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Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?

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Re: Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?

#211

Post by port11 »

skeptic_ai wrote: post #121
swiftcoder wrote: post #103

Big companies are not your worry in most cases. They have so much bureaucracy and internal politics that it's often cheaper for them to buy out the up-and-coming startups than it is to build in-house. Instead, if you achieve success without much of a moat, you will be cloned by one of the "App Store mills". These are companies who employ multiple small teams (think 3-4 people), and each team is charged with cloning o…

Rocket Internet Is one of these copycat business style.

I worked for them and even interviewed to be founder of one of their spin-offs. GP’s comment has nothing to do with Rocket’s model. Zero.

And that’s coming from someone that despises Rocket for what they did to my workplace, the parent company, all teams I knew, and all colleagues I met from other projects.

App mills don’t respect anything at all, Rocket at least is Lawful Evil.

Re: Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?

#212

Post by port11 »

utopiah wrote: post #90
robofanatic wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mark Zuckerberg has had “AGI” for over a decade in the form of tens of thousands of human software engineers This makes me think that companies like Open AI, Anthropic etc are simply new types of body shoppers. body shoppers don’t have their own products they just supply talent to help other companies make products and services.

Mechanical Turk at scale.

MeTAS, ironic since quite some AI companies ended up in the news for using humans when they claimed it was AI.

Re: Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?

#213

Post by AbstractH24 »

bpodgursky wrote: post #3

You're gonna get a lot of positive responses here, but frankly only do it if you think you can make meaningful money within a month or two. Everything is going off the rails this year. You only have to use Claude Code for 10 minutes to realize every job involving a computer is going to get flipped upside down within a year.

> Everything is going off the rails this year. […] every job involving a computer is going to get flipped upside down within a year.

Didn’t we say that last year?

Re: Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?

#214

Post by investbot »

Absolutely, if your moat isn't the code, but a deep understanding of a specific problem and speed. We're building InvestBot for investors who lose money not because of bad stocks, but because they panic and break their own rules.

Big companies don't copy this because:

The problem is too niche and behavioral (not "how to get returns," but "how to enforce your own discipline").

Their game is scale; ours is depth of trust. We see this with our 200+ beta users: 64% ran portfolio scans more than twice, 12% immediately said they'd pay $20-30/month for rule monitoring. That's not a forecast—it's existing, paying demand for discipline.

Speed vs. bureaucracy. Our engine, which analyzes thousands of historical scenarios against user-defined constraints, was built by two people in 5 months. A large corporation would still be aligning on a roadmap in that time.

The takeaway: Code is a commodity. The real moat in 2026 is speed, focus on a real pain point, and the ability to turn users into a community that trusts your approach more than a magic pill.

Re: Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?

#215

Post by robofanatic »

port11 wrote: post #212
utopiah wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mechanical Turk at scale.

MeTAS, ironic since quite some AI companies ended up in the news for using humans when they claimed it was AI.

And a lot of companies call themselves “AI companies” because their developers use copilot to generate code.

Re: Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?

#216

Post by [deleted] »

tietjens wrote: post #154
skeptic_ai wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rocket Internet Is one of these copycat business style.

Rocket Internet is often engaged in arbitrage where they bring an existing company’s idea to a different country or context. This is very different from the flood-the-zone astroturfing discussed above. Zalando is its own company employing ~5k engineers. This isn’t a copycat I would claim. But maybe you’re referring to practices I am not aware of.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?

#217

Post by gnz11 »

rubenvanwyk wrote: post #37
acrooks wrote: post #4

In my experience (enterprise software), customers buy our products not because we have a moat or some hard-to-achieve technical advantage but because they can speak to us in their words, they know we care, and we try solve their problems quickly. Just yesterday I was speaking with the COO of a $200M/yr revenue company in the supply chain space. He'd learned Claude Code and built a couple apps to solve internal proble…

This should be the top comment. The thing about growth of businesses overall, is that they want outsourced capacity (that’s what employees or contractors are) and that dynamic doesn’t go away because of AI, because like the comment mentioned, it’s not reliable enough in the sense that it can accept high-context vague instructions and ‘figure it out’ like an enterprise developer can.

No, they want "outsourced capacity" from contractors with domain specific expertise. Too many freelance/indie contractors on here scratching their heads as to why to can't land clients or jobs — you need domain expertise and experience, not just the ability to write code.

Re: Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?

#219

Post by pendenthistory »

qgin wrote: post #64

It’s still hard to create something successful. Remember that Mark Zuckerberg has had “AGI” for over a decade in the form of tens of thousands of human software engineers and Facebook still has barely been able to create a new successful product on their own without acquiring it from a smaller company.

Damn, that is an interesting point

Re: Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?

#220

Post by ranger_danger »

scotty79 wrote: post #210
ranger_danger wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their revenue last year was 400 billion dollars... you tell us.

They are still milking the product they launched 20 years ago, doing slight periodic updates to match innovations of others with few years delay. They are about as good at making new products as Google and Facebook.

I'd say it depends on your definition of "good", since the revenue seems to suggest they're doing something most people agree with.
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