[michaeljx]

I ve been bootstrapping a one-man tech company my self, and with 100usd/month I have the following facilities: managed db with weekly backups, managed kubernetes with autoscaling(DO), ci/cd (GitHub + self hosted runners), VPN meshing (tailscale), and a bunch of other open source tools (airflow, selenium, etc). This would have required an entire IT department only 5-7 years ago

[vagab0nd]

If it's easy for you, it's easy for your competitors too. IMHO, how easy it is to start a startup is dictated by the competition, not the accessibility of the underlying technology. The tech is always the state of the art at the current time. But that doesn't have any bearing on markets, resources, hiring, etc.

[michaeljx]

I agree but with a different frame of reference. How easy it is to start a startup is not dictated by how easy it is for your competitors to start one, but by how big of a moat the incumbents have. With all these tools available to me now, that moat is becoming smaller and smaller

[ldjkfkdsjnv]

Not really, competitors can be antiquated. A ten year old tech stack can be very hard to pivot away from, and easy to catch up to with modern programming

[vagab0nd]

Yes, and that has always been the case. We are trying to figure out why it's different now.