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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.
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.
I am a firm believer of "limitation breeds creativity" and being able to make what you want with immediate result will lead to less diverse solutions. In a world of in-diverse products you need more creativity to stand out as it will become harder to conceive of something "outside of the box".
Similarly to how anyone can basically create any image they desire in Photoshop (with some limited training). Leading to a lot of images of a similar style instead of a lot of different styles (ai slop anyone?). This is because between the idea and the result the roadblocks are reduced, the process is smooth (tools aim for 1:1 conversion). In the creative process these roadblocks are usually where you will find interesting new directions or ideas. And very often the original idea was not that interesting to begin with (and perhaps not as original as we would like to believe).
I appreciate the conversation the post initiates. Nevertheless, by counter-example -- OpenClaw's creator was just recruited by people with more capital than countries. If they could "re-produce" it with their capital, they would've preferred that. Whatever he has, is still a moat. What that is, is debatable. Is it brand? Is it his creativity? Is it trust/autheticity? A vision? Ownership of a repo or leadership of tha…
In the case of OpenClaw I think you're looking at a fairly pure iteration of luck there, too. It isn't even a case of "I prepared for years until luck finally knocked" or any variant like that. It was just luck.
If that is the only counterexample I'd say it doesn't disprove the point, if anything it just strengthens it. Nobody can build a business plan based on "I plan to be as lucky as OpenClaw".
"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…
Imagine American manufacturing industry workers saying the same thing of the (at the time) soon-to-be import only products. Original thoughts are valued more than non-original ones but maybe, the market doesn't require that many original thoughts to extract max profit...
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…
An idea is not a moat. Execution is only a moat if being nimble is part of the ongoing offering.
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?
Having money is NOT an economic moat-- i.e., a durable, structural competitive advantage.
He overlooks broader, true definition of moat attributes like labor supply, infrastructure, PP&E, brand, network, natural monopolies, switching costs, regulation. These don't go away with commoditized CRUD apps.
And quoting someone with decades of experience implying that things are hard now and innovation didn't turn over industries in the last 25+ years is a joke.
Today, the money-making side has staged a hostile takeover.
The attention conundrum is just a symptom of a deeper financialization. Multi-billion dollar companies have turned profit into a data-driven science – analytically turning the screws on every script, product, and interaction to optimize for extraction. This is the destruction of the art of making things.
The real issue is that you cannot compete with an entity that has no respect for the art. When a platform replaces the integrity of the work with the logic of a metric, the independent creator is no longer an underdog – they are functionally excluded. You can be the best at any art, but in a system that prioritizes sheer extraction over excellence, your craft effectively ceases to exist.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The followup thought / concern that occurs: what if the number of hard things is going down?
I would have imagined it's going up while the percentage of people who are capable of doing the hardest things is going down. Not that I know much of anything.
Just because you're doing something hard, doesn't mean anyone wants it.
Just because you're doing something useful doesn't mean you're going to get paid much for it.
Just because something is hard and useful doesn't mean someone is going to pay you for the cost of the effort.
People here saying creativity or having a good idea is the moat You know that if anything you build gets traction, it'll be cloned by 100 people, right?
there's more problems then ever before that need empathetic humans to solve - are you up for the challenge - or you're doing a quick cash grab
due to people using machine gun approaches - spray & pray - we haven't forgotten how scalable human touch is -- yeah at first - you've to do things the manual way - reach out have a conversation - but slowly word spreads around without you spending money on ads | content etc