# Upsides and Downsides

DevFeed: [Upsides and Downsides](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/upsides-and-downsides-37190.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://calv.info/upsides-and-downsides>)

Author: Calvin French-Owen

Published: 2025-02-27T00:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Calvin French-Owen](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/calvin-french-owen.md>)

Topics: [Requirements](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/requirements.md>), [Security](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/security.md>), [audit](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/audit.md>), [Latency](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/latency.md>), [Artificial Intelligence](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai.md>)

Tags: [audit](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/audit.md>), [churn](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/churn.md>), [latency](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/latency.md>), [requirements](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/requirements.md>), [risk](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/risk.md>), [security](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/security.md>), [startups](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/startups.md>), [velocity](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/velocity.md>)

## AI overview

This opinion article presents a framework for understanding how startup priorities change as a company matures. Early-stage startups benefit from pursuing high-upside opportunities and accepting variance, while later-stage companies must reduce downside risks such as security issues, access-control gaps, audit requirements, uptime problems, and cost or performance concerns. The article also argues that this shift helps explain why AI demos often fail to become strong products.

## Source excerpt

When to shift mentality from upsides to downsides. And why most AI demos don't make great products.