You can get the same output as $500k/year of software engineers for $2.4k/year now. Never been better if you ask me!
Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?
31–40 of 239 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?
#32Build something novel, what has changed?
I'd argue the question was wrong, it's not that big companies can copy you easier now. They could have always invaded your space and destroyed your business. As other pointed out it was always picking up the pennies that they didn't want until those pennies became dollars.
The concern now is that other small team or solo developers can rebuild what you have very quickly. This happened in the mobile space with all the decompiled and repacked (with min changes) apps that showed up in the stores.
The moat for SaaS startups was that the code is hidden. Now that matters less because people use AI to try and reverse engineer your backend from the API or even UI screenshots.
You have to pick up the pace to keep ahead of them and make sure you don't cause problems for customers while doing it.
Re: Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lol that's what they told us last year. And they'll say the same thing next year. It's obviously useful for certain tasks but the number of errors and hallucinations are still quite bad for anything large or complex or really novel. That part is improving very slowly and some fundamental theoretical breakthroughs will be needed.
I don't care what they told you last year, I didn't say jack shit. I'm saying it now. Cope or pretend it's not happening, I don't care, this is the year.
Have you actually had it do anything substantial and then tried to work with the code it produces afterwards? It may "work" but it's a horrific mess. Good luck bug fixing that.
Re: Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?
#34This is the problem with big concentration of wealth and power. The big tech mega corps can copy your idea easily because they don’t have any budget, they can undercut you or sell at a loss, and they can distribute it to all their current customers with anti competitive bundling.
It has happened over and over many times and American antitrust law is useless. The largest corporations must be broken up, taxed heavily, and regulated in new ways. Otherwise there is no fair competition or level playing field for startups.
Re: Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?
#35You're asking what's a defensible value-add, but without really framing current business conditions or issues.
Time - opportunity - matters a lot, perhaps more than anything. And to face that, one needs to ask better questions (even if you're just polling).
Re: Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?
#36The serious answer:
The value cannot be just the software. E.g. some workflow tool (Salesforce). These tools will continue to exist for awhile but any customer capable of moving off of it to a startup version, can probably make their own startup version, tailored to them.
Now, if you offer something besides the software — logistics, networks, financial instruments, regulatory compliance, physical goods, compute, etc — that has value besides the software.
But the five billionth workflow automation tool has fast diminishing value in 2026.
Re: Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?
#37In 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.
Re: Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't care what they told you last year, I didn't say jack shit. I'm saying it now. Cope or pretend it's not happening, I don't care, this is the year.
Have you actually had it do anything substantial and then tried to work with the code it produces afterwards? It may "work" but it's a horrific mess. Good luck bug fixing that.
Yes, with GPT 5.2 Codex and 5.2 Pro specifically. It’s not a mess because of the context I provide and the guidance and reattempts I apply. It’s working great, the resulting code is good when I accept it, and I’m getting much more done than in the before times.
Re: Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?
#39In 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…
Yeah, this is how we survive.
I even dream of build tools for business to make apps (like Air table, but better) and even if you can do anything that do, perfectly, the software they need not means they want to babysit it all the time.
Is like the person that knows how cook, amazingly, yet hire a chef for take care of it most days.
Re: Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?
#40You're asking what's a defensible value-add, but without really framing current business conditions or issues. Time - opportunity - matters a lot, perhaps more than anything. And to face that, one needs to ask better questions (even if you're just polling).
"Current business conditions or issues" -- I think that's because OP wants you to fill that in yourself, so that you might explain your assumptions or the market potential that you see, which might be wildly different from his (i.e. software having little to no moat)