improving English proficiency, rising wages, a favorable tax code, and institutions like GITA - Georgia's Innovation and Technology Agency, backed by the World Bank and EU - as structural enablers."I've watched Georgians become founders and build international tech businesses, and this will only accelerate with the help of AI," he says. "The historical barriers to building a tech company here have largely evaporated."
The gap that remains, in his assessment, is psychological rather than structural. "The main difference between Georgia and Silicon Valley is simply mindset. People in the US just inherently see opportunities. I wish more people here realized that with the tools available today, there's incredible potential to build global companies right from Georgia."
For the next generation of founders, Mitchell points to a rapidly closing window. "There are 15-year-olds in China and India who are picking up AI tools and launching businesses right now," he says. "New models and tools come out every three months - things are moving incredibly fast."
The competitive advantage, in his view, will accrue to those who engage with the tools directly and continuously: building, iterating, and putting products in front of users. Proximity to the work, he argues, is itself the skill - and that, in the AI era, there is no substitute for it.
