Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The only moat left is money?

elliotbonneville.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 398 posts

Re: The only moat left is money?

#331

Post by gzread »

fuzzfactor wrote: post #289
pier25 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you are going to do something for a living, make sure it is NOT scalable I guess it also means that if you build something for a niche audience then big companies will never be interested in it.

I like doing things for big companies that they actually could afford easily, but their costs are so high it's a better deal to have me do it. One of my favorite niches :) Some clients are good enough at math to figure it out, and you don't actually need that many of them if they are big enough.

What are the things you do?

Re: The only moat left is money?

#332

Post by gzread »

ericmcer wrote: post #314
zabzonk wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> things that FAANGs would have paid billions for 10 years ago such as?

I mean literally anything that leverages modern APIs. WYSIWG Site Builders, text Chat bots, audio Transcription, voice synthesis. Yeah building from scratch would take longer, but you can slap a UI, a DB/schema around modern APIs and output something that would be science fiction 10 years ago.

WYSIWYG sure builders existed 10 years ago and did not cost billions. Chat bots were a novelty since the NFT bubble hadn't popped yet, and they would invent NFTs to stake the economy on instead. Audio transcription and synthesis existed and did not cost billions.

Re: The only moat left is money?

#333

Post by sureglymop »

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.

Creativity is always a valid moat by definition. If what used to be creative isn't anymore you need creativity by definition to differentiate yourself from that.

Re: The only moat left is money?

#334

Post by gzread »

lelanthran wrote: post #255
prmph wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which clones? And why not the others? Which is my point: it seems easy to clone something that seems conceptually simple, but is the result of all kinds of UI, UX, performance, etc optimizations. The reason someone might choose Obsidian over these so called clones is not just marketing, I assure you. The reason people attempt Obsidian clones is that they think creating todo-list management tools, etc is all it takes…

> Which clones? Are you seriously contending that apps that have Obsidians functionality don't exist? Just on HN alone, throughout 2023 - 2025 we were seing like one new TODO app show up on HN weekly! > And why not the others? Because money is the moat, and they have it! That was my entire point - money is the moat .

You have failed to provide a single example of an Obsidian clone.

Re: The only moat left is money?

#335

Post by zahlman »

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…

20 years ago, people told me ideas were a dime a dozen and implementation was what counted....

Re: The only moat left is money?

#336

Post by goldenarm »

Everyone is excited (or scared) by vibe coded startups, but ask yourself, how many vibecoded apps do you use weekly ? Every single one I've tested looks great at first, but is an UX nightmare with awful performance.

Even worse, my founder friends are all churning slop prototypes with Claude Code with zero product vision and are going nowhere. Is this revolution just a mirage that is FOMO-driven ?

Re: The only moat left is money?

#338

Post by femiagbabiaka »

kardashev8 wrote: post #202
femiagbabiaka wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

automation makes every job scalable, no?

could you automate a BJJ coach?

IMO literally automating the job isn't the only possible scenario -- already in the weightlifting space coaches are supplying skills and system prompts to llms that do their training for them, massively raising the number of students they can train at at time -- at some point that turns training into a zero sum game

Re: The only moat left is money?

#339

Post by dugidugout »

apsurd wrote: post #273
bubblewand wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I am one of the people who has a preferred tailor who can do more than just let trousers waists out. I also know where the nearest cobbler is. That’s not normal, though. A dead industry often doesn’t entirely disappear, it just shrinks a bunch and comes to rely entirely on enthusiasts or very rare actual need, rather than broad need or appeal. Consider the draft horse breeder, or the carriage driver. There’s a m…

Yes, your message is coming from the pov of economics and business, as makes sense in this thread! That's my mistake, I took your message more sentimentally. I've used tailoring probably 5 times in my life, with the only recurring need being to hem pants. "There is no money in tailoring" seems right. It's the "not all things need to make maximum $$$" that I speak to. You didn't pick this fight though, I did heh. My (…

A romantic perspective I still try and hold myself, however the point about the watch and the cloth and the dwindling appreciation for such is presently experienced in reference to decades or centuries of disruption and are intrinsically tied to the demand of attention. I don't trust the acceleration will leave much, but I am continuing to paint and taking writing more seriously in great fear of the time scales we are navigating today. I find myself confronted with nihilism in so many facets of my life but perhaps this is simply the smell of the air in my particular milieu.

Re: The only moat left is money?

#340

Post by femiagbabiaka »

layer8 wrote: post #208
femiagbabiaka wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

automation makes every job scalable, no?

Do you expect we’ll have AGA, artificial general automation?

I don't think it needs to be general to be scalable to the point that it causes previously safe industries to "race to the bottom"

Uber didn't need to launch in every neighborhood to start destroying the taxi business

Facebook didn't need to have every eyeball on the internet in order to massively disrupt trad advertising

At some point there's just a tipping point

Post reply on HN