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by deaux 71 days ago
Among all apps that do $1M ARR, the share that got there through particular software expertise that only few people had, has been exceedingly small for a very long time now.

Another similar but different point: no software development expertise doesn't mean no other expertise. As an extreme example, good luck building tax software with zero tax expertise. This applies to tons of niches.

A third point - lots of this increase in apps is from people who do have software expertise. They're now just able to create things they didn't have the time for, despite their expertise.
1 comments
saltyoldman 71 days ago
I think the counterpoint to that is if a tax expert and 1 coder that vibes can now compete against TaxActOnline or FreeTaxUSA (or any number of large ones out there today), whereas those existing companies built their solution with hundreds of developers.

I mean someone can literally make a tax app now asking the user to just snap a picture of their w2 and any other tax forms from banks they received, and submit in 15 seconds.

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deaux 71 days ago
But that's not a counterpoint at all, that's exactly what I'm saying:

"Among all apps that do $1M ARR, the share that got there through particular software expertise that only few people had, has been exceedingly small for a very long time now."

There are basic flashlight apps, file explorer apps, qr code scanner apps and so on making lots of money. Note taking apps, calendar apps, a billion tile-matching games, we can go on and on. The fact that they're easy to code and lots of SWEs could code one, doesn't mean none of them are making good money. LLMs change nothing about that concept, it just expanded it to more fields.

> I think the counterpoint to that is if a tax expert and 1 coder that vibes

Sure, tax is one where there is a huge population of "tax experts" who could help with this, though I don't think that combination is even close to being enough FWIW. Plenty of niches where this population isn't this big and the pie is a lot smaller, yet still big enough for one person to earn a very sweet living.

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