By Felipe Daragon. April 20, 2026.

Something fundamental has shifted in our industry - and I don't think we've fully reckoned with what it means.

Not long ago, building high-quality software required deep specialization, significant capital, and time. Today, those constraints have largely dissolved. Teams move faster than ever. Ideas become working systems in hours, not quarters. Capabilities that once required entire departments are now accessible to nearly anyone with a prompt and a purpose.

At first glance, this looks like pure progress. In many ways, it is. But from where I sit as a Chief Visionary Officer, it also introduces a risk that's easy to miss: when everything becomes easier to build, far more things get built that shouldn't exist in the first place. That's the paradox we're living in - and it's precisely why vision has never mattered more.

Execution is no longer the bottleneck. Vision is.

I don't operate primarily at the layer of implementation. AI, engineering, and modern tooling handle that with remarkable - and rapidly improving - efficiency. My focus is on intent, direction, and meaning. The central question of my role isn't can we build this? It's should we? And increasingly, those two questions are diverging. Because what I see across the industry is a quiet convergence problem. AI is compressing differentiation. Products are becoming feature-rich faster, but also more similar. As McKinsey recently observed, competitive advantage in software is shifting away from features toward proprietary data, domain expertise, and customer relationships - the things that can't be replicated in a sprint. If your strategy is defined by functionality alone, the moat you're defending is already eroding. My responsibility is to ensure we are not just building a product - but the right product, for the right reasons, at the right time.

The abundance problem.

AI doesn't only accelerate execution. It generates options. Endless ones. New features, integrations, optimizations, entire product directions that didn't seem feasible six months ago. The danger isn't scarcity - it's abundance. Without strong vision, teams drown in possibility, chasing everything and committing to nothing. Part of my role now is restraint. Curation. Not every viable idea deserves to exist within the product. In a world where Gartner predicts that by 2030, 80% of organizations will rely on smaller, AI-augmented engineering teams, the scarcest resource isn't talent or compute - it's focus. Protecting it is a strategic function, not an operational one. Equally critical is coherence. Rapid, AI-assisted iteration can quietly fragment a product if left unguided. Small decisions, made quickly and in isolation, accumulate into something that no longer has a clear identity. Preserving continuity - ensuring every step forward reinforces a larger, intentional trajectory - is one of the most important and least visible things I do.

Responsibility isn't downstream of vision. It's part of it.

As systems grow more autonomous and more powerful, the implications of what we build extend well beyond functionality. Security, misuse, unintended consequences, user trust - these are no longer secondary considerations to be handled at launch. They are design inputs. Vision today includes anticipating second-order effects and building accountability into the architecture of the product from day one, not patching it in after the fact. This has also become a market reality. Recent M&A data shows that buyers are now paying meaningful premiums for AI-native products - but only those with genuine differentiation, defensible data layers, and clear strategic intent. "AI as a feature" is no longer enough. The market is beginning to distinguish between products built with vision and products built with velocity.

AI is a force multiplier. It amplifies what's already there.

If an organization lacks strategic clarity, AI will accelerate the confusion. If it has genuine direction, AI will accelerate the progress. That asymmetry is the most important thing leaders need to understand right now.

Which is why I believe the role of the Chief Visionary Officer has evolved from being strategic to being foundational. In a world where almost anyone can build something powerful, the real advantage lies in knowing what is worth building - and having the discipline to pursue it with intent.

That's the space I operate in.

Felipe Daragon currently serves as Chief Visionary Officer (CVO) at Syhunt. He has held this position for the past seven years and, since 2026, has also serves as CVO at DaragonTech, a newly formed European AI innovation company.

References

McKinsey & Company, The AI-Centric Imperative: Navigating the Next Software Frontier (October 2025) - on competitive advantage shifting from features to proprietary data and domain expertise.

Gartner, Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2026 (October 2025) - on AI-native development platforms and the predicted shift toward smaller, AI-augmented engineering teams by 2030.

Gartner, Top Strategic Trends in Software Engineering for 2025 and Beyond (July 2025) - on developers shifting from implementation to orchestration. IMAP Germany, AI Special 2026: Structural Repricing of Software & SaaS (2026) - on AI-driven SaaS commoditization and the migration of value toward AI-native platforms.

Deloitte Insights, 2026 Software Industry Outlook (February 2026) - on AI-first engineering, intensifying competition, and the rising importance of agentic cybersecurity.

Software Equity Group, 2026 State of SaaS M&A Buyers' Perspectives Report - on valuation premiums for AI-native products and the centrality of differentiation in current deal flow.

Modus Create, 8 AI Trends That Will Define Product Development in 2026 (February 2026) - on the widening gap between product strategy and delivery when AI removes execution friction.