Comment by legitster
2 days ago
Well, you can tell from the tone of his post that he isn't blaming anyone directly. They monetized convenience, and something more convenient came along.
I think it's more shocking to everyone how quickly something like that happens.
Exactly the business model wasn't strong enough, just upselling templates for hundreds of dollars which AI can churn in few tokens was easy to disrupt.
The business model is strong. AI is stealing traffic/money from creators. That's not a problem with the business model, it's a problem with AI. AI hyperscalers shamelessly monetize other people's work without compensation. Truly an awful dystopia.
The output of AIs that is "churned out" wouldn't exist without templates like this being used as an input to the training. But that isn't "Copyright Infringement", according to the AI companies.
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I disagree. The bare minimum they could have done in all these years was build a proper high quality, tightly coupled component library instead of riding this "copy paste your way to a result" trend.
Not stuff like shadcn and Tailwind Catalyst, but a proper versioned, tightly coupled UI library with rich theming capabilities made for the 99% of users who aren't skilled enough at design to be cobbling together their own design systems or editing a Button component directly.
Instead they rode the wave (despite being best positioned to redirect the wave) and they're paying the price.
If it wasn't AI it'd be the first version of MUI that moves on from Material Design 2 as a default. Or Hero UI v3. Or literally anyone who brings sanity back to the space of component libraries and leaves "copy and paste code snippets" behind
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If a business model can't withstand being disrupted, it is no longer viable. It's like Uber putting cabs out of business with something better. Selling templates is now no longer viable, and blaming AI will not do anything. As Darwin would say, adapt or die.
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It isn't just the product itself: he's saying traffic to the site has dropped substantially, so any product will be harder to sell now for them.
Some people who would buy the higher quality templates don't know that they exist now.
I think the era of buying templates is over, when you can get a tool that listens to you patiently, iterates again and again till you're satisfied for pennies, why would you pay hundred's for a template that is there for anyone else to buy as well.
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