Emberikos: VCs must pivot from product builders to distribution-first founders
Alexander Emberikos · OpenAI's Codex Lead: Why Coding as We Know It is Over · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Feb 21, 2026 · at 48:26
Alexander Emberikos, product lead for OpenAI's Codex, discusses how AI development tools alter the founder archetype required for venture returns.
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“I think this maybe changes what kind of founder you invest in, right? Like, I think there was this maybe temporary phase where, that I liked personally as a product builder. There was this phase where you would invest in, like, the person who can just, like, build good product. And you could kind of ignore if they had a good thesis around a customer or go to market or distribution or anything like that, because it was so hard to build good product. Right. And I think that was a, that was an anomaly. If we look at where we are now, like maybe that kind of founder is not the founder you should invest in because it's like kind of relatively easier to build good product. And you need to go back to like investing in the founder who's like thought through distribution, who has a good, good domain expertise of what to build for a specific customer.”
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