[briandoll]

I'm not sure "hard to replicate technology" is a moat I'd often bet on, given that by definition that does not deliver any specific advantage to your customer.

User Experience. Developer Experience. Community. Those are moats you can bet on primarily because it takes so much dedication, expertise, and work. That's not easy to buy.

[throwno]

Ultimately, you are right. Innovative proprietary tech just doesn't matter in software. I want to believe it does, so I don't feel that I've wasted my life learning to build software. Seems like hardware and medical are the only places where innovation creates value. A software company being no different from a salty snack company is sad to admit. On the other hand starting some new brand of potato chips or soda can't be any worse than making a webapp to squat a SaaS microniche that you don't care about.

[throwno]

>User Experience. Developer Experience. Community.

But that's what I'm saying. If you find some solution to a problem that's making decent money, some guy with big capital will just come in and "fast follow" you with better user experience and advertise the shit out of it until they have a better or at least more active community. Like suppose this guy's admissions scheduling app actually started making money. Why wouldn't some big player like Pearson just come in and roll him? They can easily hire a bunch of guys to copy what he's doing and then leverage their existing relationships with the education industry to lock him out.

[mrmanner]

While Pearson have the advantage of some connections at universities and in the education sector, they also have the disadvantage of being a large and slow organization. Hiring 25 people won’t get you a better product than that lone wolf has, unless you (the one hiring the 25 people) have the vision and understanding of what those 25 people are going to build.

And from what I’ve seen of Pearson, I highly doubt they have a clue. Their existing business survives due to market inertia, but they’re very far from delivering quality products.

[__jal]

Education is a very "enterprisey" market in which the purchasers are not the users, who are essentially powerless.

Pearson doesn't need to deliver quality, they need to deliver functional + whatever sweetener on the rest of the contract to keep out the competition.