This is the 16th year we’ve been teaching the Stanford Lean LaunchPad class. This year, from the first hour of the first class, we realized we were seeing something extraordinary happen. It was both the end and beginning of a new era.

Teams showed up to the first day of class with MVPs (Minimal Viable Products) looking like finished products that previous classes had taken weeks or months to build. After the class, as the instructors sat processing what just happened, we realized there’s no going back.

I’ve been writing about how AI is going to change startups, but the shock of seeing 8 teams actually implementing it was mind blowing. And not a single team thought they were doing anything extraordinary.