In LLM era, can software startup survive?
13 pointsby sjia6 hours ago7 comments
  • genldd6 hours ago
    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.

    • questionableans25 minutes ago
      Choosing the right problem to solve was always very important. The code wasn’t always the hard part, but arguably it really was the hard part more often earlier on.

      For example, a personal computer operating system that runs all your existing programs at full speed but doesn’t crash all the time and the ability to run a virtual machine on an x86 PC both took as long as they did to get to market primarily due to the technical difficulty, not because it was hard to find people ready to pay for them. Those kinds of hard coding problems are less plentiful, or at least less obvious today.

    • pydevgo23 minutes ago
      Distribution is the moat now :)
    • sjia5 hours ago
      Large companies are working hard on laying off and buying out real persons for GPU compute budget.
      • grim_io43 minutes ago
        And then regretting it shortly after.

        The tech is not there yet. It may not be ready for many years.

        • 0xbadcafebee31 minutes ago
          The tech will never be there with LLMs. They can't learn, they hallucinate, lie, cheat, steal, destroy things, break the law, etc. You can't train them out of these behaviors, it's how LLMs work.

          An LLM is just a really fancy nail gun to replace hammers. Much faster nailing, but you need to hold it right to not shoot yourself in the foot.

  • fnordpiglet32 minutes ago
    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.
  • efren66 hours ago
    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.
  • gregzem5 hours ago
    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.
    • sjia5 hours ago
      Settleing channels are hard for small businesses.
  • vivzkestrel2 hours ago
    - 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
    • sjiaan hour ago
      like bottle water
  • kirs_chen3 hours ago
    [flagged]
  • al2o3cr2 hours ago
    [dead]