Dr. René Bohnsack - AI Innovation & Sustainability Leadership

TL;DR

The classic founder framework — Hacker, Hipster, Hustler (HHH) — no longer fits how startups are built in the AI-native world.
AI is transforming not just how products are built, but how teams form, how markets are reached, and how value is delivered.
A new functional model is emerging: VAI — Visionary, AI Architect, Influencer. These are not roles to hire for, but core capabilities to activate — often embodied by one or two people, supported by AI tools, agents, and networks.
The SaaS model is being disrupted. Instead of selling standardized software, startups are now composing intelligent systems that adapt and evolve with the user.
Influence — especially platform-native presence on LinkedIn, podcasts, and social channels — is replacing traditional GTM. Trust is becoming the new growth engine.
In our lab's research across Europe, we're seeing founders replace functions with orchestration, headcount with agents, and pitch decks with live products.
The future of founding is not about team size — it's about system design: seeing the opportunity, composing the intelligence, and owning the conversation.

For more than a decade, when I talked about startup teams in my MBA courses in Lisbon, St. Gallen or Sao Paulo, I shared a framework that had near-mythical status in the entrepreneurial world: the trinity of the Hacker, Hipster, and Hustler.

This model is more than pedagogical. It captured what founders, investors, and advisors believed are the three essential functions for any early-stage startup: someone to build the tech, someone to make it usable and desirable, and someone to get it in front of people. Whether spread across two or three co-founders, the HHH model became a North star for team balance and investor readiness.

But that trinity is now breaking down. At least that is what I see.

In ongoing interviews we have been conducting with researchers at my DSI-Lab (Digital + Sustainable Innovation Lab), we're seeing the rise of startups that look radically different from what we've taught and practiced for decades. Smaller teams. Fewer job titles. Faster velocity. Founders are building entire product stacks using AI agents. They're acquiring users through thought leadership. They're not just integrating AI — they're being redefined by it.

We're entering a new era. One not built on SaaS playbooks or full-stack teams. Instead, we see a new framework taking shape which I like to call the VAI Team, composed of the Visionary, the AI Architect and the Influencer. Simply: VAI.

The End of HHH

To understand what's changing, we first need to revisit what made the old model work. The Hustler, Hipster, and Hacker framework wasn't just catchy — it aligned perfectly with how tech startups were built, launched, and funded during the SaaS era.

The traditional HHH model is being disrupted

The Hustler used to be the engine of momentum — cold emailing leads, pitching investors, and crafting the story that attracted users and capital. Today, AI-powered tools do this faster, with hyper-personalized messaging and automated funnel testing. And as traditional VC funding becomes more selective, platforms like Kickstarter and AngelList are creating new pathways — which now depend more on audience trust and attention than access to investor networks.

The Hipster brought creativity and empathy into the product — designing interfaces that delighted users and told a story. But now, tools like Midjourney, Figma AI, and Lovable generate visual assets, layout systems, and brand components in minutes. Founders don't design from scratch — they curate and compose. This demands vision and a working knowledge of the tools themselves — when to use which, how to integrate them, and how to architect user journeys on top of tools and channels.

And the Hacker? Once the most in-demand co-founder on the team, now increasingly replaced by a new profile: the AI-savvy solo founder. With platforms like LangChain, v8.net, and Lovable, these builders can compose intelligent products without ever touching traditional code. The new advantage lies in knowing which tools exist, how to integrate them, and how to react as those stacks evolve. Intelligence is now composable.

But be aware: What's disappeared isn't the need for these functions — it's the assumption that they require people to execute them. The trinity is absorbed by AI (you may say with exception of funding, but we get to that later). However, there is still the need for people, just with different skill sets.

The Rise of VAI

Enter VAI — a new founder framework for how startups are built, launched, and scaled in the age of artificial intelligence.

The VAI Framework: Visionary, AI Architect, Influencer

Just like HHH, the Visionary–AI Architect–Influencer model isn't about job titles. It's about functional presence — the core capabilities that every AI-native venture must activate in some way.

You don't need three co-founders. You might not even need a traditional team. What you need is to ensure that these functions are present in the system — whether embodied by one person, distributed across collaborators, or delegated through a hybrid of humans and tools.

I believe that these functions will exist in every successful AI-native startup, regardless of structure. Sometimes, one founder embodies all three. More often, one or two founders cover the bases, with supporting tools and communities activating the rest.

Influence isn't about scale — it's about credibility. And in a privacy-first concerned digital world, distribution may become the new moat — and trust might just be the new sales engine.

The VAI framework isn't just a team composition strategy. It's a design logic for how companies will operate in an AI-native economy.

SaaS Is Dead (or Dying)

On a recent flight, I ended up chatting with the person next to me, a venture builder from Berlin, coming fresh from a VC retreat in Morocco. "All we talked about," he said, "was how SaaS is dead… if you can build your own tools with AI in minutes you don't need SaaS."

The transformation from SaaS to AI-native solutions

It stuck with me. And he's right.

SaaS — especially for internal productivity use cases — was built around the idea of standardized tooling. You paid monthly for access to products like Notion, Slack, or Doodle because they saved time, brought structure, and were good enough. But now? You can simply build the exact tool you need, in minutes, often for free.

A personal example: I used to pay €5/month for the mind-mapping tool MindMup. Last week, I asked Lovable (a prompt-based AI app development platform) to generate one for me — including the exact features I wanted. I got what I needed, instantly, and at no cost. That's not a productivity hack. That's the distruption of an entire class of business models.

This doesn't mean SaaS is entirely obsolete. It still dominates enterprise billing cycles and B2B pricing structures. But the underlying logic of SaaS — build once, sell repeatedly, monetize via subscription — is starting to fracture.

The AI-native paradigm is fundamentally different. The product is no longer static. The interface is no longer fixed. The intelligence evolves, adapts, and interacts. You're no longer selling access to a tool. You're enabling a use-case specific conversation with cognition — one that can adapt to the user's goals in real time.

In this new paradigm, intelligence orchestration becomes the product. Founders aren't building software — they're composing modular systems that deliver outcomes. And investors are watching closely. Capital is flowing toward platforms and intelligent wrappers, not toward more dashboards and feature lists.

This is exactly the mentality shared by Gaurav Misra, CEO of Captions, one of the fastest-growing consumer AI companies. In a recent podcast of Lenny Rachitsky[^1], he outlined what it takes to win in the AI-native era:

Ship a marketable feature every week. That means velocity and iteration are the moat — not perfect backlogs.
Balance two roadmaps: public and secret. Use one to meet demand, the other to surprise and leap ahead.
Take on strategic technical debt. Speed matters more than structure in early stages. Build fast, refactor later — if needed.

"At the core of building products," Gaurav said, "is solving problems."

In a landscape increasingly shaped by AI, it's no longer enough to ship software. You need to ship intelligent, adaptive, and evolving systems. That's what users will demand — and that's what founders must learn to compose.

What We're Seeing in the Lab

Through our interviews with AI-native startups across Europe — from Lisbon's Startup Factory to Intel's Liftoff AI program — the same patterns keep surfacing:

Teams are lean by design. Founders use AI agents instead of hiring early.
MVPs are launched in days, not weeks. Most leverage open-source building blocks.
Go-to-market isn't led by a CMO — it's increasingly led by influence: LinkedIn posts, podcasts, demos, and founder presence.
Value is created not by headcount, but by the composition of intelligence — human and machine.

This isn't a theoretical shift. It's a practical one. Founders aren't just replacing team members with tools — they're designing entire company operating models based on what AI can now do well.

Closing time: Three People? No. Three Capabilities? Absolutely.

I used to teach the HHH model. I believed in it. I saw it work, including my own startups including Fitbase.de which we excited in 2020.

But the world changes — and the frameworks we teach must change with it. Today, startups need VAI:

The best founders today don't hire — they orchestrate. They don't just build software — they compose intelligence. They don't shout — they generate trust.

Visionary. AI Architect. Influencer. These are not job titles. They are archetype functions, and every (AI) venture needs them — in one form or another.

If you're an MBA, a founder, or an innovation leader — ask yourself not "who do I need to hire," but "what must this system I envision do?"

Because the future belongs to those who can see the system, build the intelligence, and influence the network.

Thank you Motoki Tonn, Alex Collignon and Margarita da Silva Oje for your valuable comments!