s05e02 – Craig Sturgis – From CTO to AI Warlord

# From CTO to AI Warlord: Inside the Rise of the One-Person Dev Army

In this episode of the BigCheese Podcast, Brandon Corbin, Jacob Wise, and Sean Hise sit down with Craig Sturgis, fractional CTO and AI-first builder, for a wide-ranging conversation on how AI has permanently reshaped software development. Craig breaks down what it means to operate as a “one-person wrecking crew” using AI agents, how startups can now be built and scaled with dramatically smaller teams, and why the traditional paths for junior developers are rapidly disappearing. The group dives into recursive language models, vibe coding, AI fatigue, VC economics, and the emotional reality of building in a non-deterministic world—ending with a look at Craig’s personal AI executive assistant and why the future belongs to builders, not ticket-takers.

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Topics

- 00:00 – 06:30: Introductions, rotating hosts, and how Craig reconnected with the BigCheese crew

- 06:30 – 15:00: Daily life with AI as a developer: Claude Code, terminal workflows, and context switching

- 15:00 – 27:00: Building Rootnote as a solo developer and how AI replaced entire dev teams

- 27:00 – 40:00: How AI changes consulting, fractional CTO work, and startup economics

- 40:00 – 55:00: Recursive language models, orchestration, agents, and breaking big problems into small ones

- 55:00 – 1:10:00: Burnout, dopamine, flow state vs. agent management, and mental fatigue

- 1:10:00 – 1:25:00: Venture capital, bootstrapping, and why the old startup playbook is dead

- 1:25:00 – 1:40:00: The future of software teams: fewer engineers, more leverage, higher expectations

- 1:40:00 – 1:55:00: Junior developers, builders vs. ticket-takers, and how to start a career in 2026

- 1:55:00 – End: Craig’s AI executive assistant (ACE), side projects, and where to find him online

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Mentioned in This Podcast

- Rootnote – Analytics and media kits for content creators

- Cloudflare – Infrastructure, edge compute, and network effects

- OpenAI – Large language models and AI primitives

- xAI – Grok and conversational AI experimentation

- Claude / Claude Code – AI-assisted development and agent workflows

- Recursive Language Models (RLMs) – Breaking large problems into smaller LLM calls

- VC vs Bootstrapping – Changing economics of building software companies

- ACE (AI Executive Assistant) – Craig’s personal productivity and accountability system

- Vibe Coding – High-velocity AI-driven software creation

- Product Engineers vs Ticket-Takers – The future skill divide in software development

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Sponsors

•Crafted – https://craftedup.com

•Wickedform – https://wickedform.com

BigCheese Podcast – Season 5

🎧 Powered by curiosity, chaos, and way too many AI agents