A fairly unique aspect of building software products for software developers is that most of your potential customers could probably build your product if they

A fairly unique aspect of building software products for software developers is that most of your potential customers could probably build your product if they really wanted to. And as was illustrated yesterday, if the cost is of whack with the value created, software developers will just build their own version of it. Twillio is a great example of the opposite. I don't think Twillio is actually so deep that people don't understand what's going on under the hood. Open source alternatives exist to using Twillio, like Asterisk. But setting them up and maintaining them is a massive time suck. The value Twillio creates is being able to make phone calls and send text messages immediately and never have to worry about that piece of your infrastructure. Additionally their pricing is set such that using them is over taking the time to setup something yourself is a no-brainer. A nice side effect of making software for software developers, is that if you do open source something simple, someone else will find it when they're looking to save a few hours, and probably spend a little more time adjusting it to their needs and making it better. Then everyone is in a better position to use that code to build something that creates a lot of unique value and charge for it.