I’ve taught a lot of people how to snowboard over the years, and I never tell beginners to invest in fancy gear.
A pro board has opinions: specific flex, length, width, camber, and much more. Every one of those choices assumes you already know how you like to ride. If you’re still falling on greens and barely linking turns, none of that helps you. Worse, it works against you. You end up riding someone else’s style before you’ve discovered your own, and the board feels unstable, unforgiving, even hostile. Eventually, you blame it.
This happens every season. People quit snowboarding and say, “It wasn’t for me.” Most of the time, it wasn’t the mountain. It wasn’t the board either. It was impatience.
I’m watching the same pattern play out right now with AI. There’s an enormous amount of energy going into debates about which model is best, which agent framework to use, which orchestration setup unlocks the “real” power. People are spending more time configuring tools than actually learning how to think with them.
The rental board exists for a reason. Vanilla ChatGPT (or Claude 😉). The defaults. The boring setup everyone thinks they’ve already outgrown. An expert can carve on that just fine. Use it until you’ve worn grooves into it. Use it until you understand what good output feels like and why it’s good. Use it until you stop blaming the tool and start noticing your own lack of clarity.
Most “bad AI results” aren’t model problems. They’re intent problems. People reach for more advanced tools because they want leverage before they’ve built fundamentals. They want speed before they have direction. They want opinions before they’ve formed any of their own. A pro board won’t make you better sooner. It just makes your mistakes louder.
Once you actually know how you like to ride, the next board becomes obvious. You don’t guess. You don’t ask Twitter. You don’t read comparison charts. You feel it. The mountain tells you.
AI works the same way. When you’re ready for more opinionated tools, you’ll know exactly why you need them. Until then, the simplest setup is doing you a favor. Progress doesn’t come from better gear. It comes from learning how to ride.
Unrelated: I’m a founder again, which means my gear bag is basically packed. If you’re skiing or snowboarding this season and have an extra seat, I’m very in. I ride, I teach if needed, I vanish into trees if not. Consider this a soft signal.
