[HN Gopher] Is the golden age of Indie software over?
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Is the golden age of Indie software over?
Author : hermitcrab
Score : 37 points
Date : 2025-12-22 21:06 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (successfulsoftware.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (successfulsoftware.net)
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Interested to hear whether other Indie software vendors feel that
| things are getting harder.
| ofalkaed wrote:
| I think this space is just about to get really interesting.
| Historically when a craft/skill becomes automated it pushes that
| craft/skill to explore all those nooks and crannies which the
| automation can not reach, build around and exploit all those
| nooks and crannies, giving them a say over form and function. We
| are just starting to see this happen in software with AI.
| observationist wrote:
| This, for sure. A whole lot of things that would be too tedious
| or naive or ineffective will get tried, and a whole lot more
| people will have access to try ideas, I think things should get
| really fun and wild for a while.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| We are definitely in a period of transition. The question
| (for me) is whether Indie developers will be able to make a
| living in the new world of an Internet dominated by a few
| massive corporations and their AI tools.
| designerarvid wrote:
| Somehow this comes to mind: https://taxheaven3000.com/
| seinecle wrote:
| Well put. Certainly my case with https://nocodefunctions.com
|
| - traffic is slightly but noticeably decreasing for the last
| year: https://public.nocodefunctions.com
|
| - it pushes me to improve the design, the overall quality,
| explore new feature spaces: https://next.nocodefunctions.com
|
| Also, I noticed:
|
| - at first LLMs apply a penalty to development: it requires to
| explore new toolings for AI assisted coding, then select and
| get used to one of them, that might well end up being a
| transient solution. e.g. Cursor, to be replaced soon by Claude
| Code?
|
| - new uncertainty about which feature to develop: if I can
| develop it, then anyone else surely can reverse engineer it
| easily and replicate it? This is quite unnerving.
| abcd_f wrote:
| It's basically a blog post to plug links to author's (presumably)
| struggling projects.
|
| The majority of established ISVs are perfectly fine and have long
| adapted to new realities, be that the existence of AI coding
| tools, subscription licensing or what have you.
|
| _The_ fundamental - making something to solve users ' pain
| points - is still there and it's now easier than ever to go from
| identifying a niche to shipping a solution. If anything, the
| golden age is now.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| How has it got easier to identify niches?
| rnewme wrote:
| If you iterate faster your discover the market faster.
| mstank wrote:
| In my experience, the golden age of indie software is about to
| begin. LLMs and coding agents will make building vertical and
| niche software much more cost effective.
|
| In the last 3 months, I've built and launched a SaaS app to help
| my sister manage her florist business, and already have other
| paying customers. Without LLMs, this would have never been
| feasible because of dev time and/or costs.
| moralbankruptcy wrote:
| No the big players will just consume what any indie puts out
| and spit out something better.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| For some value of 'better'.
| moralbankruptcy wrote:
| Is Mcdonalds better than the mom and pop shop that got
| displaced 30 years ago?
| wnevets wrote:
| > Is Mcdonalds better than the mom and pop shop that got
| displaced 30 years ago?
|
| In some cases yes, other wise why would they make
| billions of dollars?
| hermitcrab wrote:
| For me: no. For the suits: yes.
| sh3rl0ck wrote:
| I agree.
|
| There's such an opportunity for people to actually explore
| ideas whose prototyping cost would have been too high with both
| time/money to not be worth it earlier.
|
| And even outside that perspective, there's a lot of broken
| corpo software now. The indie hackers are fighting back. See
| Helium by imputnet, for example. Ghostty by the revered
| Mitchell Hashimoto is another example of something I daily and
| is relatively indie.
|
| Corpo-slop seems to be enshittifying at an exponential rate due
| to decision paralysis and general management talent decay.
| risyachka wrote:
| You just named all reasons why it is over
| simonw wrote:
| What, because it only takes three months to build a SaaS for
| a florist?
|
| If it took 12 months to build a SaaS for a florist _nobody
| would build a SaaS for a florist_.
| ikamm wrote:
| How ever will humanity survive without vibe coded florist
| SaaS
| mstank wrote:
| All that matters if the florists are happy with it --
| extrapolate that to humanity as you wish.
| heyalexej wrote:
| Humanity will clearly also survive without cars and
| shoes. What's your point?
| xnorswap wrote:
| Of course, saas for florists does exist
| https://www.strelitziasoftware.com/our-story/
| jppope wrote:
| I agree with this take, if anything the Enterprise corporations
| probably have more to fear than Indie software developers.
| switz wrote:
| Yup, I echo this sentiment. We're about to flourish.
|
| It's never been cheaper and easier to build real value. It's
| also never been cheaper and easier to build real crap-but, the
| indie devs who care will build more value with higher velocity
| and independence. And good indie development will come with it
| an air of quality that the larger crap will struggle to compete
| with (at the edges). Not that they'll care, because the big
| players be making more money off the entrenched behemoths.
|
| But as an indie dev, your incentive structures are far
| different and far more manageable.
|
| Betteridge's law applies here - if the author truly believed
| the thesis, they would have declared it as a statement rather
| than a question.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| The author only has limited amount of data to go on, so can't
| really make a definitive statement that covers Indie
| developers in general.
| flashgordon wrote:
| This. Companies are chomping at the bits about developer
| productivity and how they can do 10x more. What is not clear
| even if they can fire 90% of their engineers (assuming the 10x
| productivity gain is real), how are they expecting that even a
| tiny sliver of that 90% cannot replicate the products - with
| AI? And if we are in such a world how are those companies'
| valuations justified any more?
|
| I am really excited at indie software again!
| webdood90 wrote:
| The signal-to-noise ratio is going crazy. How do you stand out
| when there are 10x as many people trying to make the same buck as
| you? There is so much garbage being created, it's insane.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| For years the size of the market grew as more as more people
| came online. The competition also increased. But now it seems
| the competition is increasing while the market size is
| stagnating or even shrinking. By competition I mean everything
| competing for attention.
| grumbel wrote:
| Or from a users perspective: Why bother looking for software
| that fits your purpose, when you can just let the AI write one
| from scratch that does?
|
| A lot of what makes software complicated is that it has to
| serve thousands of users with different requirements at once.
| With AI on the other side, that's not something a user has to
| worry about, they can just let the AI spawn a much smaller
| special purpose tool that solves exactly the problem they are
| having.
|
| We might be entering the age of disposable software, where
| software isn't a product, but just something your AI system
| produces temporarily in the background for the task at hand.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > Why bother looking for software that fits your purpose,
| when you can just let the AI write one from scratch that
| does?
|
| Because the software a person makes will actually be good,
| and the one the AI makes will be garbage.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| AI tools are shifting the story of indie app creation from
| needing the skill + time + interest to just needing the time +
| interest (spending the necessary time workshopping the process
| with AI).
|
| So the simpler your app is, the less of the moat it has going
| forward.
|
| Example: It was only a few years ago that I wanted a basic iOS
| app to remind me to do 100 pushups, 100 situps, etc. every day. I
| paid $5 for quite a crappy app that got the job done (it was
| comically slow somehow). I found the developer's twitter and he
| was one of those "I make money creating and selling 1000 apps"
| people.
|
| Now making that kind of app is trivial with Claude Code without
| even launching Xcode. I've build at least five apps so far just
| for personal use.
|
| So, on the other hand, another definition of "indie software" is
| on the cusp of explosion.
| tcfhgj wrote:
| Couldn't have used a calendar app
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I wanted simple per-exercise counters that step +10, and a
| notification at 5pm if I hadn't finished all of my exercises
| for the day.
|
| The point is that at the time paying $5 was a good trade so I
| didn't have to dick around with software.
|
| But now it's trivial to have an LLM build it to my spec, yet
| still barely dick around with the software side.
|
| A lot of software is like this.
| asdev wrote:
| This is classic engineer trying to build a business. Indie
| software is more of a business than it is software. Everyone
| wants to do the easy part(coding/tech), nobody wants to
| relentlessly service customers and do marketing/distribution.
|
| Coding is easy. Building a business is hard, whether indie or VC
| backed.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| >This is classic engineer trying to build a business.
|
| My business has been profitable for 20 straight years, so I
| can't be that terrible at it. ;0)
| keyle wrote:
| For me I care about the minutiae's of good software and AI slop
| produced software just has none of that. It takes experience to
| produce that and experience to understand how well something is
| crafted.
|
| Granted it flies over the head of most people. They can't discern
| a well written website to a 15MB webpage with an 8K thumbnail.
|
| Same applies to software. Margins, bevels, grouping, spacing,
| primary and secondary actions. Some see the difference. Some
| don't. You can't fake understanding of what you can't perceive
| exists.
|
| You can't know what you don't know.
| lapcat wrote:
| As an indie software developer myself, I think that the most
| difficult part of the business is not writing the software but
| rather finding potential customers. That's why I have few worries
| about LLM slop. "If you build it, they will come" is a fantasy.
| Marketing will make or break you.
|
| In my case, there are a couple of cliches that are actually true:
| it's a marathon, not a sprint, and it took me 5 years to become
| an "overnight success". Thus, the ability to code faster with AI
| is totally irrelevant to me. That's not going to help. There are
| a number of comments here claiming that LLMs are going to usher
| in a golden age of indie software, but I think that's just
| delusional. These people don't appear to know what it takes to
| establish an indie business.
|
| I can't speak about the effectiveness of Google Adwords, like the
| article author did, because I rarely purchase paid advertising
| and rely mostly on word-of-mouth. That's worked out fairly well
| for me, but obviously that's not going to work for everyone.
|
| I disagree with the author about one thing: "Mobile-based
| software is expected to be free or, at best, very cheap. So
| requires huge scale to make any decent return." I think App Store
| developers have to resist the race to the bottom. We can't make
| it up in volume like the BigCos. The biggest mistake of new indie
| devs--and I made this mistake myself years ago--is to price your
| apps too low. You need sustainable prices, and just ignore the
| people who complain that your price is too high. If they're
| complaining, that means they're interested! You might be able to
| pick up those customers eventually on Black Friday.
|
| My personal "golden age" was 2024, my highest income ever. 2025
| was decent but a down year, back down to around 2021 levels. I'm
| not quite sure why, perhaps the economy? But who knows.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| You need to have a fair amount of customers before 'word of
| mouth' becomes a viable strategy.
| Pepp38 wrote:
| I think part of the disagreement is how "the golden age" is being
| defined.
|
| If it meant building something decent, ranking on Google, and
| pushing a few ads, then yeah, that probably is over.But if it
| means a single person being able to explore ideas, iterate
| quickly, and build software closely tied to a real, lived
| problem, I'm not sure we've seen that era peak yet.
|
| What seems to be shrinking is generic attention. What seems to be
| growing is the number of specific problems that are now cheap
| enough to try solving.
|
| That probably hurts copycat SaaS. It might actually help people
| with strong taste and proximity to a niche.
| mstank wrote:
| Exactly this... I think there will be a golden age of excel
| replacement SaaS solutions with highly customized UX and
| workflows for vertical use cases. But, at the same time a lot
| more competition. Regardless, it will be great for users /
| companies with these specific problems.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| >Regardless, it will be great for users / companies with
| these specific problems.
|
| If they can ever find the solutions that exist for their
| specific problem.
| conwy wrote:
| No, it's just getting started!
| Barrin92 wrote:
| You have to distinguish between two different versions of "indie"
| software. What the author is describing, small business products
| really heavily reliant on marketing and traffic to me don't even
| fall under that label. That's not indie software, that's just
| software.
|
| I had a CS teacher in school who spent a lot of his free time on
| software for people who take part in pidgeon racing competitions.
| He spent a whole decade on this because he was interested in it
| and it did even net him enough money eventually to pay part of
| his house off. That kind of thing to me is indie software and
| whether that is viable has nothing to do with LLMs or the web or
| what have you, because it's genuinely niche and serves an
| authentic community of people and enthusiasts that no company
| cares about anyway.
|
| If you're in that kind of space and you don't care about
| attention next week desperately you don't need to be worried
| about some random technology because it's about people anyway,
| you're just the guy or girl who happens to be able to write
| software to help out.
| spankibalt wrote:
| > "I had a CS teacher in school who spent a lot of his free
| time on software for people who take part in pidgeon racing
| competitions."
|
| Fascinating! Do you have a link, or at least a name?
| jrm4 wrote:
| When I saw the headline, I _genuinely_ could not picture what
| could possibly be meant by "A Golden Age Of Software In Which We
| Currently Reside."
|
| So, I suppose it means SaaS-as-viable-income-maker. Which, well
| -- I suppose is fine if you can do that, no individual hate. But
| honestly -- funny enough -- it's pretty equivalent to me in terms
| of what is going on in hip-hop.
|
| Rappers are making _less_ money and also the art is _improving_
| back to a state that it once was in.
|
| Seems like LLMs will actually help that as well.
| JacobiX wrote:
| >> it is getting harder for small software vendors
|
| I think maybe this trend will continue and not specifically for
| indie developers, but for all software vendors. If AI becomes
| capable of producing genuinely highquality software, competition
| will intensify, and the industry will start to resemble the music
| industry. Alternatively, AI may continue to generate software
| that is not necessarily high quality but is largely
| indistinguishable from competing products; in that case, the
| market for lemons dynamic will apply. In either scenario, the
| value of software will decline...
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| It's a shift towards what was known to be indie software as
| personal software and what used to be products of big
| corporations as indie software. It remains to be seen how big
| corporations will adjust with their bigger inertia.
|
| I don't use canned native OR web apps much anymore. What I do is
| load Google Antigravity and ask for a flutter app with specified
| screens and functionality then run on mobile, desktop or web.
| What I get is equivalent of old indie software, except I do not
| depend on anyone to add the next feature I decide I need. What
| changed is not the software, but the business model - profit vs
| in house necessity. Hopefully indie game companies can benefit
| from same upscaling to develop their ideas into AAA feel titles
| which are beyond my personal AI assisted coding ability?
| acedTrex wrote:
| Its been over for well over a decade tbh
| cube00 wrote:
| I feel it's harder, I get clicks but no engagement.
|
| I even have comments enabled on my Reddit ads and I don't even
| get ASCII wangs.
|
| Nobody says my product is bad (or good), there's just silence.
|
| Although with the aggressive way the AI bros are scraping my site
| I can imagine where all these alleged clicks are coming from.
|
| It's a bad time when you're paying $1 a click and you still see
| Reddit's own ads way above yours. So it's not because they are
| filling space where they don't have real ads available. It makes
| you feel like they run their own ads to jack up the price.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| You might find this interesting:
|
| https://successfulsoftware.net/2025/08/11/what-i-learned-spe...
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