Dear founder,
You know that moment when you realize the ground has shifted beneath your feet? I had one of those moments recently. I was watching an AI agent build out a complex feature for Podscan in about twenty minutes – something that would have taken me days to code properly just a year ago. And it hit me: the rules of the game have fundamentally changed.
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Over the last couple of months, my way of building product has significantly changed. A lot of the skill of coding solutions effectively has been pretty much surpassed by the AI agents that I use. Don’t get me wrong – it still has a lot to do with the fact that I’m very capable of specifying extremely correctly what I want and having a system build out code that is well specified, well commented, and that makes it easy for an agent to implement the things that I wanted to implement. But the speed at which this is being built? It removes one of the biggest moats for indie hackers and software entrepreneurs.
We used to be really good at building stuff and creating code that works. That advantage doesn’t exist anymore when everyone has access to Claude, or ChatGPT, or whatever the latest model is for building applications. So that’s gone.
And at the same time, we’re looking at subscription fatigue. People don’t want to buy software as a service businesses anymore. That used to be the one big thing that indie hackers had – reliable and anticipatable revenue from monthly subscriptions.
So what are the things that we still have? What are the things that are moats that we as entrepreneurs can use to protect ourselves from competition when our traditional advantages are disappearing?
The Expertise-Relationship Advantage
I believe – and we should probably expand a bit on this here – that the moats we do have are deep expertise in the field and the willingness to collaborate with our customers where bigger companies just see them as a transaction. We see them as a relationship. Relational engagement with customers is the ultimate opportunity builder for software founders.
This creates something interesting. We’re not looking at our businesses as these stand-alone services anymore that just generate value for our customers. It becomes much more of a collaborative approach to building services and building value for them.
Think about it this way: when you have deep domain expertise – really understanding the pain points, the workflows, the unspoken needs of your market – that becomes your first competitive advantage. But here’s where it gets interesting: you position yourself as the expert who codes, not just a coder who happens to work in your domain.
This is what I call the “Expertise-as-a-Service” model. You’re not just selling software; you’re selling your understanding of the problem space, backed by the ability to rapidly prototype and iterate solutions. Your customers aren’t just buying a tool – they’re getting access to someone who understands their world and can build exactly what they need.
The Integration-Heavy Future
We’re very integration heavy. If we are heavily collaborating, we build integrations into existing systems. We maintain those integrations and make them work better, make them work with even more things. And all of a sudden our moat is not about lock-in. In our universe, our customers are kept and engaged not because they’re locked in, but because our moat is that we are flexible and capable of interfacing with other systems.
We’re providing data to other systems, providing reliable, important, relevant, critical data that comes from somewhere else. And we just make it work. We make it attainable. We make it manageable. We make it accessible.
Here’s what I’ve started doing: instead of just building integrations myself, I’m creating what I call “Integration Marketplaces” around my core products. Think of it as turning your product into a platform where customers or even third-party developers can build their own integrations. You take a percentage of revenue or charge connection fees. Suddenly, your product isn’t just a tool – it’s an ecosystem.
This approach transforms switching costs entirely. Instead of technical lock-in, you create relationship depth. When your product becomes the hub that connects to everything else in their workflow, leaving becomes exponentially more difficult – not because they can’t, but because they lose all those valuable connections and relationships.
The Communication Revolution
From that relational approach to customer success stems a very different business model, a very different product design philosophy. Not one of locking people in, but one of unlocking things for people.
And where this happens is in the collaborative conversation with our customers. It’s in the feedback that we get. It’s in the back and forth and the ideas that our customers bring into our product. Like, “Hey, I would like this.” Or, “Hey, I see a competitor offers this. I don’t like that, but I want something like it, but better.” Those kinds of things come from conversations with customers.
But here’s where AI becomes your secret weapon for customer discovery. I’ve been experimenting with what I call “AI-Powered Customer Discovery Loops.” Instead of manually sifting through support tickets and feature requests, I deploy AI agents to analyze patterns across all customer interactions. These agents identify trends I’d miss manually, spot emerging needs before they become widespread, and even help me understand which customers are most likely to churn based on their communication patterns.
This gives you faster feedback loops and helps you stay ahead of customer needs. While your competitors are still manually analyzing quarterly surveys, you’re responding to customer needs in real-time. Customer development becomes your competitive advantage.
The scripts have to be rewritten. The whole idea of the software business that was impossible to build for anybody without extensive coding experience – that is gone. The software part may not even be as relevant anymore.
The important part, if you are a software entrepreneur, is not the software. It’s the wetware. It’s the communication with human minds. It’s the flow – I don’t know what else to call it. There’s something that is outside of all the automations that are ever easier and easier to build. The automation becomes a consequence rather than the product.
The New Business Models
The product, in many ways, is our capacity and willingness to engage and build solutions for the people that we’re serving. Not build a solution and then sell it to people, but sell our capacity to build the thing that people want.
This is leading me toward what I’m calling “The Solution Concierge” business model. Instead of traditional subscriptions, you offer solution packages where customers pay for outcomes rather than just access. You use AI to rapidly prototype and iterate solutions with customers, charging per problem solved or per integration implemented, rather than relying solely on monthly recurring revenue.
Last week on the podcast I talked about how we can onboard people using AI, where we don’t even know what people need, but AI will figure it out with them and for them. Or we figure out who our customers are by having AI sift through a system, then write the perfect follow-up email for us, knowing what the capacities of our system are and what this user should be doing.
But there’s another layer here that I’ve been experimenting with: building async collaboration tools directly into your product. Since human communication is becoming the differentiator, why not make that communication part of your platform? Think shared workspaces, commentary systems, or workflow documentation that keeps customers engaged with your platform daily.
Instead of trying to increase engagement through notifications or gamification, you increase it through genuine collaboration. Your customers aren’t just using your tool – they’re working with you inside your tool. The switching cost becomes the loss of that collaborative relationship, not the technical difficulty of moving data.
The AI Facilitation Layer
The AI systems are facilitators here. They’re kind of like agentic organic compounds in this wetware that we’re building.
The more I see people struggle with the fact that AI isn’t replacing them as software engineers just yet, the more I think these people are looking at it from the wrong perspective. Because it’s not about the quality of code that comes out of AI agents today – it’s the expectable increase in quality that agentic AI coding systems are going to bring to the business in the next few years.
Just like email became a thing that every business is using, the idea of custom software to solve your problem – or software that is highly customizable to the point that it will really adequately solve your problem – that’s the magic that’s coming.
When AI handles the implementation details, your job becomes solution architecture and customer relationship management. You become the translator between customer needs and technical possibilities. You become the curator of solutions.
This is where the relationship advantage really shines. A big company might have better AI agents, but they can’t have the same depth of relationship with each customer that you can. They can’t have the same willingness to customize, to iterate, to build something that’s exactly right for one specific use case.
What This Means for Your Business
So what does this mean practically for bootstrapped founders?
First, start positioning yourself as the domain expert who codes, not just someone who codes in a domain. Write about your industry. Speak at industry conferences. Become known for understanding the problem space deeply, not just for your technical skills.
Second, make integration your strategy, not just a feature. Look for ways to turn your product into a hub that connects to everything else your customers use. Consider building marketplace models around those integrations.
Third, use AI for customer discovery, not just product development. Set up systems that help you understand your customers better and faster than anyone else in your space.
Fourth, build collaboration into your product from the ground up. Make working with you and your team part of the value proposition, not just using your software.
And finally, experiment with outcome-based pricing models alongside or instead of traditional subscriptions. Sell your capacity to solve problems, not just access to a tool.
The Wetware Advantage
The businesses that will thrive in this new landscape are the ones that understand that software is becoming a commodity, but solutions are becoming more valuable than ever. The relationship becomes the product. The expertise becomes the service. The willingness to collaborate becomes the moat.
This isn’t about building defensive moats the way we used to think about them. This is about building generative moats – advantages that actually create more value for everyone involved, including your customers and even your competitors in some ways.
When you’re integration-heavy and collaboration-focused, you’re not trying to lock anyone in. You’re trying to unlock value for them. And when you do that consistently, with expertise and genuine care for their success, that creates a kind of loyalty that’s much stronger than any technical switching cost.
Looking Forward
The future belongs to founders who understand that in a world where code is commoditized, relationships become premium. Where solutions matter more than software. Where being able to rapidly prototype and iterate with customers beats having the most polished initial product.
AI systems make this much easier, but they don’t make the human element less important – they make it more important. The AI handles the implementation details, freeing you up to focus on understanding problems deeply and building relationships authentically.
The entrepreneurs who are struggling right now are often the ones still trying to compete on technical implementation quality or trying to build traditional SaaS businesses in a market suffering from subscription fatigue. The ones who are thriving are embracing this shift toward collaboration, expertise, and relationship-driven business models.
Your coding skills aren’t obsolete – they’re just moving up the stack. Instead of writing functions, you’re architecting solutions. Instead of debugging code, you’re debugging customer problems. Instead of optimizing algorithms, you’re optimizing relationships.
And that, I think, is a much more interesting and sustainable way to build a business anyway.
The question isn’t whether AI will replace software entrepreneurs. The question is whether software entrepreneurs will evolve fast enough to stay relevant in this new landscape. The tools are there. The opportunities are there. The only question is whether we’re willing to change our approach to match the new reality.
That’s what I’ve been thinking about lately as I watch this industry transform around us. What are you seeing in your own business? How are you adapting to this shift? I’d love to hear your thoughts – this conversation is just getting started.
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