Rafael Franco spent 20 years leading product and engineering for companies like Influencer.com and Atlassian, managing $50M+ portfolios. Now he's a fractional CPTO helping startups scale — and building his own SaaS product, AdsForBands, helping artists sell out their shows.

In this episode, Rafael breaks down the reality of building with AI, why most founders confuse "it works" with "production-ready," and what separates successful products from expensive failures.

Topics covered:

• Why 70% of his product took 2 weeks but 30% took 2 months
• The Cursor refactoring disaster that nearly destroyed everything
• What "product engineers" are and why they're the future
• Why AI makes validation MORE important, not less
• The brutal truth about vibe coding vs. production-ready code
• How to validate before you build (and avoid wasting months)

If you're a founder considering AI instead of a dev team, this is required listening.

👉 Follow George:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgehelgesen
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@UCuVBXySjBgR-y7tMYDxdfuQ

👉 Follow Rafael:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rafaelsoaresfranco
• Website: https://www.rafconsultancy.com
• Ads for Bands: https://www.adsforbands.ai
• Brain of J: https://www.youtube.com/@brainofj-pearljamtributeband