Comment by HarHarVeryFunny
3 days ago
I don't think cheaper/easier software development can be the limiting success factor for many startups. Success is more about the skills and business aptitude of the founder(s), which is why VCs invest more in people than ideas, and don't seem to flinch when founders pivot to something completely different.
I could see AI coding leading to more attempted startups, and more people shipping initial products and attempting to get traction with them, but whether they do get traction and achieve PMF, and are able to actually grow it into a business is going to come down to the startup expertise of the founders, not how quickly/cheaply the code of the product was written.
I expect you see the world this way because you are a software developer. People who know how to sell and understand the problems to solve do not routinely understand how to build software to solve those problems so they can sell them to customers. Now that the bar for building software is lowering, the world of building a startup is changing. A relatively newcomer to software is able to ship a medium complexity vibe-coded app to a few test customers and kick off revenues.
I agree that the bar for building software has dropped significantly, but I think the harder part still shows up right after the first few customers.
Shipping something workable is easier now, but understanding which problems are actually worth solving — and getting consistent feedback early — still seems to be the main separator between hobby projects and real businesses.
I totally concur. That said, technology is evolving fast, and I think it's clear that the bar for solving those problems with non-technical people will drop dramatically in the next 12 months.