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10 years building vertical software: are we cooked?

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Re: 10 years building vertical software: are we cooked?

#11

Post by xfour »

fnord77 wrote: post #6

Was this generated by AI? Anyway, I dispute that there's "zero switching" costs to go from proprietary keyboard shortcuts to english sentences as the interface. In the bloomberg example, the shortcuts are precise. LLM's responses are not always what you want. Imagine being a vim or emacs user and have those replaced by something you have to type entire sentences for functionality. "Public Data Access → Commoditized"…

Even if it wasn't generated by AI, it reads like an advertisement for some company which sure sounds like a wrapper on top of a LLM. I think the moat for that type of company is a lot less defensible than any of the Vertically Integrated category leaders by a country mile.

Re: 10 years building vertical software: are we cooked?

#12

Post by bigiain »

zahlman wrote: post #9

> The S&P 500 Software & Services Index, 140 companies, fell 20% year to date. The overall index has been pretty well flat. What sectors gained? And surely there aren't 140 "software and services" companies in the top 500 by market cap?

Pretty sure there are 500 "software and services" companies in the The S&P 500 Software & Services Index.

Re: 10 years building vertical software: are we cooked?

#13

Post by JBAnderson5 »

> Now consider what the same analyst does with an LLM agent: "Show me all software companies with over $1B market cap, P/E under 30, and revenue growing over 20% year over year. Build a DCF model for the top 5. Run sensitivity analysis on discount rate and terminal growth."

While I think LLMs can improve the interface and help users learn/generate domain specific languages, I don’t see how a professional can trust an llm to get a technical request like this correct without verification. Wouldn’t a financial professional trust the Bloomberg llm agent that translates their request into a set of Bloomberg commands more?

Re: 10 years building vertical software: are we cooked?

#15

Post by johntb86 »

fnord77 wrote: post #6

Was this generated by AI? Anyway, I dispute that there's "zero switching" costs to go from proprietary keyboard shortcuts to english sentences as the interface. In the bloomberg example, the shortcuts are precise. LLM's responses are not always what you want. Imagine being a vim or emacs user and have those replaced by something you have to type entire sentences for functionality. "Public Data Access → Commoditized"…

> Imagine being a vim or emacs user and have those replaced by something you have to type entire sentences for functionality.

As a former vim user who uses cursor, I've found that as the models get better I'm typing less and less. I appreciate the vim key bindings, but eventually I can imagine not missing them.

Re: 10 years building vertical software: are we cooked?

#16

Post by idiotsecant »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #10
marginalia_nu wrote: post #2

Show me even a single trader who would prefer a slow-ass chat interface to 36 monitors full of stock tickers and charts.

Is trading even a real thing? Is there really a job title "trader"? Entities really think they can outperform DCA SPY?

I guess you better go tell them they don't exist.

Re: 10 years building vertical software: are we cooked?

#17

Post by t0mas88 »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #10
marginalia_nu wrote: post #2

Show me even a single trader who would prefer a slow-ass chat interface to 36 monitors full of stock tickers and charts.

Is trading even a real thing? Is there really a job title "trader"? Entities really think they can outperform DCA SPY?

Yes. Traders are involved in all kinds of deals that aren't like index funds.

Re: 10 years building vertical software: are we cooked?

#18

Post by trescenzi »

I find this line of thinking so hard to follow. I happen to have worked at FactSet and when I was there we were stuck supporting chromium 18 because it was embedded in the version of the workstation that a partner had signed a contract which prevented them from needing to upgrade the base install. SASS is of course to some extent about functionality. Maybe it will make sense for larger customers to duplicate functionality themselves using AI. I very much doubt we’re anywhere near being able to prompt Claude and get FactSet out but fine we can grant that. The reason SASS is so valuable though is because it allows firms to pass off the costs and risk of maintenance behind SLAs. Why would you want to bring that risk in-house when you can essentially buy insurance against software errors by paying a SASS company?

Re: 10 years building vertical software: are we cooked?

#19

Post by einrealist »

I can follow the arguments, and I find many of them plausible. But LLMs are still unreliable and require attention and verification. Ultimately, it's an economic question: the cost of training the model and the computing power required to produce accurate results.

The strongest argument is the one about the interface. LLMs will definitely have a large impact. But under the hood, I still expect to see a lot of formally verified code, written by engineers with domain knowledge, with support by AI.

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