Solving the Gen Z brainrot software engineering epidemic

Until recently, building a feature meant reading documentation, writing code, discovering why the code did not work, and reconsidering several decisions made earlier that morning. Today, a software engineer can hand much of that process to an AI. The remaining obligation is to wait for it to finish. This has proved unexpectedly demanding. People who once spent entire weekends debugging authentication now require a second source of entertainment while the first computer handles it for them.

At Miss Ventures, we believe new technology creates new customer needs, including needs that would have been embarrassing to explain to the previous generation. Braincurb serves one of them. Its desktop app automatically opens short videos or a game of Subway Surfers while an AI processes a request, then closes the entertainment when the answer arrives. Users can move directly from asking a machine to solve a problem to watching someone cut a bar of soap into very small pieces. The team has removed several unnecessary steps between these activities.

What drew us to Braincurb was its willingness to accept how its customers actually want to spend their time. Much of the software industry responds to an empty moment by suggesting another useful task. Read this article. Clear that inbox. Learn a language in the time it takes your coffee to brew. Braincurb recognizes that someone who has just outsourced their work may also wish to decline these additional opportunities. The interval can remain entirely unproductive. It simply no longer has to be boring.

We met the founders during a demonstration in which an AI was refactoring a small application. While it worked, we watched a video of a rug being cleaned. The code finished before the rug did. Several people in the room expressed disappointment, which the team received with the calm of founders who had encountered this response before. We asked whether they considered it a problem that users might prefer the waiting period to the result. They pointed out that the window had closed and we were all looking at the code. It was difficult to dispute the evidence.

As AI takes on longer and more complex assignments, people will spend more of their working lives waiting for something they no longer have to do themselves. We’re excited to support a company making those periods enjoyable without requiring them to become meaningful. After the meeting, one partner requested access to the demo recording. We assumed he wanted to revisit the product. He asked us to check whether it included the rest of the rug.