Most AI startups are accidentally building for power users

One thing that surprised me while building ZOL AI Studio:

The people who benefit most from AI are often the least interested in learning how AI works.

Small fashion brands don’t want:

• prompt engineering

• workflow configuration

• model settings

• “creative AI tooling”

They want outcomes:

• launch products faster

• create catalog images quickly

• save time

• reduce production costs

I think a lot of AI startups accidentally build for power users because founders themselves are power users.

But most real businesses don’t want more controls.
They want less friction.

The strongest user reactions we’ve seen weren’t:
“the AI is impressive.”

It was:
“Wait… this saved me hours.”

That completely changed how we started thinking about product design.

Now we spend more time simplifying workflows than adding features.

Curious if other founders building AI products are seeing the same pattern?