Comments
Hacker News
Great post except that light grayish blue background is killing my eyes.
by chenster
I don't know if it's a coincidence but this is the same thing an AI explained to me when prompted something like "what replaces SaaS now that AI can build most things on demand". That was like a year ago. I have no proof for this, but we might all just be getting similar responses from similar contextual bubbles and landing on the same conclusions.
by ef2k
Some contrudictions in the article. Yes, Todo apps were always cheap to build, but some became large companies. Yes, the ai made the easy part easier. So why should the landscape change? Yes, technical people can build tools for themselves. Do they all really want to? What about non-technical people? Also, note - it's tools, not products. Tools help me achieve a specific goal. Products help me work better in a way I've not necessarily thought about myself.
I do think one claim is spot on - as production costs go down customization becomes cheap. This makes it economically viable to build products, especially more complex ones, for niche markets. Hubspot for medical? No problem. MailChimp for music clubs? You got it.
Ultimately, the value remained in the same place - create something people are willing to pay for. The economics might have changed, certainly for software development job market - but honestly, as a developer myself, I've always felt coding is not hard enough or valuable enough for the society to justify the insanely high salaries.
by sashagim
Idk if I disagree completely but it feels like I do. To elaborate, I don’t think we will see less applications, I think we will see more with better features.
My reasoning is people aren’t happy with many of the titans we have for certain apps, uber is my favorite example. Everyone hates the price it charges thinks it’s unfair, but to go back to a time before uber is unfathomable.
That to me is a ripe market to be overtaken. What it really needs is a taxi driver or operator so fed up with the current system they spend their energy organizing and making their own uber with less greed.
For sure not every tool will become huge, but most of the tools we use nowadays started with someone having a problem, being frustrated with the status quo, and having the will and means to execute.
The means necessary to execute get lower and lower everyday.
by khasan222
> Senior interface designer
> The website fails accessibility color contrast
by soulchild37
Before the industrial revolution or so somebody coming up in a craft would build a chunk of their toolset as part of that process. Even today many good (not necessarily software) engineers build some of their own tools. AI has made it much easier to build tooling to make your life better. Maybe some could be sold. But that isn't the intent and, as others have noted, can take significant additional effort.
I have my own "bandsintown" for example because I want to avoid the advertisement shitshow. I have a number of very specific tools for building software. I doubt I ever package up any of this for use by others much less try to monetize it.
That is the vibe I got from this article. This is a good concept to have in your (meta) toolbelt.
by tahoemph999
> I built a SaaS in a few hours. It does its job better than tools people pay real money for.
It's easy to build something for yourself that solves your own use case. You know how you work and what's important to you. Most of the effort in software goes into understand people other than you and building guardrails for them.
> Whatever niche tool you’re sketching this week, a thousand people can prompt a working version by Sunday night
A lot of people on HN are naturally builders. For them it's fun to play around with AI and see what can be built. Not everyone is like that.
For individuals, how many people actually want to spend their weekends building a niche tool for themselves vs just paying a few dollars a month to access something that does the job even though it may not be perfect?
For businesses, the buy vs. build tradeoff does now have some new compelling evidence in favour of "buy" but there's still maintenance needed for the service internally, there will be people with feature requests for it. Before you know it, the company is diverting resources away from their core business for a support tool that doesn't really drive impact.
I think we'll see more options in the marketplace as individuals will be able to get started more easily but SaaS is far from dead.
by mattm
This has that weird "AI written" sentence structure.
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- Hacker News
- Great post except that light grayish blue background is killing my eyes.by chenster
- I don't know if it's a coincidence but this is the same thing an AI explained to me when prompted something like "what replaces SaaS now that AI can build most things on demand". That was like a year ago. I have no proof for this, but we might all just be getting similar responses from similar contextual bubbles and landing on the same conclusions.by ef2k
- Some contrudictions in the article. Yes, Todo apps were always cheap to build, but some became large companies. Yes, the ai made the easy part easier. So why should the landscape change? Yes, technical people can build tools for themselves. Do they all really want to? What about non-technical people? Also, note - it's tools, not products. Tools help me achieve a specific goal. Products help me work better in a way I've not necessarily thought about myself.
I do think one claim is spot on - as production costs go down customization becomes cheap. This makes it economically viable to build products, especially more complex ones, for niche markets. Hubspot for medical? No problem. MailChimp for music clubs? You got it.
Ultimately, the value remained in the same place - create something people are willing to pay for. The economics might have changed, certainly for software development job market - but honestly, as a developer myself, I've always felt coding is not hard enough or valuable enough for the society to justify the insanely high salaries.
by sashagim - Idk if I disagree completely but it feels like I do. To elaborate, I don’t think we will see less applications, I think we will see more with better features.
My reasoning is people aren’t happy with many of the titans we have for certain apps, uber is my favorite example. Everyone hates the price it charges thinks it’s unfair, but to go back to a time before uber is unfathomable.
That to me is a ripe market to be overtaken. What it really needs is a taxi driver or operator so fed up with the current system they spend their energy organizing and making their own uber with less greed.
For sure not every tool will become huge, but most of the tools we use nowadays started with someone having a problem, being frustrated with the status quo, and having the will and means to execute.
The means necessary to execute get lower and lower everyday.
by khasan222 - > Senior interface designer > The website fails accessibility color contrastby soulchild37
- Before the industrial revolution or so somebody coming up in a craft would build a chunk of their toolset as part of that process. Even today many good (not necessarily software) engineers build some of their own tools. AI has made it much easier to build tooling to make your life better. Maybe some could be sold. But that isn't the intent and, as others have noted, can take significant additional effort.
I have my own "bandsintown" for example because I want to avoid the advertisement shitshow. I have a number of very specific tools for building software. I doubt I ever package up any of this for use by others much less try to monetize it.
That is the vibe I got from this article. This is a good concept to have in your (meta) toolbelt.
by tahoemph999 - > I built a SaaS in a few hours. It does its job better than tools people pay real money for.
It's easy to build something for yourself that solves your own use case. You know how you work and what's important to you. Most of the effort in software goes into understand people other than you and building guardrails for them.
> Whatever niche tool you’re sketching this week, a thousand people can prompt a working version by Sunday night
A lot of people on HN are naturally builders. For them it's fun to play around with AI and see what can be built. Not everyone is like that.
For individuals, how many people actually want to spend their weekends building a niche tool for themselves vs just paying a few dollars a month to access something that does the job even though it may not be perfect?
For businesses, the buy vs. build tradeoff does now have some new compelling evidence in favour of "buy" but there's still maintenance needed for the service internally, there will be people with feature requests for it. Before you know it, the company is diverting resources away from their core business for a support tool that doesn't really drive impact.
I think we'll see more options in the marketplace as individuals will be able to get started more easily but SaaS is far from dead.
by mattm - This has that weird "AI written" sentence structure.