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Ideas are cheap, execution is cheaper
51–60 of 120 posts
Re: Ideas are cheap, execution is cheaper
#52Baseline execution is cheaper. An LLM is not going to help you build a unique business.
"AI startups say the promise of turning dazzling models into useful products is harder than anyone expected":
https://www.wired.com/story/artificial-intelligence-startups...
This is not new. There is tech that enables new possibilities, but it's not a f---ing magic wand.
Re: Ideas are cheap, execution is cheaper
#53When software becomes cheap to build, a lot of strange second-order effects kick in. It’s not just that products are easier to create; sales, marketing, and every other business function can iterate faster alongside them. That speed erodes moats. As this reality sinks in, I think we’re headed for a brutal shakeout in SaaS. People still argue that distribution is the real bottleneck now. But when the product itself is…
I think that we should discern between nonfunctional and functional requirements. Right now, implementation of functional requirements can be done very fast, with the effects that you mention. But nonfunctional requirements such as reliability, performance and security are still extremely hard to get right, because they not only need code but many correct organizational decisions to be achieved. As customers connect…
"As customers connect these nonfunctional requirements with a brand, I don't see how big SaaS players will have a problem."
Brand means almost nothing when a competitor can price the software at 90% cheaper. Which is what we are going to see
Re: Ideas are cheap, execution is cheaper
#54Re: Ideas are cheap, execution is cheaper
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
No moat? In the software industry? My decades of experience suggests that the opposite will happen. People will realize that the software industry is 100% moat and 0% castle. People will build great software that nobody will use while a few companies will continue to dominate with vaporware.
Yes, the moat is disappearing. Go look at any stock index of publicly traded saas companies, they have all been selling off 50% in the last six months. This is going to be a bloodbath
Thats just not true. $CRM is at worst flat looking back 1 year. $IGV, software ETF is the same. Definitely not down 50%.
Re: Ideas are cheap, execution is cheaper
#56> I’m not exaggerating. And neither is anyone else. > Stack Overflow, the site that defined a generation of software development, received 3,710 questions last month. That’s barely above the 3,749 it got in its first month of existence. The entire knowledge-sharing infrastructure we built our careers on is collapsing because people don’t need to ask anymore. "Because people don't need to ask anymore."?! Yeah, I would…
Dude decided to completely ignore how hostile SO became in the last years, because obviously it is AI and not "DUPLICATE", "RTFM", -100 downvotes for asking "simple" question, questions unanswered for decades, etc.
Re: Ideas are cheap, execution is cheaper
#57I don't see much discussion on maintenance of software built by LLMs using LLMs.
We already know the hard part of software engineering is designing and implementing code that is maintainable.
Can LLMs reliably create software and maintain it transparently without bringing in regressions ? How do people with no knowledge of software guide LLMs to build quality test suite to prevent regressions ?
Or is it the expectation that every new major release is effectively a rewrite from scratch ? Don't they have to maintain consistency with the UI, database and other existing artifacts.
Re: Ideas are cheap, execution is cheaper
#58When software becomes cheap to build, a lot of strange second-order effects kick in. It’s not just that products are easier to create; sales, marketing, and every other business function can iterate faster alongside them. That speed erodes moats. As this reality sinks in, I think we’re headed for a brutal shakeout in SaaS. People still argue that distribution is the real bottleneck now. But when the product itself is…
Quality may become the defining factor. Anybody can vibe code software, but only someone who is actually capable of programming themselves and has some understanding of what good UX looks like, how to fix bugs (often subtle and not caught by LLMs), and how to achieve high performance and low resource consumption can build high quality software.
I think developers who have an inclination towards UI/UX and a good grip on the technical side are particularly well positioned right now.
Re: Ideas are cheap, execution is cheaper
#59When software becomes cheap to build, a lot of strange second-order effects kick in. It’s not just that products are easier to create; sales, marketing, and every other business function can iterate faster alongside them. That speed erodes moats. As this reality sinks in, I think we’re headed for a brutal shakeout in SaaS. People still argue that distribution is the real bottleneck now. But when the product itself is…
> Historically, sales was hard because you had to design and refine a sales motion around a product while your statement is true - this is actually a very minor reason why sales is hard.
I’m well aware of what makes sales difficult—I’ve lived it, both in early-stage, venture-backed environments and in long, enterprise sales cycles. In SaaS, almost everything about how sales works ultimately ties back to the cost of building software. Relationships and customer trust absolutely matter, but when building SaaS becomes trivial, the underlying equations change—and many of the old assumptions stop holding.
Re: Ideas are cheap, execution is cheaper
#60Sigh. Lines of code is not execution man. Having functional apps is not execution. A full stack, AWS-deployed, multi-stage scaleable microservices wonder is not execution!
LLMs make it a lot easier to build MVPs, but the hard work of VALIDATING problems and their solutions, which IMO was always >80% of the work for a successful founder, is harder than ever. With AI we now get 100 almost-useful solutions for every real problem.