[showerst]

This AI boom is just a hyper-version of previous tech booms (web 1.0, VC, crypto, etc). You have an enormous number of people who just want to get in and build something, but the products they are pumping out don't serve anyone's need or solve anyone's problem.

The moat isn't money for out-marketing your idea that 750 other people are building, it's having a good idea that solves a problem that nobody else is solving well.

[neom]

I worked during the digital revolution in film, I've told the story a zillion times on HN but basically, I went through the first pure digital film program in Canada, by the time I graduated 70% had dropped out, as far as I know I'm the only one who made a proper go at it, and even then when my startup was taking off, a new hot shot would show up every month and be gone the next when they got bored or frustrated when nobody thought they were special. Tools are tools.

[ncphillips]

> a new hot shot would show up every month and be gone the next when they got bored or frustrated when nobody thought they were special

I don't know much about film industry, and I have a ton of brainfog from being sick today.

Could you say more? What made them a hotshot? They thought they were like, creative geniuses with digital film or something?

[neom]

They often WERE creative geniuses with a digital camera! Brilliant people! In fact they were the ones who came and went the fastest, what makes you useful in industry is very frequently nothing to do with genius or creativity or mastery of the tools. It's things like reliability, stability, team spirit, open mindedness etc.

Creative genius is one game, but it's far from the only, or even, main one.

Hope you feel better. <3

[curiouscavalier]

yeah this is really a part of it. Both founders and investors get spooked by the rapid entries into a market but persistent not just when it’s hard but when it’s boring goes so much farther.

[boplicity]

> the products they are pumping out don't serve anyone's need or solve anyone's problem.

This isn't true though.

Yes, there are too many products being build that don't serve anyone's needs or solve anyone's problems.

However, many of the AI products do solve problems and serve needs.

You're right though, to compare this to other booms, which also had the same problem. This is very much a "hyper" version, which is pretty incredible to be in the middle of.

[showerst]

I don't mean that _all_ AI built stuff is useless, just that the number of products where 'marketing budget' is the bottleneck is dwarfed by the number of tools that aren't that special in the first place.

If you have a product that:

1. Solves a real problem people would pay for

2. Is not trivially replicable by your potential customers or competitors

3. Does not have a natural discovery mechanism by potential customers

Then you need the marketing budget.

That is not most people's problem.

[arrsingh]

I think item #2 in your list is the real kicker here. Given that AI can write code the threshold for "trivially replicable" is going down.

Unless your thing has strong network effects or a large capex requirement (ex: GPU infra) its easily replicated and I think that's really what makes things hard.

[sarchertech]

Most business software that was truly trivially replicable with AI, was already trivially replicable with the prototyping tools we had available.

[tjwebbnorfolk]

Ok but pick any category of human endeavor and 80% of it is garbage in the beginning. There were 3000 car companies in the 1920s, and most of them sucked, and so they died. The market over time will sort out who survives and who does not.

It will take a few years for investors to figure this out, but in the meantime, everyone is spreading their bets around like peanut butter in order to be in the game.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> However, many of the AI products do solve problems and serve needs.

Every solution to a problem comes with its own costs. It is entirely possible that most solutions that are rooted in modern computing technology have actual or perceived costs that exceed the value of "solving the problem".

The problems that most people have that they really want to solve are not addressable by AI, or computers, or software.

[clickety_clack]

This seems to me like the few booms I’ve seen before. Absolutely crazy valuations with very little behind them, massive hype, everyone’s unemployed uncle suddenly becoming a shallow expert. It’s probably going to end the same way too, once the upward momentum dissipates and things start to retreat to “fundamentals”, we’ll find out that there were a lot fewer solid points in the market than we were all told to expect, so the fundamentals are actually pretty far down. After 5 to 10 years of regrouping, a more mature and solid version will come about and become such a normal part of life we barely even remember what it was like without it.

[steveBK123]

We are well on our way to the popping of inflated expectations.

Currently people are taking AI hype too seriously and extrapolating its success out in such a way as to discount the value of other businesses.

Example - last week a bunch of trucking stocks crashed 10-20% because a $6M company that pivoted from Karaoke to AI demoed something.

This is just insane. Sure, if say Waymo is pivoting into commercial trucking.. maybe. But people are basically shorting minutemaid lemonade because their neighbors kids opened up a lemonade stand. Demos are easy, products are hard.

[RC_ITR]

It's like that FT chart claiming that the rapid rise in iOS apps is evidence of an AI-fueled productivity boom.

I always ask people, in the past year, how many AI-coded apps have you 1) downloaded 2) paid for?

[sarchertech]

In addition to that, what they don’t mention is that:

1. Other app stores like Google Play and Steam haven’t seen this rapid rise.

2. There are thousands maybe tens of thousands of apps that are just wrappers calling OpenAI APIs or similar low effort AI apps making up a large percentage of this increase.

3. There are billions of dollars pouring into AI startups and many of them launch an iOS app.

[vkou]

Has steam not seen a rapid rise in AI-asset shovelware?

I'm not talking about the AAA or the AA or even the A space (where AI is being incorporated into dev processes with various degrees of both success and low effort slop), I'm talking about the actual bottom of the barrel.

[Jensson]

You never needed AI to make shovelware, you have been able to make a shitty game over a weekend ever since RPG maker was made and there are still games made using that.

AI just helps create some assets for games, it doesn't really make it easier or faster to make games but they might look a bit better.

[sarchertech]

I can’t speak to the quality of all the games released, but in January 2025 there were 1,413 games released on Steam and in January of this year there were 1,448.

[esseph]

> I always ask people, in the past year, how many AI-coded apps have you 1) downloaded 2) paid for?

In the past 5 years, the only "new" app I've added to my phone has been Claude.ai.

Before that I guess DoorDash. And that probably covers the past 7ish years of phone use.

There's just too much shit in the store, a lot of it is scammy or has dark patterns.

For me, "app stores" are largely dead.

[disgruntledphd2]

> It's like that FT chart claiming that the rapid rise in iOS apps is evidence of an AI-fueled productivity boom.

I mean, there is evidence for some change. Personally, I'm sceptical of what this will amount to, but prior to EOY 2025, there really wasn't any evidence for an app/service boom, and now there's weak evidence, which is better than none.

[_DeadFred_]

Because so much technical functionality has been lost/paywalled/dark patterned/enshitified, I've cut the number of apps I use. I've realized building core personal functionality around the whims of corporations eventually just gets weaponized against me, so I might as well start undoing that on my own terms. Who in 2026 is really bringing in a new app/Saas to do much of anything like we naively did a decade ago? No one I know, we've been shown we will be treated as suckers for doing that.

[cosmic_cheese]

> …it's having a good idea that solves a problem that nobody else is solving well.

Added emphasis to the most crucial part, in my opinion.

If you can manage to deliver a product that's meaningfully better than the competition, you still have an edge, so long as you're competent at marketing.

Nothing gets people searching for alternatives as consistently as frustration, and a product that was lazily built with AI (vibe coded or otherwise) is going to be full of bugs and papercuts that make using it a poor experience.

This is particularly true for software that sits in the hot path of peoples' workflows, where thoughtless design, misbehavior, and poor optimization chip away at time the user can't afford to spare.

In short: yes, competition will be plentiful but it will also be almost entirely awful, and capable SWEs can capitalize on that. It won't take much to stand out amongst the mountains of garbage that will be generated in the coming years.

[lelanthran]

> The moat isn't money for out-marketing your idea that 750 other people are building, it's having a good idea that solves a problem that nobody else is solving well.

This is a very naive take. Any good idea you have can now be cloned trivial in no time at all.

The clones just need to out spend you on marketing even though it is your idea that the LLM cloned.

[prmph]

So where are the AI clones of MS Office, JetBrains IDEs, Whatsapp, Obsidian, etc. so far?

[lelanthran]

Obsidian has plenty of clones. The others have money as a moat, which is exactly my point.

[prmph]

Which clones? And why not the others?

Which is my point: it seems easy to clone something that seems conceptually simple, but is the result of all kinds of UI, UX, performance, etc optimizations. The reason someone might choose Obsidian over these so called clones is not just marketing, I assure you. The reason people attempt Obsidian clones is that they think creating todo-list management tools, etc is all it takes to implement a PKM, and that that is easy. It is not.

Right now there are kinds of tools I wished existed, that I would pay for, but AI does not automatically provide the insight, good taste, technical excellence, and grit needed to create these products. I could do them, with AI assisting, but do not have the time. It is not a simple matter of saying: Claude, create or clone X, Y, Z.

[lelanthran]

> Which clones?

Are you seriously contending that apps that have Obsidians functionality don't exist?

Just on HN alone, throughout 2023 - 2025 we were seing like one new TODO app show up on HN weekly!

> And why not the others?

Because money is the moat, and they have it!

That was my entire point - money is the moat.

[gzread]

You have failed to provide a single example of an Obsidian clone.

[prmph]

You are not making sense.

> Just on HN alone, throughout 2023 - 2025 we were seing like one new TODO app show up on HN weekly!

This response shows you missed my point entirely. I am saying a todo app does not a PKM make! I'm not interested in a vibe-coded todo app, it is useless to me.

> Because money is the moat, and they have it!

You're sidestepping issue and contradicting yourself. I asked: if cloning is so easy, why has no one cloned the JetBrains IDEs, for example?

Remember, I'm not talking about what happens after the cloning. Are you saying no one has cloned Jetbrains because it takes a lot of money to do so? That would contradict your claim that AI makes it easy.

[billconan]

how to prevent others from building a copycat using ai?

[caminante]

The discussion here is going sideways, and I blame the underwhelming blog post.

Having money is NOT an economic moat-- i.e., a durable, structural competitive advantage.

He overlooks broader, true definition of moat attributes like labor supply, infrastructure, PP&E, brand, network, natural monopolies, switching costs, regulation. These don't go away with commoditized CRUD apps.

And quoting someone with decades of experience implying that things are hard now and innovation didn't turn over industries in the last 25+ years is a joke.

[RGamma]

The more I think about it the more brainrot the article really is. As if all problems are solved and pumping out soulless shovelware companies is worth anything. It really is "just one more app" all over again.

[maeln]

Knowledge ? For b2c it might be more difficult, but in b2b, understanding your customer and their specifics issue and developing something made for them is one of the big challenge. Being able to spit out code for free is useless if you don't know what and who you are making the code for.

[ativzzz]

The same way you prevented this previously. Copying successful products is nothing new, AI just makes it easier.

Marketing, lawyers, good customer support, creating relationships with customers.

[Daishiman]

You work on niches that have very specific requirements that you can only derive from having a good relationship with customers and so you attend to those needs faster than competitors who are out of the loop.

[billconan]

> you attend to those needs faster than competitors

I wonder if this type of hustling can be called moat building?

[rvz]

Let's just say, building software alone is not enough.

[Bnjoroge]

You cant. You can only focus on building your own product and making it durable and just much better

[elbear]

by keeping the how part a secret

[g947o]

You don't.

[koolba]

> The moat isn't money for out-marketing your idea that 750 other people are building, it's having a good idea that solves a problem that nobody else is solving well.

An idea is not a moat. Execution is only a moat if being nimble is part of the ongoing offering.

[_DeadFred_]

Historically, during booms like this (for example the industrial revolution), it was, because we had patent protections in order to encourage ideas to be brought to market. I don't see how you can have an AI revolution that doesn't just funnel everything to the top without something similar.

Why invent the cotton gin, find investors, and bring it to market if the steel company with the infinite worker machine can instantly compete with you?

[joe_the_user]

Well, if someone could create a drop-in replacement for Oracle-DB, Adobe Creative or AutoCad in a month of vibe-coding, I think they could prosper without having their own good idea. I would like to see something like this.

But if you're just talking the fairly simple apps that a single very talented programmer could pump out before this, sure, yeah.

[zahlman]

20 years ago, people told me ideas were a dime a dozen and implementation was what counted....

[_DeadFred_]

Not really. It's money/resources. I had some really useful apps I built for myself. I looked at releasing them, but there were companies whose business model was waiting for people like me to release apps that solve a problem, and then just instantly jump on creating a solution and outcompeting the independent app.

It's trivial for competitors with bigger pockets to outcompete you on your idea, and there are companies whose business model is just that. And with AI customers are trying to do it themselves as well. The only startup I wouldn't be nervous about as a small team without large financial backing would be ones where we start out partnered to multiple companies in the targeted industry so that we can leverage that connection.

Historically this is why we have copyright/patent laws. To make it make sense for people to try to bring their ideas to the world. But with everything changing we are back to everyone just sitting on their concepts/solutions unless they have big money behind them.

[casey2]

No, the moat is having a seemingly good "scalable" idea that solves a problem a few people have and most people think they have. Then getting bought out.

The zip2s and OpenClaws of the world

[Bnjoroge]

Eh, there's some truth it both. The truth is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. Distribution absolutely matters, often times even more than the product. And vice versa

[PlatoIsADisease]

Buddy, my wife vibe coded an app that solves her PTO tracking problem in 1 shot.

Her payroll company was going to charge her an extra $200 a month.

[paulryanrogers]

Go on