Execution is cheap? How about you try a video game, and not 3 obvious and worthless automations I could have made as a quick fix at lunch time.
Ideas are cheap, execution is cheaper
71–80 of 120 posts
Re: Ideas are cheap, execution is cheaper
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
By that logic, Microsoft’s brand means nothing when OpenOffice is free.
Re: Ideas are cheap, execution is cheaper
#73Ideas are cheap for a very narrow vision of "ideas". Sure, you can build your recipe site, TODO list or whatever it is cheaply and quickly without a single thought, but LLMs are still just assembling lots of open-source libraries _mostly_ written by humans into giant piles of spaghetti. There's a hilarious thread on Twitter where someone "built a browser" using an LLM feedback loop and it just pasted together a bunch…
The "built a browser" example you gave reminded me how I've "built a browser" as a kid in the 90s using Visual Basic (or something similar) - I've simply dragged the browser view widget, added an input and some buttons that called functions from the widget and there you go, another browser ready :-)
Re: Ideas are cheap, execution is cheaper
#74It's interesting that the the author created three saas over the weekend as some sort of proof that execution is useless now. But would any company ever buy one of these? No, because for a company to buy your saas you need salespeople or some marketing channel, compliance and regulatory checkmarks, SSO integrations, ability to take and implement special feature requests, SLAs, maintenance and support capacity, etc.
That's the execution part of creating a successful business and it's still entirely missing.
Re: Ideas are cheap, execution is cheaper
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Right now, you can take the raw html and css of a competitors website/saas product, give it to claude code, and it will rewrite your react/nextjs app to match the quality and style of the assets you gave it. You are underestimating how quickly these supposed moats have been decimated
I’ve been using Claude and it’s decent… sometimes. It’s still capable of making rookie mistakes and it will happily let those accrue if you don’t point them out (and even then, occasionally it won’t see the problem). Personal technical familiarity with the domain still brings a lot to the table.
Re: Ideas are cheap, execution is cheaper
#76It's interesting that the the author created three saas over the weekend as some sort of proof that execution is useless now. But would any company ever buy one of these? No, because for a company to buy your saas you need salespeople or some marketing channel, compliance and regulatory checkmarks, SSO integrations, ability to take and implement special feature requests, SLAs, maintenance and support capacity, etc. T…
[deleted]
Re: Ideas are cheap, execution is cheaper
#77i find it extremely ironic that he said he built 3 of these things in a weekend, and expects me to pay 100$/mo for one of them. You've just basically stated how dead simple it is to build it, I'm certainly not paying you that and instead going to build my own (although I didn't need an article to tell me this).
Matter of fact, the broader point of this entire article and my experience with AI so far as a veteran in the industry, I lean towards quickly building things now rather than paying for SaaS products, unless it's far too complex and not worth it.
A lot of cost of mature SaaS products come from security, scaling, expensive sales teams, etc. For me, if I have something sandboxed, not available to the public, and only powerful enough to serve only _me_ as a customer, then I don't need to pay those extra costs and I can build something a lot simpler, while still maintaining the core feature that I need.
Re: Ideas are cheap, execution is cheaper
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
I don't think you are correct. Take for example something like workday where companies manage their HR data. It's not only about the web interface but also about the fact that all of the implemented IT processes have been checked to be legally correct for each country, that the website is resilient to hackers and has availability that covers their customer's needs. You can't copy that without building a large org such as workday.
Even on a technical level the interfaces with country-specific legacy software used all over the place are so badly documented the AI won't help you to shortcut these kind of integrations. There are not 10k stackoverflow posts about each piece of niche software to train from.
Re: Ideas are cheap, execution is cheaper
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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
By that logic, Microsoft’s brand means nothing when OpenOffice is free.
Microsoft is a robust business, with corporate contracts going back 40 years. There are going to be exceptions and winners, and microsoft is probably a winner
Re: Ideas are cheap, execution is cheaper
#80Earlier 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
Some are down over the previous 6 months, but not by 50%. At least among the largest.
Company: 6 month change:
============================
Palantir: +20%
Salesforce: -9%
Shopify: +40%
Intuit: -26%
ServiceNow: -30%
Adobe: -17%
CrowdStrike: -1.5%
Snowflake: -3%
Cloudflare: 0%
Autodesk: -9%