Startup woes
According to one survey, last year, 23 per cent of startup founders named AI strategy as a top concern. This year, it is 32 per cent.
God knows what they meant by “concern” and “strategy”, and why it’s gone up by only 9%.
Digging into it, they all love AI because it means they can build product cheaply. But then the problem is that anyone can build product cheaply.
Even me.
At least ten times now, instead of buying into some SaaS product I’ve simply replicated the SaaS product using vibe coding at a fraction of the cost. Specifically, I incur a one time tiny cost for development and minimal ongoing costs. Plus I can tune the product to my specific needs.
With reference to the screenshot example below, it’s a CRM I built and then tailored for two of my companies.
I am not merely replacing an expensive CRM (Pipedrive) subscription with cheaper software. I am replacing a generic product with two purpose-built products that fit each company’s needs exactly.
The old SaaS proposition was that custom software was too expensive, so businesses accepted and worked around a sub-standard standardised product and paid rent forever.
Most importantly, my own vibe-coded software is free of the feature creep that makes many products unusable. Pipedrive specifically.
The first victim of AI? Software-based innovation.
Delicious irony that.
Saving the planet, one less founder at a time.
offshore westerly 