In LLM era, can software startup survive?

The essence of business is not that anyone who can write code is guaranteed to make money. In the past, software companies made money because they possessed the ability to help enterprises complete digital/automation and solve problems. Writing code is just one way to solve problems. The vast majority of software I see today only solves the problems of its creators; they don't care or pay attention to how others' problems are solved.

Of course, you might say: "Nowadays, LLMs are so cheap that everyone can write software." But the fact is, while everyone can write software, not everyone can write a complete software. And the assumption that "everyone can write software" is currently also incorrect. Not everyone can write software.

I wonder if the flood of vibecoding startups may end up helping long established enterprises and OSS through eroding consumer trust towards new software, and highlighting the value of the industrial software development process. Bills of materials, 4-eyes code reviews, release gates, QA testers, planning involving domain experts, external audits etc. Any time I see a new large piece of software nowadays that seems to have popped out of nowhere and has generic sounding docs and testimonials with em dashes I tend to wonder if it was generated with a one shot prompt and may include vulnerabilities, malicious code, or business domain hallucinations.

It's a bit like with books: 10+ years ago I could have trusted a book from a new author I never heard about just because the large effort of getting published was hinting that the author is likely qualified. Now, hell no.

When the barrier to publish drops to zero, the barrier to gain trust skyrockets.

If you solve a problem, a real problem, and has the right niche for it, for sure it can survive. AI just speed up the software part that will also rise the amount of features that was impossible in the past without a huge numbers of employees.

A premise here that doesn't stick, "users are expecting open source and free software" this is definitely dependent on the type of software, and reddit isn't even the best way to demonstrate this reddit frowns at everything anyways. There are definitely still a lot of new startups making revenue it's just harder these days.

The code was never the hard part. Understanding the market, developing product market fit, and evolving is the hard part.

Large companies aren't going to chase every opportunity.

I had the same thought - that its end of software startups since most people can develop software on their own now using LLMs. But seeing how people use LLMs to develop the app made me realize that there is a difference in knowing how software is built vs just vibe coding it. For example - only a good s/w engineer would know to include CI/CD pipeline which will help her deploy changes faster. A person who is not familiar with s/w is not gonna do that unless they dig a little more deeply OR follows an advise from a good model. In 2 months time, the non s/w engineer is gonna drown in keeping up with all the pieces of the product without regression. So startups who provide value in short cycles would still be in demand. The cycle time of requirement -> delivery is gonna be very short.

I think it’s completely inverted actually. The big companies have a much smaller moat now. This is almost certainly the best time to do a startup. You can build a decent product very fast, GTM in a month or so, and pivot rapidly. But it requires a lot of skill to do it with AI tooling in a way that sustainable and the techniques and tools are very immature and shifting around rapidly. Large companies are struggling very hard to integrate these into their flows and workforce while a small company, with the right small set of people, can achieve as much or more than a large one with thousands of developers.

This is a qwuestion that has been on top of my mind for quite some time now. My answer is it depends so munch on what are you trying to sell and to whom. As software engineers we see a potential to vibe code any product that we see, but we are alone in this, imagine the guys working as BAs or other roles at multinational corporations. Most of them have absolutely no ideea how to even vibecode a working app, that is only easy to us as engineers. So you can still atract new customers, it's just about who you target and that is mostly it.

True that your products will get cloned, but so what? If people start cloning you, that is only a proof that you are on the right track. Keep on cooking guys

To me, it seems that the modern software startup is geared up to provide highly customized solutions to customers. Software that easily bends to the customers needs, rather than customer changing their processes to make use of software.

Some products are harder to build than others imo, even if making software has gotten easier.

Making consistent and reliable software is even harder.

Creating new software is far more than just a matter of tokens. LLMs are like a small programming team: you still need a project manager (you!).

And tax return software is a perfect example of where "vibe coding" will go horribly wrong: a superficial tax return is trivial; handling tax rules for every different situation is vastly more complex. (1) You need to codify all the tax rules; (2) You need to do it reliably (which means really understanding how to work with LLMs: harnesses, gates, verification, reviews, etc.); (3) You need a corpus of real-world examples (taken from where?); (4) You need user feedback.

This would be an intensive multi-month project. And that's before even looking at marketing and sales.

Can a competitor race with you? Sure, but only if they're also determined to put in the work.

The environment of computation and it's interactions in the 7 day week of a modern classed society is open to debate and great thought will come from it to solve the problems of mere boredom , as well as the vital life sustaining things people need.

If you are settled with distribution channels, can productize the solution or convert the startup feom product one to a service model then you are probably safe. The development itself is cheap and has no moat.

It's still usually cheaper to pay for software than it's to write it, maintain it and run it.

- getting it promoted like nord vpn is the hard part, you do that, someone or the other ll buy something as long as it serves a utility

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