Students at Karachi’s Institute of Business Administration (IBA) convened on Thursday for an interactive session on venture development and how artificial intelligence is accelerating the process of developing and scaling firms amid Pakistan’s rapidly expanding yet precarious entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Dr. Jonathan Doerr, senior vice president at Disrupt.com (previously Gaditek), spoke during the event, which was held on the university’s main campus. He highlighted his 15 years of expertise as an investor and entrepreneur.
“Who among you uses ChatGPT every day?” When Dr. Doerr inquired, several hands (predictably) went up.
He emphasized that, in contrast to the telephone, which took years to acquire one million users, OpenAI’s ChatGPT reached the same milestone in just five days. Greg Brockman, the company’s president and co-founder, corroborated this.
Dr. Doerr cited the startup Lovable, which achieved a $100 million annual recurring revenue (ARR) in eight to nine months, as an example of how “open AI and other [large] language models enable a new wave of companies that are built.”
ARR is a term used to assess how much money a company makes in a year. Dr. Doerr claims that it has taken other businesses six or more years to get an ARR of $100 million.
He described how even non-technical entrepreneurs may create completely functional websites and applications with just a few easy prompts using to new “vibe coding” technologies.
AI researcher Andrej Karpathy first used the phrase “vibe coding” in early 2025 to describe a workflow in which the main responsibility changes from writing code line by line to directing an AI assistant to create, improve, and debug an application through a more conversational process.
According to Dr. Doerr, this change is making it possible for “a completely new generation of founders” to create prototypes and early-stage products without the need for sizable engineering teams. He claims that “big players” like OpenAI and rivals like Gemini, Meta, and Grok supply the technology foundation that enables startups to grow far more quickly.
He told Dawn, “We live in a time where everyone can very easily build things for the world; the barriers that may have existed in the past are lower because of AI, because of the vibe coding platforms.” Are there any issues that individuals are facing that you can resolve? That is the most important question you ought to ask yourself. Furthermore, I don’t believe there is a limit to it.
While AI may significantly speed up the creative process, “content expertise still needs to be there,” Dr. Doerr noted in a highly realistic AI-generated movie. This statement ignited a wider conversation regarding the technology’s ramifications for the creative business.
“It’s intriguing since I mentioned that AI produced the video, correct? That is accurate. That video is not authentic. However, I did not mention that there was a creative individual who is an expert in film, music, and material. Thus, he was aware, and he spent several hours constructing that,” he remarked.
Dr. Doerr related an account about a creator of a business that assists hotels and restaurants in placing organized grocery orders in order to address resistance and mistrust regarding AI. The founder learned that the company’s own workers had exploited AI to generate a third of the incoming orders.
He claimed, “They’re controlling the system because they think they can stop AI.” Many folks are clearly terrified. None of us can stop that technology. Therefore, we should accept it and see what it brings.
SOURCE: DAWN NEWS
