[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?
Considering there is very little moat left in software and big
companies can copy your product in no time?
Author : newbebee
Score : 150 points
Date : 2026-01-17 02:29 UTC (20 hours ago)
| WheelsAtLarge wrote:
| Yes! All startups are created to solve a problem, regardless of
| the tools used. Apps are simply tools to solve human problems.
| Because humans will always have challenges to address, software
| will remain a vital tool. While AI makes writing software much
| easier. It's likely to lead to an explosion of new apps. Only
| those that fill a genuine need will survive. Your job is to
| identify these new problems and determine which apps to build.
|
| Simple apps are a thing of the past. If an LLM can generate an
| app in a few sittings, it isn't a saleable product. However,
| people will still pay for a fully engineered application that
| solves a complex problem that AI cannot easily replicate.
|
| Regarding copies, there is always room for more than one solution
| to the same need. Your challenge is to figure out how to stand
| out. A fundamental business hurdle, that has existed since the
| beginning.
|
| Here's an idea that always bear's fruit. We humans love to do
| things as easy as possible. Write something that saves energy,
| time and is simple then people will pay for it.
| hooverd wrote:
| Plus, how many of these existing apps were just databases wired
| up in different ways?
| coliveira wrote:
| And how many of these apps were just files wired up in
| different ways?
| LPisGood wrote:
| This is why I like using mathematical or algorithmic
| approaches to solve difficult problems. Writing programs that
| use statistics, mathematics, optimization, analytical
| geometry, etc guarantee a certain level of security from the
| swarms of CRUD merchants flooding the market.
| latexr wrote:
| > All startups are created to solve a problem
|
| And most of the time that problem is "the founders don't have
| as much money as they want".
|
| > Apps are simply tools to solve human problems. Because humans
| will always have challenges to address, software will remain a
| vital tool.
|
| You make it sound like it's something noble, but let's not
| pretend most software companies these days don't have "make me
| rich" as the top goal. Effectively everything VC backed (yes,
| including by Y Combinator) falls in that category. That's why
| pivots are a thing. Most founders these days don't give a shit
| about what they're building or customers, they only care about
| the payoff.
| cowboy_henk wrote:
| That's a cynical take, but a more positive interpretation is
| that pivots are needed if your company isn't actually solving
| a problem. Otherwise people would pay for it, and the
| founders would be getting rich. So you need to pivot until
| you actually create a solution to a problem that people will
| pay for.
| latexr wrote:
| > That's a cynical take
|
| One that you apparently agree with, given the rest of your
| comment.
|
| > you need to pivot until you actually create a solution to
| a problem that people will pay for.
|
| In other words: You don't care about the problem, you care
| about the profit from selling _a_ solution.
|
| If a startup is "created to solve a problem" and then
| pivots to solve a _different_ problem because the first one
| wasn't profitable, that means profit was the priority, not
| solving the problem.
| pousada wrote:
| Of course profit is a priority how else are you going to
| pay the bills/employees etc?
| latexr wrote:
| "The", not "a".
|
| There is a chasm of difference between "I care about this
| problem and want to solve it, but I also need to think
| how to make it sustainable" and "I don't really care what
| I'm tackling, as long as I make bank".
|
| Both exist. The second one is ever more the norm.
| tock wrote:
| Why is this a problem? As long as the problem gets
| solved.
| latexr wrote:
| I would expect it to be obvious that caring about making
| money _above_ fixing a problem means the problem won't be
| solved that well compared to the alternative.
|
| Are you really going to claim you never encountered a
| startup that is obviously shitting on customers and
| degrading the experience to make a buck? Do you honestly
| believe _all_ startups are created to solve a problem
| (the original claim I responded to) and none are created
| with the intent of being the next "unicorn" to make the
| founders rich? If that is the case, search the term
| "enshittification". Surely you'll have encountered it by
| now. Pick whatever example helps you understand the
| point.
| tock wrote:
| I don't see how its "obvious" at all. I think most
| problems wouldn't be solved at all with this view because
| most problems aren't something people care about. Money
| gives people the incentive to solve every problem
| possible. Someone who "cares" is free to solve it even
| better and make even more money.
| dahart wrote:
| This is to some extent a false dichotomy. Generally
| speaking, products that prioritize fixing a problem
| "above" making money do not exist. There are no
| alternatives. Businesses can't sustain that. Sometimes it
| happens for a short while, and eventually they reduce the
| level of service, or charge more money, or die.
|
| I don't know why you're picking on startups. Big
| companies are where you see enshittification the most,
| and it's because economies of scale require them to cut
| costs. Startups can often use VC fuel to offer delightful
| and unprofitably superior solutions to problems. That
| goes away after startups graduate to being real
| companies.
| latexr wrote:
| > I don't know why you're picking on startups.
|
| Read the thread. I'm not "picking on startups", _the
| conversation is about startups_. Yes, Big companies do it
| too, that's just not what this particular conversation is
| about.
| dahart wrote:
| I see, so no comment at all on the fact that caring about
| products and customers requires making money?
|
| I have read the thread, thank you, and you certainly have
| been talking about startups and founders as if these
| issues are unique to them. It's not just 'yeah yeah big
| companies too'... if you actually care about and study
| enshittification at all, it is, by and large, _entirely_
| coming from big companies, and it isn't new to software,
| it has always been happening. The only thing new is a
| cute term for it that got popular recently. Old business
| terms that mean the same thing include: loss leader, hook
| product, bait and switch, and plain old "promotion".
| Regardless of what the topic here is, it doesn't make
| sense to harp on startups over quality going down. For
| that to happen, it had to be higher at some point, and
| that point is: startups. VC funding might lead to some
| quality decline, but all companies trim and get worse as
| they grow, and always have. Startup is the phase when
| companies provide the highest level of product or
| service.
| 9rx wrote:
| A healthy business uses revenue to pay bills, employees,
| etc.
|
| Using profit to pay for those things is what we call
| gambling.
| pousada wrote:
| Guess I got the semantics wrong, not my first language
| _shrug_
| dahart wrote:
| This seems like a very jaded comment, and if it's because you
| got burned in a startup, then you have my sympathy and I'm
| sorry for debating. Just know that not everyone is running on
| nothing but greed. You might be confusing VCs with startup
| founders a bit. VCs are definitely profit motivated, by
| design. It's going too far, and incorrect IMO, to suggest
| even VCs, or anyone involved, doesn't care about building
| solutions or care about customers. _All_ founders I've ever
| met care about what they make, and most VCs care about it
| somewhat but also care that the founders care strongly; they
| don't often fund founders who don't care.
|
| So can you source any of your claims of "most"? I just looked
| it up, and the majority of software startups are self-funded
| or angel/seed-funded, not VC funded. Founders that don't care
| about product or customers enough tend to fail. Founders that
| only care about the payoff don't tend to self-fund their
| startup.
|
| That said, _everyone and all companies_ have financial
| incentives. There's nothing unique or new about software
| startup founders there. The entire economy runs on profit
| motive. And I've seen a _lot_ more people who don't care
| about customers or product working in large companies making
| a nice easy salary working 9 to 5 (or less)!
|
| My personal sampling of founders vs company workers is that
| founders are, _by far_ , the ones who care more deeply about
| building something new and delighting customers and growing a
| sustainable business, care enough to start working nights and
| weekends, go years with crappy pay or no pay, to do every job
| in the company from engineering to design to marketing to
| support to filing taxes. Some people certainly are at least
| partially motivated to accept these sacrifices for the chance
| at a payoff, but lots of founders would prefer a lifestyle
| company where they get to keep building and don't have the
| insane pressures and politics of a unicorn company.
|
| Pivots are a thing because good product ideas often are not
| good business ideas. Startups that fail to pivot are the ones
| that die, and if your startup dies you don't get to care
| about what you're building or about customers at all. If you
| want companies to care about product and customers and not
| profit, then you should embrace sustainable economics, and
| that means making things people will pay for, and when
| they're not paying, making something else.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| It doesn't matter what the motivations were for the
| founders once they take VC money. The purpose of tge
| company then becomes the exit.
|
| Your personal sample doesn't jibe with the literally
| thousands of even YC companies
| dahart wrote:
| You're arguing something different than @latexr did, and
| picking a VC as your example makes sense here but fails
| to counter the fact that most startups aren't VC funded.
| Still, you're also like GP confusing VC motivation with
| founder motivation. It's possible for founders to care
| deeply about the problems they're solving, and for the
| company's primary goal to be an exit, at the same time.
| Both can be true, contrary to what GP claimed.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| There are an infinitesimal number of tech based startups
| that are "lifestyle companies" that were bootstrapped and
| use revenues to grow without taking investor money.
|
| There are even fewer that are "successful" - ie where
| everyone involved wouldn't be better off just working as
| a LOB CRUD developer.
|
| The goal of the founders don't matter even if they do
| "care" about the customer. The customer is at the whim of
| the strategies of the investors of the company and if an
| acquired, the customer will probably get an email about
| "our amazing journey" when the company is shut down
| dahart wrote:
| > even if they do "care" about the customer
|
| You're not debating me, you're contradicting @latexr.
|
| > infinitesimal
|
| You invented a narrow niche to knock down there, but as I
| said, I actually looked it up and the majority of startup
| companies that form are seed or self funded, not VC
| funded. I was responding to @latexr's claims that "most"
| founders don't care about product at all, which I believe
| is just false. You're arguing with me about something
| else, and I don't know what your point is yet. Mine is
| that caring about customers and caring about money aren't
| exclusive things, a successful business must do both.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Where did you find this tidbit of information that most
| tech startups don't take outside funding?
|
| Every company "cares about their customers" to the point
| where that's how they make their money.
| dahart wrote:
| > Where did you find this tidbit
|
| Google it. There are pages and pages of sources. Here's
| one: https://gregslist.com/
|
| > Every company "cares about their customers" to the
| point where that's how they make their money.
|
| And if they don't make money, they fail and lose the
| opportunity to care about customers. It's a boring
| _tautology_ to say that companies care about money. The
| point is that @latexr is wrong about assuming that caring
| about money means they don't care about product or
| customers.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| It's not at all a tautology. A company that cares about
| its customers can balance its need to make money and
| leave money on the table because it's not in the best
| interest of the customers.
| dahart wrote:
| Agreed, that's what I've been saying from the top. Again,
| you're disagreeing with @latexr, and agreeing with me.
|
| The tautology is that all companies care about money.
| Companies care about money _by definition_. Many
| companies and many people in companies also care about
| customers and product quality. However, there is an
| absolute limit to how much money a company can leave on
| the table, regardless of what the customer wants, and
| serving the customer's best interest becomes a 'bad
| decision' and threatens the ability for the company to do
| anything for the customer the moment it's unprofitable,
| as soon as costs exceed income. This effectively means
| that at some level, companies _must_ prioritize profit
| over service, otherwise service will cease to exist. The
| balance _must_ lean in favor of the company on average
| over time.
| jbs789 wrote:
| These smaller companies are doing well, they just aren't
| incentivised to tell you about it. The VC backed
| companies are, either targeting you as a consumer or an
| investor and n an eventual IPO.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| These startups were not created to solve a problem, some didn't
| even have a technical person. These startups were created to be
| VC bait and hopefully sell out to the bigger fool
|
| https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Uy2aWoeRZopMIaXXxY2E...
| bpodgursky wrote:
| You're gonna get a lot of positive responses here, but frankly
| only do it if you think you can make meaningful money within a
| month or two.
|
| Everything is going off the rails this year. You only have to use
| Claude Code for 10 minutes to realize every job involving a
| computer is going to get flipped upside down within a year.
| sho wrote:
| I am just as bullish as you on the potential. AI is going to
| change the world all right. Much bigger than the internet.
|
| I an far, far less bullish than you on the timeframe. The vast
| amount of work is not even optimised for computers without AI.
| Much if not most bureaucratic process has stayed mostly the
| same for the best part of a hundred years.
|
| It will change everything, but not in a single year!
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| Claude Code is useless for anything that requires advanced
| knowledge.
| dimgl wrote:
| +1. Claude is actually really good at all kinds of
| development but Claude will still make plenty of mistakes and
| occasionally go so far in the wrong direction that it still
| needs someone with experience to steer it.
| nradov wrote:
| Lol that's what they told us last year. And they'll say the
| same thing next year. It's obviously useful for certain tasks
| but the number of errors and hallucinations are still quite bad
| for anything large or complex or really novel. That part is
| improving very slowly and some fundamental theoretical
| breakthroughs will be needed.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| I don't care what _they_ told you last year, I didn 't say
| jack shit. I'm saying it now.
|
| Cope or pretend it's not happening, I don't care, this is the
| year.
| honeycrispy wrote:
| Have you actually had it do anything substantial and then
| tried to work with the code it produces afterwards? It may
| "work" but it's a horrific mess. Good luck bug fixing that.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Yes, with GPT 5.2 Codex and 5.2 Pro specifically. It's
| not a mess because of the context I provide and the
| guidance and reattempts I apply. It's working great, the
| resulting code is good when I accept it, and I'm getting
| much more done than in the before times.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Yes, Opus 4.5 is not business as normal. If you haven't
| tried it, you really need to, to update your opinion.
| honeycrispy wrote:
| I am talking about opus 4.5. It made a complete mess out
| of my project.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| That's what it does. Switch to Codex (not someone else's
| harness) with 5.2 Codex XHigh
| vlod wrote:
| I just keep hearing all these people that preach this, but
| I don't see anything substantial (that isn't something
| stupid or a tutorial they followed from medium) that anyone
| responds with. e.g. of a meh: give me top 10 HN articles
| for today and summarize the contents, add tags and build a
| website. I know AI can do that, but it's not impressive.
|
| Not to pick on you, be mean or anything, but your github
| profile says no contributions in a year. Obviously there
| are other online git repo sites.
|
| Care to share anything in prod? For a reply so aggressive,
| the proof is in the pudding.
| nradov wrote:
| Why would any of us care what _you_ say? You 're not
| particularly intelligent and have never accomplished
| anything significant. You're just some guy.
| acrooks wrote:
| In my experience (enterprise software), customers buy our
| products not because we have a moat or some hard-to-achieve
| technical advantage but because they can speak to us in their
| words, they know we care, and we try solve their problems
| quickly.
|
| Just yesterday I was speaking with the COO of a $200M/yr revenue
| company in the supply chain space. He'd learned Claude Code and
| built a couple apps to solve internal problems but reached out to
| talk to us. I asked him "you've been able to build some really
| impressive tools, clearly you can solve your own problems, why
| are you talking to me?" And he said "I have a business to run. I
| shouldn't be coding. I need somebody who understands my business
| & can solve my problems without taking a lot of my time."
|
| Is there a cheaper way for him to solve his problems? Absolutely.
| But he wants to put the key in the ignition and know the car will
| turn on every time without thinking about it. There is an endless
| list of problems to solve; I don't think software businesses are
| going anywhere anytime soon.
| dimgl wrote:
| One of the better, more levelheaded responses here.
| fredthomsen wrote:
| A PM I've worked with many times always used to say, "They
| want an easy button! It's that simple!."
| rubenvanwyk wrote:
| This should be the top comment. The thing about growth of
| businesses overall, is that they want outsourced capacity
| (that's what employees or contractors are) and that dynamic
| doesn't go away because of AI, because like the comment
| mentioned, it's not reliable enough in the sense that it can
| accept high-context vague instructions and 'figure it out' like
| an enterprise developer can.
| mamcx wrote:
| Yeah, this is how we survive.
|
| I even dream of build tools for business to make apps (like Air
| table, but better) and even if you can do anything that do,
| perfectly, the software they need not means they _want_ to
| babysit it all the time.
|
| Is like the person that knows how cook, amazingly, yet hire a
| chef for take care of it most days.
| hahahahhaah wrote:
| Obviously a COO shouldnt be prompting Claude Code but your
| competition is someone in their team doing the same. The person
| in their team is trusted and knows the business.
| LastTrain wrote:
| Or maybe COO was using it for leverage
| bluGill wrote:
| Maybe. great businesses don't need moats. They just need
| sonething people buy from them. Maybe venture capital needs moats
| - but you can get rich without that. (If rich is even the goal -
| a nice life is a better goal)
|
| beware of any business where there is no competition - there is
| generally good reason nobody else is making money there.
| leros wrote:
| You could probably become rich wholesaling gravel in your city.
| There are plenty of opportunities all around. Execution is key.
| wewewedxfgdf wrote:
| Do it if _you want to_ - if you feel some burning desire to
| create that thing and you just can 't get it out of your head.
| shubhamjain wrote:
| You mean the big companies who still haven't moved away from
| abominations like SAP and Oracle? The ones where you require
| twenty approvals to get a small pilot done? Instead of moving to
| saner and cheaper alternatives, they would just say, "hey, why
| don't we just start making our own software?" Every effort like
| this--if it had any takers--will fail spectacularly.
|
| I get it people are skeptical about the future. But I can't
| imagine any scenario where people would like taking
| responsibility of building and mantaining their own software for
| everything vs. paying marginal amount of money (relatively
| speaking) to let someone else take the headache.
| gdsdfe wrote:
| I can imagine a future where it will be possible for a family
| to host their own essential services ... There got to be
| something between homelabs and cloud services bc the gap is too
| big.
| pan69 wrote:
| > I can imagine a future where it will be possible for a
| family to host their own essential services
|
| Exactly. Even something as seemingly mundane as hosting your
| own email is a major challenge.
| atrus wrote:
| Good luck. To have something that a regular family could use
| would require remote access from the company for
| troubleshooting, updates, maintenance.
|
| So you get all of the downsides of cloud hosting (company
| employees can still remote in), with none of the upsides (all
| the hardware is now geographically distributed, instead of
| one big building) with the privilege of _paying_ for it
| instead of being "free" like facebook/google.
| 4mitkumar wrote:
| Not quite there yet but Yunohost is a fantastic attempt to
| get closer to this ideal. Install the OS - and the basic
| self-hostic-use-case apps are all just there to click and
| install. From Immich to Kodi to Wordpress and what not.
|
| https://yunohost.org/
| t2o4iu234o234 wrote:
| With IPv6 (and/or NAT-forwarding) it was already possible to
| host stuff.
|
| However, E-mail's horrible protocols and spam-blocking
| security monopolies mean you're stuck with one of the big
| cloud providers, even if you could automate/solve e-mail
| server complications.
| graemep wrote:
| Not true. Been hosting my own email for years and only
| prblem is delivery to some MS hosted services (usually
| hotmail)
| rishabhpoddar wrote:
| It is. Big companies (or really anyone) usually don't have the
| time to copy an idea unless it becomes too big already. And if
| your idea becomes too big, it was worth pursuing it.
| tharkun__ wrote:
| Or worth buying up. Which in many cases was the "purpose" of
| doing the startup in the first place.
|
| Sure, we'd all like to think that the goal was an idealistic
| "startup does things for bettering humankind".
|
| But let's face it: A large amount of startups are literally
| founded as an "easier" alternative of building a "more agile"
| sub-organization within an established and more process driven
| org and then just get bought out by some of those larger orgs.
|
| Whether or not those large orgs are then actually successful in
| integration and actually properly leveraging what they bought
| vs. just "crushing competition", is not necessarily the concern
| of the founders, depending on how ruthless vs. idealistic they
| are.
| pm90 wrote:
| in the valley at least its difficult to pursue that unless you're
| in a "hot" field. A few years ago, it was cloud, then big data,
| then crypto and now AI. When startups in those fields can raise
| hundreds of millions, they can lure away a lot of talent (both
| tech and non tech).
| nradov wrote:
| Nah. Regardless of where the company is nominally headquartered
| there are always an effectively infinite number of employees
| who can be hired to work remotely or out of satellite offices.
| gedy wrote:
| Depends on your goal - do you have an idea you care about and
| want to solve? Probably a good idea. If you "want to be your own
| boss" or looking for something just to be acquired, hard to say,
| depends on who you know, etc.
| thundergolfer wrote:
| Thought this would be a thread about the crazy offers being
| handed out to join AI teams at Amazon, Meta, Google, OpenAI,
| Anthropic, Apple, or any of the massively capitalized 'neolabs'.
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| The fact that people look to start a business based on searching
| foe a moat shows they don't believe in free markets. As well as
| shows what's wrong with Silicon Valley.
| Herring wrote:
| Yeah, and a moat can just be a solid trusted brand. Claude Code
| can't take that away.
| johnsmith1840 wrote:
| Build something novel, what has changed?
| matt_heimer wrote:
| I'd argue the question was wrong, it's not that big companies
| can copy you easier now. They could have always invaded your
| space and destroyed your business. As other pointed out it was
| always picking up the pennies that they didn't want until those
| pennies became dollars.
|
| The concern now is that other small team or solo developers can
| rebuild what you have very quickly. This happened in the mobile
| space with all the decompiled and repacked (with min changes)
| apps that showed up in the stores.
|
| The moat for SaaS startups was that the code is hidden. Now
| that matters less because people use AI to try and reverse
| engineer your backend from the API or even UI screenshots.
|
| You have to pick up the pace to keep ahead of them and make
| sure you don't cause problems for customers while doing it.
| johnsmith1840 wrote:
| That's the same it's always been?
|
| Building something hard cannot be replicated easily or at
| all. People can and always have stolen things.
|
| I do agree that you just have to move faster but again that's
| the same.
| canadiantim wrote:
| Isn't it the opposite? E.g. there is very little moat left and
| small companies or individuals can copy any product big or small
| in no time?
| lettergram wrote:
| There's still plenty of moats frankly, same moats as before. What
| isn't the moat is the software development time.
|
| In our case, we're building a tool that has a moat from:
| integrations, multiple parties connecting, and others
|
| It's very sticky once we get in, and has nothing to do with the
| software so much as legal, company policy and inter party
| communication
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| So long as it's not about AI. The world hasn't run out of
| problems that could be solved or improved by software.
| ipnon wrote:
| You can get the same output as $500k/year of software engineers
| for $2.4k/year now. Never been better if you ask me!
| SilverElfin wrote:
| This is the problem with big concentration of wealth and power.
| The big tech mega corps can copy your idea easily because they
| don't have any budget, they can undercut you or sell at a loss,
| and they can distribute it to all their current customers with
| anti competitive bundling.
|
| It has happened over and over many times and American antitrust
| law is useless. The largest corporations must be broken up, taxed
| heavily, and regulated in new ways. Otherwise there is no fair
| competition or level playing field for startups.
| w10-1 wrote:
| You're asking what's a defensible value-add, but without really
| framing current business conditions or issues.
|
| Time - opportunity - matters a lot, perhaps more than anything.
| And to face that, one needs to ask better questions (even if
| you're just polling).
| rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote:
| "Current business conditions or issues" -- I think that's
| because OP wants you to fill that in yourself, so that you
| might explain your assumptions or the market potential that you
| see, which might be wildly different from his (i.e. software
| having little to no moat)
| paulddraper wrote:
| The serious answer:
|
| The value cannot be just the software. E.g. some workflow tool
| (Salesforce). These tools will continue to exist for awhile but
| any customer capable of moving off of it to a startup version,
| can probably make their own startup version, tailored to them.
|
| Now, if you offer something besides the software -- logistics,
| networks, financial instruments, regulatory compliance, physical
| goods, compute, etc -- that has value besides the software.
|
| But the five billionth workflow automation tool has fast
| diminishing value in 2026.
| jongjong wrote:
| I would strongly recommend staying away from software startups
| unless:
|
| - The CEO of some major corporation or a big VC is a close friend
| or friend of your family.
|
| - You are rich and have a lot of friends who will buy your
| product.
|
| - You already finished the MVP; which you started building 12
| years ago... Might as well try to complete.
|
| - You're a criminal.
|
| The market is insanely saturated and people already have more
| stuff than they need. Capitalism has been over since 2008. Now
| it's just feudalism. Product is irrelevant; it's all a social
| game of selection. You have to be selected. You just need to know
| someone and have a product with a semi-reasonable narrative that
| your CEO buddy can use as a justification to give you company
| money. That's it.
| eastbound wrote:
| You're talking about VC startups.
|
| I disagree with the sour mindset, as I don't feel those games
| were necessary for my startup, although I admit mine was
| bootstrapped (0$), and didn't grow as far as the others, it
| still made me millionaire, has paid my employees a high-than-
| average salary and has the potential of adding them a few
| hundred thousands each.
|
| I admit the old market (do web apps to manage records! or
| notes!) is saturated but the IA market is brand new and fresh
| open.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| AI?
| jongjong wrote:
| How do you find users? Organic? SEO is useless as all the
| projects with any meaningful pagerank are all pointing to
| each other. Social media advertising is useless; nobody even
| sees your tweets or posts. Advertising? How do you get a
| return on CPC? All the big competitors seem to be running
| negative margins. Also, small volume social media ads tends
| to attract only bots... Are you operating in a niche? How do
| you get word of mouth in this case? Niches related to solving
| bureaucratic problems are often regulated! No SOC2 or
| ISO27001, no contracts for you.
|
| In the last 15 years, I met just one person who bootstrapped
| a tech startup 'on their own' to be worth a few millions...
| This guy was super smart and switched on... But I later found
| out his wife's parents were multi-millionaires. I'm thinking
| that was probably the differentiator. I met a LOT of
| successful tech people. They always got major help. I never
| actually met one who didn't have access to significant help.
| rramadass wrote:
| The real question to ask is;
|
| _Is it still worth pursuing a software startup ... using the
| same strategies /approach/mindset/tools/means/methods of
| yesteryears_?
|
| Answer is Yes for the first part and No for the second part.
|
| Problems which need software solutions and/or have a software
| component (at this point, practically everything) still exist in
| plenty. AI/ML has only changed the playing field drastically. It
| cannot understand the _intent behind the problem_ which is a
| uniquely Human Dilemma. This is where the opportunities lie;
| understanding different Problem /Business Domains by studying and
| closely interacting with possible clients and coming up with
| tailored solutions whether domain-specific or client-specific.
|
| The emphasis now is on better problem
| understanding/specification/verification (DSLs/notations/diagrams
| etc.) and faster iteration to a MVP. AI/ML is a great help here
| but the cycle is initiated by a Human who is always in the loop
| and steers it on the right trajectory in the state space of
| possible solutions.
| ItsBob wrote:
| > Considering there is very little moat left in software and big
| companies can copy your product in no time?
|
| Having worked in the corporate world all my working life I can
| safely say with confidence that big companies absolutely DO NOT
| move fast. Do not underestimate the power of middle-management to
| destroy momentum!
|
| Solve a problem for someone and if it was a painful one, they'll
| pay you for it.
| smokel wrote:
| An interesting paper in this context is "Structural Inertia and
| Organizational Change" by Hannan and Freeman, 1984 [1]. A quote
| from the introduction: _"...selection processes tend to favor
| organizations whose structures are difficult to change. "_.
|
| In other words, it's typically a _good_ thing that larger
| companies are slow to adapt. That 's something that startups
| can make use of.
|
| [1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/2095567
| pabe wrote:
| Yes! Coding is just one of the tasks you've got to do when
| building a software business. You also have to find a good value
| preposition, identify a good channel to your customers, manage
| your resources etc.
|
| Channels are becoming even more important as software has become
| easy to copy. But copycats always existed. When it wasn't created
| by AI, it was created in low wage countries.
| eastbound wrote:
| I've recently realized that behind each copycat, there is an
| entrepreneur. It's not a big factory with written "Leading #1
| in piracy" at the front. It's someone with almost as many
| skills as the original entrepreneurs, trying to copy a few of
| them to see where there is traction, with hopes and dreams
| similar to the original, but too far away from the world's
| center of activity to propose something relevant. Some of them
| probably do it with the "I can do it better than them" mindset.
| kokogo wrote:
| Could it be that it's just a wrapper for APIs like
| OpenAI/Anthropic? I've been thinking about this for a long time,
| and I'm surprised to find someone else with the same view.
| spacecadet wrote:
| Got to get more creative and less funding dependent. People still
| seem caught up in the old process of ideation, static creation,
| pitch decks. Ack! Garbage now! I only ever took funding to scale
| to 3-5 heads, well I have 20 heads for nearly nothing now... Ive
| created more "startup" ideas in the last 3 years then the last 20
| of my career. I just keep cranking out anything remotely
| interesting, launch, and if it don't "work", move on. I just
| launched another one this week, feels most promising, but we'll
| see... I didn't go quitting my day job just yet.
|
| Also, GTFO! My ideas are not just slop from sitting around day
| dreaming. Every one is from observations made from talking or
| watching people struggle... cant replace that with AI yet.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| if you have to ask the answer is no.
|
| if you are young there's still hope that you can change your
| mindset and approach though.
|
| if software can save time and make money than human capital then
| there will be demand.
| artyom wrote:
| > Big companies can copy your product in no time
|
| Your advantage in this case, now or 10 years ago, is that this is
| simply not true.
|
| If your business is "a flashlight app", yeah, eventually they'll
| copy it (as it happened). However they'll take an unusual long
| time to do that simple thing (as it also happened).
|
| Why? Because everything at big companies is a political game,
| full of internal conflicts, multiple priorities, non-
| collaborative teams, self-interest, promotion games, and a bunch
| of other things not really related to build the thing in
| question. It _very rarely_ has anything to do with how fast the
| code can be written.
|
| If your business is good enough and becomes something more than
| "a piece of software", and solves a problem, becomes a brand, has
| great user feedback... that's not something you can "copy in no
| time".
| robofanatic wrote:
| What about other smart guys looking for ideas for their
| startup?
| Oras wrote:
| While I agree with sone of your points, there are many
| evidences that this happened in the past.
|
| One example is Microsoft creating teams to take on Slack.
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| I dont think the founders or early team at slack are upset
| with how things played out
| Sevii wrote:
| Just the consumers unfortunately.
| ctkhn wrote:
| Teams is still nowhere near Slack's features and usefulness.
| I wouldn't say it's a direct competitor, it's like store
| brand vs a mid-luxury item
| musicale wrote:
| Nobody really likes Teams, but it does seem to have more
| features than Slack in terms of integration with the rest
| of Microsoft's office software ecosystem. It's nice to be
| able to open up and edit Word/PowerPoint/Excel documents
| directly, view the Outlook calendar directly, etc. It is
| also integrated with SharePoint and OneDrive for file
| storage. Teams had video calls before Slack as well IIRC.
|
| Teams, Slack and Discord all seem to be built as clunky web
| apps; but my experience is that Discord seems to work
| slightly better than Slack, which in turn works slightly
| better than Teams.
| 9rx wrote:
| If, knowing what you know now, you could go back in time and
| be the one to create Slack would you not do it? Even if
| everyone is using Teams now (they're not), it took a really
| long time to show up that Slack's founders were able to
| capitalize on.
|
| The change in the software landscape today is the apparent
| ability to develop a competitor faster thanks to LLMs. _But_
| , as the parent points out, the bottleneck was never code
| writing. It was waiting on the people involved to get past
| their egos. LLMs have done nothing to change that.
| atonse wrote:
| Every single org I've seen using teams (sample size of 4-5
| orgs) uses it because it came for free. And every one of them
| also got slack and paid for it.
|
| That says everything about how shitty Teams STILL is. MS
| still hasn't improved it much from the steady state turd that
| it's been a few years ago.
| dangus wrote:
| It's so funny. My company is basically merger hell and we
| have both Teams and Slack for similar reasons.
|
| One of the more important acquired companies with a cash
| cow product basically refused to move to Teams because they
| hate it and concocted a reason that we just had to keep it.
|
| The reason was total BS but it was crafted to appeal to the
| higher-ups, and it worked, because nobody was really going
| to fight over less than ten bucks per person per month.
| pankajdoharey wrote:
| Don't worry big companies still can't copy anything quickly,
| even with AI. Why? Because before they can ship a single
| feature, they'll need to schedule 42 alignment meetings, debate
| AI-generated slide decks, and log their "strategic pivots" into
| an AI-curated Jira board.
|
| The real moat isn't just code it's speed, focus, user trust,
| and the ability to actually ship. Those are things bloated orgs
| struggle with, with or without AI. If you're solving a real
| problem and building a real brand, you're already ahead.
| i7l wrote:
| The real moat is not being forced to use Jira then.
| awakeasleep wrote:
| That's not even it, because in the small company jira won't
| be such an oppressive system.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| I don't do side projects related to computers and never
| have in 30 years. But I still use a Trello board to keep
| myself organized
| pants2 wrote:
| Ironically I use a vibe-coded Trello clone with some
| tweaks for my specific workflow...
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| In a previous big-tech job, we called this the "Release
| Prevention Team".
| therobots927 wrote:
| I couldn't agree more. In fact I think the exact opposite of
| the original statement might be true: Find a product made by a
| big corporation that is a great concept but has clearly
| suffered from an internal shitshow of a team for some time, and
| copy it. If other corporations are sloppily copying it - even
| better. That just means the product has actual market fit.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| That's a whole lot of ifs. At the end of this long road filled
| with if's, what are the chances that he can have a _profit_
| large enough to overcome the opportunity cost of not just
| working as an enterprise dev in a 2nd tier city _and_ have
| continuing profits or have a meaningful exit?
| elif wrote:
| Since the majority of our industry is still in a combination
| denial/disbelief and bureaucratic incompatibility with AI
| workflows, startups are increasingly well positioned to reap the
| rewards.
|
| The way I think about it is, everyone is struggling to make AI
| tools work well, so if you can be in the top 50% of people
| trying, you're actually in the top 10% in terms of positioning
| for future growth.
| moconnor wrote:
| The only software worth writing is tools for agents that contain
| something hard for them to vibe code in a couple of sessions.
|
| Making someone's agents 20% better, cheaper or faster will be a
| measurable and easy sales goal.
| pousada wrote:
| I hope this is sarcasm...
| elif wrote:
| Unfortunately any pro-AI viewpoint, no matter how
| uncontroversial, will be immediately dismissed and down voted
| here. Doesn't make it not true.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| The proof is really in the pudding, isn't it? I don't see a
| wave of successful vibe-coded startups in the market yet.
| That's kind of the benchmark for whether this stuff actually
| does in practice what the AI-hypemen claim it can.
| sequin wrote:
| Rather the opposite. A vibe-coded startup cannot survive if
| it can be trivially duplicated. The proof will be in
| observing the inverse phenomenon; (pure) software companies
| disappearing.
| qgin wrote:
| It's still hard to create something successful.
|
| Remember that Mark Zuckerberg has had "AGI" for over a decade in
| the form of tens of thousands of human software engineers and
| Facebook still has barely been able to create a new successful
| product on their own without acquiring it from a smaller company.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Facebook cannot make products, its that simple.
| epolanski wrote:
| Oculus?
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| That division is losing billions a year. I wouldn't call it
| a success
| toast0 wrote:
| Acquired
| KaiserPro wrote:
| I worked for oculus, well reality labs.
|
| Lots of talented people, and decent hardware, once the
| stupid politics was overcome.
|
| But.
|
| In all the time I worked there, we never managed to get
| "join my friends" feature get made. Trying to join your
| friends in a game was so fucking hard. You'd think being a
| social company, who's whole point is connecting people,
| this would be the first feature.
|
| But no.
|
| Threads is the only product they have launched in the last
| 5 years that anything close to successful. Even then it
| only launched because management ignored it, let them get
| an MVP out the door before swelling the size of the team
| from ~8(?) to >>2k The time to fun was also waaay too high.
| it got better towards the end, but in 2020-2023 it would
| take ages to log in, update, load, get kicked out, reboot
| and then join.
| utopiah wrote:
| Did they make though or did they buy? What did they
| actually buy that wasn't already done at Valve?
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Oculus was shipping hardware/software before the Facebook
| acquisition, and proceeded to slowly bleed out post-
| acquisition. We shipped a few decent VR headsets in the
| middle there (Quest 1, 2 and 2s/3), but most of the other
| initiatives within Meta's reality labs withered on the
| corporate vine...
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Or Google
|
| Large companies struggle to launch anything due to their
| staff size.
|
| They're as inefficient as a government
| robofanatic wrote:
| > Mark Zuckerberg has had "AGI" for over a decade in the form
| of tens of thousands of human software engineers
|
| This makes me think that companies like Open AI, Anthropic etc
| are simply new types of body shoppers. body shoppers don't have
| their own products they just supply talent to help other
| companies make products and services.
| utopiah wrote:
| Mechanical Turk at scale.
| robofanatic wrote:
| Body shoppers on steroids
| bee_rider wrote:
| As much as Facebook was a silly and poorly coded site at the
| time, Zuck seemed to do better in like 2007 when it was pretty
| small. I wonder if increasing the capabilities of somebody who
| still has ideas left and isn't burdened by a bloated
| organization is the real benefit here.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Successful people also tend to overestimate what portion of
| that success was down to timing/luck. Zuck had a lot of
| early-mover advantage in the social media space (especially
| in the university demographic Facebook started out in).
|
| A lot of his later ventures have been trying to break into
| markets that are already crowded by more established players,
| and that's just a lot harder to execute on.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| There was never a statistical "advantage", you just never heard
| about the 9/10 outright failures or even the parts of the 1/10
| where people are toiling in obscurity and would have been better
| off financially "grinding leetcode and working for a FAANG" ((c)
| r/cscareerquestions) or even being an enterprise dev in a tier 2
| city.
| dangoodmanUT wrote:
| Yes, otherwise there wouldn't be billions of dollars flowing into
| seed rounds every year to make novel products.
|
| Not sure why you think a large company can copy a product in no
| time, they have to steer a cargo ship, you have a speed boat.
| rypskar wrote:
| Yes, big companies can copy your product. But at what cost,
| especially when including opportunity cost and the levels of
| bureaucracy in larger companies? I have heard your question many
| times during the last 20 years, and still there are more software
| startups.
|
| In many cases it would cost them less to buy your company than to
| create it from scratch. Which is why so many small companies are
| acquired instead of copied. The question should be more what do
| you want to do and are you able to follow up on creating a
| startup? Writing the code is a small part of creating a
| successful startup
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| Sometimes, software that 2 devs make in a year, takes same 2
| years for 5 teams of 10.
| ZiiS wrote:
| That seems very optimistic, a team that can ship with two would
| probably be 10x as fast on average.
| utopiah wrote:
| That's always been the case, in software and elsewhere.
|
| Yet, Ford didn't copy Tesla, why not?
|
| Checkout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma
| but overall the idea is that large corporations have totally
| different goals and incentive than startups. Also check
| https://steveblank.com and his startup owner manual trying to
| clarify that a startup is NOT a small company, rather it's
| searching for a product/market fit.
|
| So is it worth pursuing a (software) startup?
|
| Honestly if you want to make money, no. It's much easier to work
| for a large corporation (big economical benefits) or a public
| institution (work safety). You might not get ridiculously rich
| either way but you will be safer than most.
|
| If you want to make a ridiculous amount of money though, well you
| might have to make sacrifices you are underestimating. I don't
| want to promote the grind culture but checkout Silicon Valley,
| the TV show, in particular when they discuss VC and promises
| done. Basically if you ask for a very high valuation you have to
| deliver on those claims and obviously they investors are going to
| keep you accountable on that. You might have to work more than
| you wanted (which might make the whole process a nightmare more
| than a joy) but more dangerously you might lose the very raison
| d'etre of the company you founded. If it's "just" about making
| money, you won't care, if you have a genuine mission, those
| compromises are going to eat you alive.
|
| So... is it "worth it" very much depend on who you are, who you
| want to be and how saturated the market is.
|
| I wouldn't worry about the big corporations, I would worry about
| what you can actually deliver and how not being able to do so
| will change you along the way.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| > Considering there is very little moat left in software and big
| companies can copy your product in no time?
|
| Your task in a software startup (or any startup) is to produce
| the moat. If you can create something with little effort in a few
| weeks or months then so can anyone else.
|
| If your product does something hard or useful that you know how
| to do because you understand the audience or business, or
| includes data or knowledge that others may not know about or
| have, or just you can put the effort in to great service to build
| a large customer base it becomes harder to be copied.
| iambateman wrote:
| The opposite is increasingly true...
|
| I spent the past 6 months rebuilding a medium-size company's CRM.
|
| They were on Salesforce for a decade, and now they'll own their
| data based on the work of a single engineer.
|
| For Salesforce, the moat is increasingly the inertia that comes
| from big-company contracts and the perceived safety of buying
| Salesforce.
|
| Society is experiencing the first wave of the true Cambrian
| explosion of software and there's never been a better time to be
| an indie maker. Never. This is like the iOS App Store moment, but
| multiplied by 100 and expected to last 10x longer.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| A software startup has always, always been a longshot. This is
| still true. Also, vanishingly few companies of any kind,
| including software, ever get a "moat". Small companies survive,
| when they do, by being fast moving enough to keep making new
| things.
|
| You certainly should not start a software startup to get rich, as
| that was never the most likely outcome. You should start one if
| you have an idea for software that isn't out there, which you
| think people would find useful, and you want to see what it's
| like to do a startup (enough to give it several years of your
| life).
|
| I have, btw, never founded a software startup, though I have
| worked at some. I got paid in salary, not equity. It is now,
| always was, and probably always will be a longshot.
| matthewsinclair wrote:
| Is "software startup" the right term? I understand that you might
| want to "use software" in the startup but surely, in the most
| successful startups, the thing that makes them successful is that
| they solve a real problem, that real people/businesses have, and
| are prepared to "pay" [1] you to solve for them.
|
| If the startup is just "software for the sake of software" then I
| think that's a different thing entirely. And to be fair,
| sometimes software for the sake of it is more like art or fun.
| And it's true, sometimes something wonderful comes out of that.
| Sometimes. :)
|
| [1]: Obviously "pay" can mean _very_ different things in
| different contexts.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Big companies are not your worry in most cases. They have so much
| bureaucracy and internal politics that it's often cheaper for
| them to buy out the up-and-coming startups than it is to build
| in-house.
|
| Instead, if you achieve success without much of a moat, you will
| be cloned by one of the "App Store mills". These are companies
| who employ multiple small teams (think 3-4 people), and each team
| is charged with cloning one of the most popular apps - they have
| really abbreviated development cycles, on the order of 6 weeks,
| and they just keep churning till they've drowned every app on the
| leaderboard in clones. And because they are astroturfing the
| whole space, they don't actually need most of these clones to be
| individually profitable.
| skeptic_ai wrote:
| Rocket Internet Is one of these copycat business style.
| tietjens wrote:
| Rocket Internet is often engaged in arbitrage where they
| bring an existing company's idea to a different country or
| context. This is very different from the flood-the-zone
| astroturfing discussed above. Zalando is its own company
| employing ~5k engineers. This isn't a copycat I would claim.
|
| But maybe you're referring to practices I am not aware of.
| greenacred wrote:
| > Considering there is very little moat left in software and big
| companies can copy your product in no time?
|
| Whenever you have doubts about your ability to do something
| enough to ask for advice from random people you don't know, and
| if that thing is unnecessary and will be significantly difficult,
| like a startup that is just some option for you to work on, the
| answer is probably no.
|
| You have to feel the true desire to make something happen because
| you must. Anything other than that is probably a bad idea.
| paxys wrote:
| The risk is the same as it was a decade ago, and the decade
| before that.
|
| The startup will take over your life. You will pour every bit of
| time and money you have into it. You will lose your sanity. And
| it's pretty much a guarantee that you will fail.
|
| Unless you already have a comfortable financial cushion and/or
| industry connections that will guarantee funding and
| partnerships, you have to be truly crazy to try that life. But,
| ultimately it's the crazy ones that end up winning.
| osigurdson wrote:
| If true then VC money would dry up. We definitely are not at the
| stage where new company formation has ended.
| rorylaitila wrote:
| Yes, but not in relationship to products being copied. Copying
| the technical aspects of an idea has been possible for a long
| time anyway.
|
| Knowing how to acquire, support and cultivate a growing user base
| is the challenge.
|
| The availability of a technical "moat" has always been a select
| property of only a few products. All real moats are network
| effects.
| jurschreuder wrote:
| The problem is the software has already been made in the past. It
| has built up over time. Just like songs. There are so many
| already there.
|
| When smartphones just came out I was already not making websites
| anymore. But every single app I made got at least 10k downloads
| in one week and around 1/5 got in the top 10 of a category like
| "social" even though I've only ever spent maybe a month max on
| developing any single app.
|
| But now there are soooo many already there. Good luck getting
| into the top 10 social now with one weekend of coding.
| __s wrote:
| Not with that attitude
| gehsty wrote:
| Depends what you expect, people still have problems that need
| solved by software, if you expect to be the next Google the odds
| are not in your favor but if you aim to have a sustainable income
| from software that should be viable.
| dahart wrote:
| Yes!! The software market is still growing quickly.
|
| What moat are you referring to? AFAICT, moats are bigger now than
| ever before, but the moats I see are centered around things like
| consumer habits and B2B contracts and hub/platform experiences.
| People tend to like the software they know & have, or the
| contractors they know already, even when they complain about it.
| The need to overcome static friction is a moat, one that makes it
| harder for startups to get in, but easier to stay once you're in.
|
| Big companies are slow. It seems like it would be easy for them
| to copy products, but they rarely do, and even when they try they
| take forever. Worry about yourself first, whether you can
| deliver, whether your product is superior, whether you can get
| customers, whether your business is sustainable, etc.. Worry
| about other startups second. They can copy faster than big
| companies. Do you have an edge over other startups? Don't worry
| about the big companies. If they aren't already solving the
| problem you want to solve, they won't start until after you're
| successful.
|
| Note acquisitions are a thing! Big companies that want to copy
| your product are aware that the fastest way to do that is to
| acquire a working solution and a pile of new customers. You
| should be thinking about big companies more as opportunity than
| competition.
| 762236 wrote:
| You're asking an orthodox and conservative audience who have time
| to be on HN
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Depends on your market. Enterprise is hard to crack. B2B you can
| sneak in via grassroots but it requires building a guerilla
| marketing presence, B2C is a hit business model with on average
| deep pocket requirements.
|
| Little moat, but also little thresholds. The only way to not win
| 100% is not to play.
| e9 wrote:
| It's the best time to start a company. Few people can build
| anything now. Big companies are at a huge disadvantage now
| because they can't be personal. Software development is going
| decentralized. You can go to a bunch of businesses and be
| personal, and develop personalized solutions for them in person.
| You only need few such clients to be profitable and have
| lifestyle business.
| obirunda wrote:
| Software moats were never really a moat in and of themselves. You
| always had to be a first mover. It's true that there are fewer
| and fewer first mover opportunities, but that has less to do with
| recent LLMs advancements and more that we have already solved a
| lot of software problems on first principles. It's partially why
| LLMs work so well, they are pulling the "widgets" from
| distribution and synthesizing into your requirements. Before, we
| probably thought we were writing novelty when it was literally
| solved 1000x over.
|
| If you aren't a first mover, your success was always dependent on
| other skills and great execution across multiple disciplines, and
| also a lot of stubbornness. The software layer has always been
| important, but a support role of successful enterprises. Start-
| ups have always been hard to pull together successfully for a lot
| of other reasons unrelated to code.
|
| If you find a disruptive algorithm (like pagerank) there is
| little evidence that LLMs will infer your solution by looking at
| your app. Anything else, they are just design choices and have
| never been moats either, but say you have a qualitative edge,
| you'll make the choices that can create a recognizable brand
| where someone vibing a copycat may not care as much. Nothing has
| changed on this. Your chance of succeeding rests on your ability
| to reach your users and iterate in a crowded space, this is what
| you always had to do anyway.
|
| There are things, however, that aren't worth working on anymore
| with the advent of LLMs. Some of these have been fully dismissed,
| for example sentiment analysis. A single API call for the
| cheapest (even local) LLM vendor will give you SOTA
| classification. There are many more examples but they are so
| obvious. Essentially, the "build me 1 billion dollar app" prompt
| will never work, so if you have a burning desire to build
| something, do it. Just remember, there never was and never will
| be a promise of unlimited fortunes whatever you do.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Big companies aren't the problem.
|
| Finding customers is the difficult part.
| segmondy wrote:
| If you have to ask, then the answer is no.
| devld wrote:
| It depends on what you are pursuing. Software was never a true
| moat for the really hot stuff. See books Zero to One, 7 Powers.
| It can be moat when you have something extremely complex, like
| for Unreal Engine, software actually is the moat. However, when
| it comes to regular software, everything was always prone to
| being copied. Will it be copied, it depends entirely on what's
| for the grabs for someone else to copy it. If you have a mature
| SaaS, that already has some competitors, what does anyone gain by
| copying it if the projection for building a sustainable business
| is very small? Personally I am building something that is
| relatively complex (much more complex / non-standard than a CRUD
| and likely not in Claude training data, and something that would
| be a very bad idea to write it in AI slop due to security issues)
| and relatively niche, something that a well funded startup would
| never dream about building, yet something that a smaller team
| would have a difficult time to compete with me, LLMs or not.
| Pavel_V wrote:
| no
| softwaredoug wrote:
| The moat for small company is the lower coordination overhead
| than bigger companies, not about the effort of writing code.
|
| Big companies try to balance a lot of stakeholders, the
| collection of all their requirements makes them risk adverse and
| creates wasted effort. I've been on a lot of projects (pre AI
| coding) with rewrites and changes that have more to do with
| politics and org changes, lack of vision, and needless veto
| points.
|
| That's the small software company advantage still IMO
| saluki wrote:
| YES, now is the best time in history to build a software startup.
|
| Copying isn't your biggest worry.
| journal wrote:
| Yes if people have to learn how to use it. Make something that
| will last centuries not just a couple of decades. 700 years ago
| they invented double-entry method of accounting which is still
| used today. Relational databases were invented recently as well
| and will survive well past most front-end frameworks. Eventually
| skynet will be invented but no one believes me just like no one
| would have believed that aluminum tubes would be flying through
| the sky or enriching uranium. If before you couldn't open a
| winapi window, now you can do that in one sentence instruction,
| and you'll have a good starting point. Things are changing. Look
| at accounting, accountants don't even do accounting anymore,
| they're just QB users.
| sodafountan wrote:
| Sure, the world still needs software. Perhaps even more so now
| with the advent of AI.
|
| There's still a ridiculously minuscule chance that you'll end up
| profitable, let alone successful.
|
| I read that software, from a business perspective, is almost
| always looked at as a liability rather than an asset. There just
| isn't very much profitable software in this world, and the
| software that can become profitable likely subsidizes its
| business with advertising. The only saving grace is that software
| that becomes profitable can typically scale. See Facebook,
| TikTok, Google.
|
| Games sell but are risky and creatively demanding.
|
| Software is a tough business.
| silexia wrote:
| The biggest problem is the government has made it more and more
| difficult to start a business, both through fees, especially
| through taxes, and very especially through all the regulations.
| level09 wrote:
| Software startups still work, but only if software is not the
| point.
|
| Code is now cheap, so the advantage moved into things that cannot
| be copied by looking, accumulated data, hidden workflows, trust,
| and judgment earned by staying inside a problem too long.
|
| Big companies copy shapes, not gravity. If your edge is visible,
| it is temporary. If it only appears over time, you are still
| early.
| vlod wrote:
| Try and go for $100 MRR (pay for servers and some pizza). Big
| companies won't go for that.
|
| Try another idea (while still running the above). Go for $1000
| MMR. Still too small.
|
| This is harder than you think and will teach you incredible
| skills. Next: keep going. :)
|
| DISCLAIMER: obviously don't quit your job/starve/become homeless
| etc to try this.
| wavemode wrote:
| Big companies are very bad at developing new software.
|
| That's why it's so common for successful software startups to
| eventually get acquired. Big companies know that it's a lot more
| efficient for them to spend money simply buying someone who did
| the thing, than spending money and taking on a bunch of risk
| trying to do the thing themselves.
| lukasm wrote:
| Google won't copy anything unless is super strategic or generates
| $$$ (100M ARR?).
| fathermarz wrote:
| You gotta find a niche these days and do it well. No longer can
| there be generalist software. Find underserved industries that
| aren't "cool" per se, but still have problems.
|
| Have heard from multiple investors that they think boring
| software is the next wave, rather than a new UI/UX/Productivity
| way of doing things.
| musicale wrote:
| Yes, if you have customers who need your software and are willing
| to pay for it.
| gethly wrote:
| Yes, but not SaaS or services in general but products. And focus
| on B2B, not B2C because money in B2C is there only for huge
| companies whereas if you hit the right niche, you can make bank
| with B2B.
|
| Also, disregard any "success stories", as they are 99.999% funded
| by a massive piles of money and immeasurable amount of
| connections in high and right places, that you never hear of.
| didip wrote:
| It depends how surgical your product market fit is and how fast
| you capture the identified market.
|
| Everything else is just details and it doesn't matter if the idea
| is rehashed a million times.
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