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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

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 well.

billconan 8mo ago
how to prevent others from building a copycat using ai?
- Bnjoroge 8mo ago
  You cant. You can only focus on building your own product and making it durable and just much better
- g947o 8mo ago
  You don't.
- Daishiman 8mo ago
  You work on niches that have very specific requirements that you can only derive from having a good relationship with customers and so you attend to those needs faster than competitors who are out of the loop.
  - billconan 8mo ago
    > you attend to those needs faster than competitors I wonder if this type of hustling can be called moat building?
- ativzzz 8mo ago
  The same way you prevented this previously. Copying successful products is nothing new, AI just makes it easier. Marketing, lawyers, good customer support, creating relationships with customers.
- maeln 8mo ago
  Knowledge ? For b2c it might be more difficult, but in b2b, understanding your customer and their specifics issue and developing something made for them is one of the big challenge. Being able to spit out code for free is useless if you don't know what and who you are making the code for.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- rvz 8mo ago
  Let's just say, building software alone is not enough.
- caminante 8mo ago
  The discussion here is going sideways, and I blame the underwhelming blog post. 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.
  - RGamma 8mo ago
    The more I think about it the more brainrot the article really is. As if all problems are solved and pumping out soulless shovelware companies is worth anything. It really is "just one more app" all over again.
- elbear 8mo ago
  by keeping the how part a secret
RC_ITR 8mo ago
It's like that FT chart claiming that the rapid rise in iOS apps is evidence of an AI-fueled productivity boom. I always ask people, in the past year, how many AI-coded apps have you 1) downloaded 2) paid for?
- disgruntledphd2 8mo ago
  > It's like that FT chart claiming that the rapid rise in iOS apps is evidence of an AI-fueled productivity boom. I mean, there is evidence for some change. Personally, I'm sceptical of what this will amount to, but prior to EOY 2025, there really wasn't any evidence for an app/service boom, and now there's weak evidence, which is better than none.
- sarchertech 8mo ago
  In addition to that, what they don’t mention is that: 1. Other app stores like Google Play and Steam haven’t seen this rapid rise. 2. There are thousands maybe tens of thousands of apps that are just wrappers calling OpenAI APIs or similar low effort AI apps making up a large percentage of this increase. 3. There are billions of dollars pouring into AI startups and many of them launch an iOS app.
  - vkou 8mo ago
    Has steam not seen a rapid rise in AI-asset shovelware? I'm not talking about the AAA or the AA or even the A space (where AI is being incorporated into dev processes with various degrees of both success and low effort slop), I'm talking about the actual bottom of the barrel.
    - sarchertech 8mo ago
      I can’t speak to the quality of all the games released, but in January 2025 there were 1,413 games released on Steam and in January of this year there were 1,448.
    - Jensson 8mo ago
      You never needed AI to make shovelware, you have been able to make a shitty game over a weekend ever since RPG maker was made and there are still games made using that. AI just helps create some assets for games, it doesn't really make it easier or faster to make games but they might look a bit better.
boplicity 8mo ago
> the products they are pumping out don't serve anyone's need or solve anyone's problem. This isn't true though. Yes, there are too many products being build that don't serve anyone's needs or solve anyone's problems. However, many of the AI products do solve problems and serve needs. You're right though, to compare this to other booms, which also had the same problem. This is very much a "hyper" version, which is pretty incredible to be in the middle of.
- PaulDavisThe1st 8mo ago
  > However, many of the AI products do solve problems and serve needs. Every solution to a problem comes with its own costs. It is entirely possible that most solutions that are rooted in modern computing technology have actual or perceived costs that exceed the value of "solving the problem". The problems that most people have that they really want to solve are not addressable by AI, or computers, or software.
- showerst 8mo ago
  I don't mean that _all_ AI built stuff is useless, just that the number of products where 'marketing budget' is the bottleneck is dwarfed by the number of tools that aren't that special in the first place. If you have a product that: 1. Solves a real problem people would pay for 2. Is not trivially replicable by your potential customers or competitors 3. Does not have a natural discovery mechanism by potential customers Then you need the marketing budget. That is not most people's problem.
  - tjwebbnorfolk 8mo ago
    Ok but pick any category of human endeavor and 80% of it is garbage in the beginning. There were 3000 car companies in the 1920s, and most of them sucked, and so they died. The market over time will sort out who survives and who does not. It will take a few years for investors to figure this out, but in the meantime, everyone is spreading their bets around like peanut butter in order to be in the game.
  - arrsingh 8mo ago
    I think item #2 in your list is the real kicker here. Given that AI can write code the threshold for "trivially replicable" is going down. Unless your thing has strong network effects or a large capex requirement (ex: GPU infra) its easily replicated and I think that's really what makes things hard.
neom 8mo ago
I worked during the digital revolution in film, I've told the story a zillion times on HN but basically, I went through the first pure digital film program in Canada, by the time I graduated 70% had dropped out, as far as I know I'm the only one who made a proper go at it, and even then when my startup was taking off, a new hot shot would show up every month and be gone the next when they got bored or frustrated when nobody thought they were special. Tools are tools.
- curiouscavalier 8mo ago
  yeah this is really a part of it. Both founders and investors get spooked by the rapid entries into a market but persistent not just when it’s hard but when it’s boring goes so much farther.
- ncphillips 8mo ago
  > a new hot shot would show up every month and be gone the next when they got bored or frustrated when nobody thought they were special I don't know much about film industry, and I have a ton of brainfog from being sick today. Could you say more? What made them a hotshot? They thought they were like, creative geniuses with digital film or something?
  - neom 8mo ago
    They often WERE creative geniuses with a digital camera! Brilliant people! In fact they were the ones who came and went the fastest, what makes you useful in industry is very frequently nothing to do with genius or creativity or mastery of the tools. It's things like reliability, stability, team spirit, open mindedness etc. Creative genius is one game, but it's far from the only, or even, main one. Hope you feel better. <3
Bnjoroge 8mo ago
Eh, there's some truth it both. The truth is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. Distribution absolutely matters, often times even more than the product. And vice versa
clickety_clack 8mo ago
This seems to me like the few booms I’ve seen before. Absolutely crazy valuations with very little behind them, massive hype, everyone’s unemployed uncle suddenly becoming a shallow expert. It’s probably going to end the same way too, once the upward momentum dissipates and things start to retreat to “fundamentals”, we’ll find out that there were a lot fewer solid points in the market than we were all told to expect, so the fundamentals are actually pretty far down. After 5 to 10 years of regrouping, a more mature and solid version will come about and become such a normal part of life we barely even remember what it was like without it.
- steveBK123 8mo ago
  We are well on our way to the popping of inflated expectations. Currently people are taking AI hype too seriously and extrapolating its success out in such a way as to discount the value of other businesses. Example - last week a bunch of trucking stocks crashed 10-20% because a $6M company that pivoted from Karaoke to AI demoed something. This is just insane. Sure, if say Waymo is pivoting into commercial trucking.. maybe. But people are basically shorting minutemaid lemonade because their neighbors kids opened up a lemonade stand. Demos are easy, products are hard.
koolba 8mo ago
> 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 well. An idea is not a moat. Execution is only a moat if being nimble is part of the ongoing offering.
- _DeadFred_ 8mo ago
  Historically, during booms like this (for example the industrial revolution), it was, because we had patent protections in order to encourage ideas to be brought to market. I don't see how you can have an AI revolution that doesn't just funnel everything to the top without something similar. Why invent the cotton gin, find investors, and bring it to market if the steel company with the infinite worker machine can instantly compete with you?
_DeadFred_ 8mo ago
Not really. It's money/resources. I had some really useful apps I built for myself. I looked at releasing them, but there were companies whose business model was waiting for people like me to release apps that solve a problem, and then just instantly jump on creating a solution and outcompeting the independent app. It's trivial for competitors with bigger pockets to outcompete you on your idea, and there are companies whose business model is just that. And with AI customers are trying to do it themselves as well. The only startup I wouldn't be nervous about as a small team without large financial backing would be ones where we start out partnered to multiple companies in the targeted industry so that we can leverage that connection. Historically this is why we have copyright/patent laws. To make it make sense for people to try to bring their ideas to the world. But with everything changing we are back to everyone just sitting on their concepts/solutions unless they have big money behind them.
PlatoIsADisease 8mo ago
Buddy, my wife vibe coded an app that solves her PTO tracking problem in 1 shot. Her payroll company was going to charge her an extra $200 a month.
- paulryanrogers 8mo ago
  Go on
lelanthran 8mo ago
> 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 well. This is a very naive take. Any good idea you have can now be cloned trivial in no time at all. The clones just need to out spend you on marketing even though it is your idea that the LLM cloned.
- prmph 8mo ago
  So where are the AI clones of MS Office, JetBrains IDEs, Whatsapp, Obsidian, etc. so far?
  - lelanthran 8mo ago
    Obsidian has plenty of clones. The others have money as a moat, which is exactly my point.
    - prmph 8mo ago
      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 to implement a PKM, and that that is easy. It is not. Right now there are kinds of tools I wished existed, that I would pay for, but AI does not automatically provide the insight, good taste, technical excellence, and grit needed to create these products. I could do them, with AI assisting, but do not have the time. It is not a simple matter of saying: Claude, create or clone X, Y, Z.
      - lelanthran 8mo ago
        > 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.
casey2 8mo ago
No, the moat is having a seemingly good "scalable" idea that solves a problem a few people have and most people think they have. Then getting bought out. The zip2s and OpenClaws of the world
joe_the_user 8mo ago
Well, if someone could create a drop-in replacement for Oracle-DB, Adobe Creative or AutoCad in a month of vibe-coding, I think they could prosper without having their own good idea. I would like to see something like this. But if you're just talking the fairly simple apps that a single very talented programmer could pump out before this, sure, yeah.
cosmic_cheese 8mo ago
> …it's having a good idea that solves a problem that nobody else is solving well. Added emphasis to the most crucial part, in my opinion. If you can manage to deliver a product that's meaningfully better than the competition, you still have an edge, so long as you're competent at marketing. Nothing gets people searching for alternatives as consistently as frustration, and a product that was lazily built with AI (vibe coded or otherwise) is going to be full of bugs and papercuts that make using it a poor experience. This is particularly true for software that sits in the hot path of peoples' workflows, where thoughtless design, misbehavior, and poor optimization chip away at time the user can't afford to spare. In short: yes, competition will be plentiful but it will also be almost entirely awful, and capable SWEs can capitalize on that. It won't take much to stand out amongst the mountains of garbage that will be generated in the coming years.
zahlman 8mo ago
20 years ago, people told me ideas were a dime a dozen and implementation was what counted....

billconan 8mo ago

how to prevent others from building a copycat using ai?

Bnjoroge 8mo ago
You cant. You can only focus on building your own product and making it durable and just much better
g947o 8mo ago
You don't.
Daishiman 8mo ago
You work on niches that have very specific requirements that you can only derive from having a good relationship with customers and so you attend to those needs faster than competitors who are out of the loop.
- billconan 8mo ago
  > you attend to those needs faster than competitors I wonder if this type of hustling can be called moat building?
ativzzz 8mo ago
The same way you prevented this previously. Copying successful products is nothing new, AI just makes it easier. Marketing, lawyers, good customer support, creating relationships with customers.
maeln 8mo ago
Knowledge ? For b2c it might be more difficult, but in b2b, understanding your customer and their specifics issue and developing something made for them is one of the big challenge. Being able to spit out code for free is useless if you don't know what and who you are making the code for.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
rvz 8mo ago
Let's just say, building software alone is not enough.
caminante 8mo ago
The discussion here is going sideways, and I blame the underwhelming blog post. 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.
- RGamma 8mo ago
  The more I think about it the more brainrot the article really is. As if all problems are solved and pumping out soulless shovelware companies is worth anything. It really is "just one more app" all over again.
elbear 8mo ago
by keeping the how part a secret

RC_ITR 8mo ago

It's like that FT chart claiming that the rapid rise in iOS apps is evidence of an AI-fueled productivity boom. I always ask people, in the past year, how many AI-coded apps have you 1) downloaded 2) paid for?

disgruntledphd2 8mo ago
> It's like that FT chart claiming that the rapid rise in iOS apps is evidence of an AI-fueled productivity boom. I mean, there is evidence for some change. Personally, I'm sceptical of what this will amount to, but prior to EOY 2025, there really wasn't any evidence for an app/service boom, and now there's weak evidence, which is better than none.
sarchertech 8mo ago
In addition to that, what they don’t mention is that: 1. Other app stores like Google Play and Steam haven’t seen this rapid rise. 2. There are thousands maybe tens of thousands of apps that are just wrappers calling OpenAI APIs or similar low effort AI apps making up a large percentage of this increase. 3. There are billions of dollars pouring into AI startups and many of them launch an iOS app.
- vkou 8mo ago
  Has steam not seen a rapid rise in AI-asset shovelware? I'm not talking about the AAA or the AA or even the A space (where AI is being incorporated into dev processes with various degrees of both success and low effort slop), I'm talking about the actual bottom of the barrel.
  - sarchertech 8mo ago
    I can’t speak to the quality of all the games released, but in January 2025 there were 1,413 games released on Steam and in January of this year there were 1,448.
  - Jensson 8mo ago
    You never needed AI to make shovelware, you have been able to make a shitty game over a weekend ever since RPG maker was made and there are still games made using that. AI just helps create some assets for games, it doesn't really make it easier or faster to make games but they might look a bit better.

boplicity 8mo ago

> the products they are pumping out don't serve anyone's need or solve anyone's problem. This isn't true though. Yes, there are too many products being build that don't serve anyone's needs or solve anyone's problems. However, many of the AI products do solve problems and serve needs. You're right though, to compare this to other booms, which also had the same problem. This is very much a "hyper" version, which is pretty incredible to be in the middle of.

PaulDavisThe1st 8mo ago
> However, many of the AI products do solve problems and serve needs. Every solution to a problem comes with its own costs. It is entirely possible that most solutions that are rooted in modern computing technology have actual or perceived costs that exceed the value of "solving the problem". The problems that most people have that they really want to solve are not addressable by AI, or computers, or software.
showerst 8mo ago
I don't mean that _all_ AI built stuff is useless, just that the number of products where 'marketing budget' is the bottleneck is dwarfed by the number of tools that aren't that special in the first place. If you have a product that: 1. Solves a real problem people would pay for 2. Is not trivially replicable by your potential customers or competitors 3. Does not have a natural discovery mechanism by potential customers Then you need the marketing budget. That is not most people's problem.
- tjwebbnorfolk 8mo ago
  Ok but pick any category of human endeavor and 80% of it is garbage in the beginning. There were 3000 car companies in the 1920s, and most of them sucked, and so they died. The market over time will sort out who survives and who does not. It will take a few years for investors to figure this out, but in the meantime, everyone is spreading their bets around like peanut butter in order to be in the game.
- arrsingh 8mo ago
  I think item #2 in your list is the real kicker here. Given that AI can write code the threshold for "trivially replicable" is going down. Unless your thing has strong network effects or a large capex requirement (ex: GPU infra) its easily replicated and I think that's really what makes things hard.

neom 8mo ago

I worked during the digital revolution in film, I've told the story a zillion times on HN but basically, I went through the first pure digital film program in Canada, by the time I graduated 70% had dropped out, as far as I know I'm the only one who made a proper go at it, and even then when my startup was taking off, a new hot shot would show up every month and be gone the next when they got bored or frustrated when nobody thought they were special. Tools are tools.

curiouscavalier 8mo ago
yeah this is really a part of it. Both founders and investors get spooked by the rapid entries into a market but persistent not just when it’s hard but when it’s boring goes so much farther.
ncphillips 8mo ago
> a new hot shot would show up every month and be gone the next when they got bored or frustrated when nobody thought they were special I don't know much about film industry, and I have a ton of brainfog from being sick today. Could you say more? What made them a hotshot? They thought they were like, creative geniuses with digital film or something?
- neom 8mo ago
  They often WERE creative geniuses with a digital camera! Brilliant people! In fact they were the ones who came and went the fastest, what makes you useful in industry is very frequently nothing to do with genius or creativity or mastery of the tools. It's things like reliability, stability, team spirit, open mindedness etc. Creative genius is one game, but it's far from the only, or even, main one. Hope you feel better. <3

Bnjoroge 8mo ago

Eh, there's some truth it both. The truth is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. Distribution absolutely matters, often times even more than the product. And vice versa

clickety_clack 8mo ago

This seems to me like the few booms I’ve seen before. Absolutely crazy valuations with very little behind them, massive hype, everyone’s unemployed uncle suddenly becoming a shallow expert. It’s probably going to end the same way too, once the upward momentum dissipates and things start to retreat to “fundamentals”, we’ll find out that there were a lot fewer solid points in the market than we were all told to expect, so the fundamentals are actually pretty far down. After 5 to 10 years of regrouping, a more mature and solid version will come about and become such a normal part of life we barely even remember what it was like without it.

steveBK123 8mo ago
We are well on our way to the popping of inflated expectations. Currently people are taking AI hype too seriously and extrapolating its success out in such a way as to discount the value of other businesses. Example - last week a bunch of trucking stocks crashed 10-20% because a $6M company that pivoted from Karaoke to AI demoed something. This is just insane. Sure, if say Waymo is pivoting into commercial trucking.. maybe. But people are basically shorting minutemaid lemonade because their neighbors kids opened up a lemonade stand. Demos are easy, products are hard.

koolba 8mo ago

> 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 well. An idea is not a moat. Execution is only a moat if being nimble is part of the ongoing offering.

_DeadFred_ 8mo ago
Historically, during booms like this (for example the industrial revolution), it was, because we had patent protections in order to encourage ideas to be brought to market. I don't see how you can have an AI revolution that doesn't just funnel everything to the top without something similar. Why invent the cotton gin, find investors, and bring it to market if the steel company with the infinite worker machine can instantly compete with you?

_DeadFred_ 8mo ago

Not really. It's money/resources. I had some really useful apps I built for myself. I looked at releasing them, but there were companies whose business model was waiting for people like me to release apps that solve a problem, and then just instantly jump on creating a solution and outcompeting the independent app. It's trivial for competitors with bigger pockets to outcompete you on your idea, and there are companies whose business model is just that. And with AI customers are trying to do it themselves as well. The only startup I wouldn't be nervous about as a small team without large financial backing would be ones where we start out partnered to multiple companies in the targeted industry so that we can leverage that connection. Historically this is why we have copyright/patent laws. To make it make sense for people to try to bring their ideas to the world. But with everything changing we are back to everyone just sitting on their concepts/solutions unless they have big money behind them.

PlatoIsADisease 8mo ago

Buddy, my wife vibe coded an app that solves her PTO tracking problem in 1 shot. Her payroll company was going to charge her an extra $200 a month.

paulryanrogers 8mo ago
Go on

lelanthran 8mo ago

> 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 well. This is a very naive take. Any good idea you have can now be cloned trivial in no time at all. The clones just need to out spend you on marketing even though it is your idea that the LLM cloned.

prmph 8mo ago
So where are the AI clones of MS Office, JetBrains IDEs, Whatsapp, Obsidian, etc. so far?
- lelanthran 8mo ago
  Obsidian has plenty of clones. The others have money as a moat, which is exactly my point.
  - prmph 8mo ago
    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 to implement a PKM, and that that is easy. It is not. Right now there are kinds of tools I wished existed, that I would pay for, but AI does not automatically provide the insight, good taste, technical excellence, and grit needed to create these products. I could do them, with AI assisting, but do not have the time. It is not a simple matter of saying: Claude, create or clone X, Y, Z.
    - lelanthran 8mo ago
      > 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.

casey2 8mo ago

No, the moat is having a seemingly good "scalable" idea that solves a problem a few people have and most people think they have. Then getting bought out. The zip2s and OpenClaws of the world

joe_the_user 8mo ago

Well, if someone could create a drop-in replacement for Oracle-DB, Adobe Creative or AutoCad in a month of vibe-coding, I think they could prosper without having their own good idea. I would like to see something like this. But if you're just talking the fairly simple apps that a single very talented programmer could pump out before this, sure, yeah.

cosmic_cheese 8mo ago

> …it's having a good idea that solves a problem that nobody else is solving well. Added emphasis to the most crucial part, in my opinion. If you can manage to deliver a product that's meaningfully better than the competition, you still have an edge, so long as you're competent at marketing. Nothing gets people searching for alternatives as consistently as frustration, and a product that was lazily built with AI (vibe coded or otherwise) is going to be full of bugs and papercuts that make using it a poor experience. This is particularly true for software that sits in the hot path of peoples' workflows, where thoughtless design, misbehavior, and poor optimization chip away at time the user can't afford to spare. In short: yes, competition will be plentiful but it will also be almost entirely awful, and capable SWEs can capitalize on that. It won't take much to stand out amongst the mountains of garbage that will be generated in the coming years.

zahlman 8mo ago

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