Dead as a Dinosaur: 2010's Software Laws Are Gone—Here Are The Laws of the AI Age

How the AI revolution is rewriting the strategic playbook on scale, distribution, data, compute, and human coordination—and what companies and builders must do to thrive in the new era

I’ve been fortunate to witness two transformative waves in tech: first the software startup boom of the 2000s/2010s, and now the relentless surge of AI in the 2020s. Each era came with its own unwritten “laws” of success – strategic principles that every ambitious founder swore by. In this article, I’ll delve into how the guiding laws of the software era shaped legendary companies, and how today’s emerging AI giants are rewriting those rules. Along the way, I’ll draw on case studies from Facebook to OpenAI, and distill what’s changed (and what hasn’t) as we move from apps to algorithms. The goal is to develop a clear comparative framework – even a chart of new laws versus old – and give these evolving principles names. By the end, we’ll see what lessons carry forward, which playbooks belong in a museum, and how entrepreneurs and investors can navigate the brave new AI-centric world.