[artyom]

> Big companies can copy your product in no time

Your advantage in this case, now or 10 years ago, is that this is simply not true.

If your business is "a flashlight app", yeah, eventually they'll copy it (as it happened). However they'll take an unusual long time to do that simple thing (as it also happened).

Why? Because everything at big companies is a political game, full of internal conflicts, multiple priorities, non-collaborative teams, self-interest, promotion games, and a bunch of other things not really related to build the thing in question. It very rarely has anything to do with how fast the code can be written.

If your business is good enough and becomes something more than "a piece of software", and solves a problem, becomes a brand, has great user feedback... that's not something you can "copy in no time".

[pankajdoharey]

Don’t worry big companies still can’t copy anything quickly, even with AI. Why? Because before they can ship a single feature, they’ll need to schedule 42 alignment meetings, debate AI-generated slide decks, and log their “strategic pivots” into an AI-curated Jira board.

The real moat isn’t just code it’s speed, focus, user trust, and the ability to actually ship. Those are things bloated orgs struggle with, with or without AI. If you’re solving a real problem and building a real brand, you’re already ahead.

[i7l]

The real moat is not being forced to use Jira then.

[cbm-vic-20]

In a previous big-tech job, we called this the "Release Prevention Team".

[therobots927]

I couldn’t agree more. In fact I think the exact opposite of the original statement might be true: Find a product made by a big corporation that is a great concept but has clearly suffered from an internal shitshow of a team for some time, and copy it. If other corporations are sloppily copying it - even better. That just means the product has actual market fit.

[Oras]

While I agree with sone of your points, there are many evidences that this happened in the past.

One example is Microsoft creating teams to take on Slack.

[atonse]

Every single org I’ve seen using teams (sample size of 4-5 orgs) uses it because it came for free. And every one of them also got slack and paid for it.

That says everything about how shitty Teams STILL is. MS still hasn’t improved it much from the steady state turd that it’s been a few years ago.

[9rx]

If, knowing what you know now, you could go back in time and be the one to create Slack would you not do it? Even if everyone is using Teams now (they're not), it took a really long time to show up that Slack's founders were able to capitalize on.

The change in the software landscape today is the apparent ability to develop a competitor faster thanks to LLMs. But, as the parent points out, the bottleneck was never code writing. It was waiting on the people involved to get past their egos. LLMs have done nothing to change that.

[ctkhn]

Teams is still nowhere near Slack's features and usefulness. I wouldn't say it's a direct competitor, it's like store brand vs a mid-luxury item

[AbstractH24]

I dont think the founders or early team at slack are upset with how things played out

[raw_anon_1111]

That’s a whole lot of ifs. At the end of this long road filled with if’s, what are the chances that he can have a profit large enough to overcome the opportunity cost of not just working as an enterprise dev in a 2nd tier city and have continuing profits or have a meaningful exit?

[robofanatic]

What about other smart guys looking for ideas for their startup?

[artyom]

Same as 10 years ago, unrelated to how fast it can be copied.