[danenania]

"As for CRUD type apps, you are probably right but its the bits that aren't CRUD which add the most value to your product."

I'm sympathetic to your point, but I don't think this is necessarily true. What adds the most value to a product is determined by economics. It has nothing to do with whether an app is doing basic crud or nlp wizardry underneath, just whether it does something people find useful. There are tons of basic crud apps out there making people millionaires.

[stickfigure]

There are tons of basic crud apps out there making people millionaires.

Name three.

Economics drives both demand and supply. CRUD apps are easy to make; the market for most CRUD-only apps is heavily saturated with competitors, so the differentiating value of your application is not likely to be your ability to perform CRUD operations. Put it this way - if you come up with a CRUD app that does something staggeringly valuable, expect strong competitors in days not years. Your chance to make millions is small.

[chc]

I heard about this Facebook thing the other day. They seem to be doing all right for themselves.

[pointyhatuk]

Perhaps my point wasn't quite described as well as it could have been. What I meant to say was:

What distinguishes your product is not how it stores or presents the data but what value it derives or extracts from that data.

Most CRUD apps are just a form of lock in which provide no value past storing your stuff in one place. That covers pretty much the entire enterprise software space and most trendy startups these days.