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The only moat left is money?

elliotbonneville.com

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Re: The only moat left is money?

#31

Post by RC_ITR »

showerst wrote: post #3

This AI boom is just a hyper-version of previous tech booms (web 1.0, VC, crypto, etc). You have an enormous number of people who just want to get in and build something, but the products they are pumping out don't serve anyone's need or solve anyone's problem. The moat isn't money for out-marketing your idea that 750 other people are building, it's having a good idea that solves a problem that nobody else is solving…

It's like that FT chart claiming that the rapid rise in iOS apps is evidence of an AI-fueled productivity boom.

I always ask people, in the past year, how many AI-coded apps have you 1) downloaded 2) paid for?

Re: The only moat left is money?

#32

Post by g947o »

billconan wrote: post #13
showerst wrote: post #3

This AI boom is just a hyper-version of previous tech booms (web 1.0, VC, crypto, etc). You have an enormous number of people who just want to get in and build something, but the products they are pumping out don't serve anyone's need or solve anyone's problem. The moat isn't money for out-marketing your idea that 750 other people are building, it's having a good idea that solves a problem that nobody else is solving…

how to prevent others from building a copycat using ai?

You don't.

Re: The only moat left is money?

#33

Post by gorgoiler »

tquinn35 wrote: post #8

I disagree. I think creativity is still a valid moat. You still need to build good products. Its like a restaurant anyone with some money can open a restaurant but you need to has the creativity to make a good one.

The claude.ai web UI has a bug right now. If you inline some code by typing an opening backtick then the closing backtick swallows your space, puts the next letter you type after the code, then everything else back inside the code span.

One day we might be able to write software without bugs. That day is clearly not here yet.

(Firefox in Linux if anyone wants to repro. Can’t file a bug as it’s a closed, proprietary piece of software.)

Re: The only moat left is money?

#34

Post by rvz »

So this is what the VCs were screaming about this bullshit about "abundance".

Abundance of copy cats that cannot make any money as prices are raced to zero.

Re: The only moat left is money?

#35

Post by rothific »

> The people winning mostly had a head start. Or they have money. Usually both.

It feels like that doesn't it? But, as one counter-point, OpenClaw. :)

Btw I did a deep-dive into AI moats last week and wrote a blog post about it. Relationships were most likely the strongest moat from my research - but definitely having a large amount of money in reserves helps. https://www.cjroth.com/blog/2026-02-11-moats-in-the-age-of-a...

Re: The only moat left is money?

#36

Post by lm28469 »

andsoitis wrote: post #19
saubeidl wrote: post #2

Capitalism working as intended, shifting more and more resources to the already-rich. A handful of people doesn't own most of the country by accident.

Wealth is not a zero sum game. There’s more wealth in the world today than 50 years ago, 500 years ago, 5000 years ago.

That's why we cured hunger in 2012, cured poverty in 2017, fixed healthcare in 2020, working as intended indeed

Re: The only moat left is money?

#37

Post by elliotbnvl »

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #18

"The value of human thinking is going down." No! I fundamentally reject this. The value of unoriginal thinking has gone down. Thinking which is quotidian and pedestrian has become even more worthless than it already was. The value of true, original human thinking has gone up even higher than it ever has been. Do we think no new companies will ever succeed now? Of course not. Who, then, will succeed? It will be innova…

This is a compelling assertion. But who among us has truly original thoughts? How much new stuff can there be? If all the same-y stuff is losing value (but most stuff has value because it's FOUND not because it's unique) then isn't net value decreasing?

Re: The only moat left is money?

#38

Post by dzink »

The well is drying. You have less money available for hustling and less small players with money. With layoffs happening everywhere you have more people with ambition and time on their hands, but less of them can afford big expenses or major risks.

The hype machine currently pushing for agents is selling agents ability to do automated marketing. However the bigger companies know better than to create giant security holes and the small players are either not technically skilled, or will balk at the huge per-use fees for the good models, or will be drowned out because of low quality cheap model output.

Re: The only moat left is money?

#39

Post by AntiDyatlov »

elliotbnvl wrote: post #10
clay_the_ripper wrote: post #7

Doing hard things has always been, and always will be, hard. Building a static HTML page was “hard” in the 90’s. It took actual skills. Any piece that gets easier automatically opens up more hard avenues to tackle. no one is willing to pay you for easy.

Ahhh that lines up with a thought I had recently: you get out of life what you put into it. I am beginning to believe that there's some kind of metaphysical rule here that is true everywhere, all the time. So maybe the solution is: find the hardest stuff to do and do the crap out of it.

I really don't think that's true, you can put a lot of effort into a wrongheaded strategy, netting you no or bad results.

Conversely, a good strategy can get you good results without that much effort.

Re: The only moat left is money?

#40

Post by bell-cot »

I'm no big fan of economists - but if some type of business is seen as highly desirable to be in, and has minimal barriers to entry, then the market will soon be saturated. Expecting otherwise is (at best) wishful thinking.
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