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Comment by g947o | Hacker News Reader

Serious question: what's keeping a competitor from doing the same thing and doing it better than you?

That's a genuine problem now. If you launch a new feature and your competition can ship their own copy a few hours later the competitive dynamics get really challenging!

My hunch is that the thing that's going to matter is network effects and other forms of soft lockin. Features alone won't cut it - you need to build something where value accumulates to your user over time in a way that discourages them from leaving.

The interesting part about that is both of those things require some sort of time to start.

If I launch a new product, and 4 hours later competitors pop up, then there's not enough time for network effects or lockin.

I'm guessing what is really going to be needed is something that can't be just copied. Non-public data, business contracts, something outside of software.

Marketing and brand are still the most important, though I personally hope for a world where business is more indie and less winner take all

You can see the first waves of this trend in HN new.

Wouldn't the incumbents with their fantastic distribution channels, brand, lockin, marketing, capital and own models just wipe the floor with everyone as talent no longer matters?

Short answer no. In a world where AI reliably generates software, companies will bypass SaaS vendors, even the large ones, and go straight to the best LLM providers for tailored solutions. Brand, lock-in, and capital won’t save traditional vendors.

I'm not talking about the saas companies. I'm talking about the meta/google/apple/openAI/anthropic etc. They can clone any decent business overnight now, cheaper and faster than you can.

That's the point they win, we all lose.

Only if you and everyone else decide to use theirs

Work on alternatives, be indie too

If AI really makes software cheap and fast, the future isn’t generic SaaS clones competing in hours. Companies will just generate their own hyper-custom internal versions, Salesforce clones tailored to their exact workflows. Brand and lock-in won’t save vendors; internal control and cost savings will.

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