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New software product viability in the age of AI

Coding is cheaper?


In the current day and age, since the start of AI coding agents, the new software products are getting high rocketed. The official GitHub stats are proving this already. 
https://innovationgraph.github.com/global-metrics/developers#global-developers
https://innovationgraph.github.com/global-metrics/git-pushes#global-repositories
https://innovationgraph.github.com/global-metrics/repositories#global-repositories



There're news that GitHub is barely holding against new traffic with AI agents and some companies like Anthropic are trying to switch to new version controlling systems that can scale with the rate of AI agent traffic.

This means coding is a software product is getting cheaper and cheaper everyday compared to coding with humans as it used to be. This means new software products are getting created and people are starting to build new products even without any developing or engineering background who are vibe coders. 

Now, it seems a unique code or a feature is not going to be a flagship product to a certain company anymore. This is getting proven everyday with replicating products of flagship brands that used to dominate the market. We're seeing replicas of Office suites, image editing, video editing suites popping up more than ever. Yet they're in the same quality as the well known products that used to dominate the market. 

So, having a great software feature is not going to stick your customers loyal to you any longer in this day and age coz the mere users can develop their own software with the help of AI.

New software prone to copy?


This is situation is more troubling to new entrepreneurs who are planning to build their own software products form scratch. Having a great product idea or a feature set is not going to guarantee a great product anymore. Coz anyone can just build it within hours to days.

Knowing this, how do we start a business with new software products? This is a great question that we all will have to find answers. 

Here are some of the things that I gathered so far to answer this. 

We can consider this as more of a checklist before starting a software product.

  1. Can someone reproduce 80% of the product's value using AI tools in a few days?
    • Can a competitor build something that most of your solution trying to do using ChatGpt, Claude or any existing AI products in a short time?
  2. Do we have something valuable that competitors cannot easily access?
    • eg: industry expertise, proprietary data, exclusive partnerships, or established customer relationships.
  3. Does our product become better as more customers use it?
    • Look at the continuous improvement plan based on the user feedback. Can we extract useful patterns, insights that can improve the product further so it'll be helpful for the future users?
  4. Is our product deeply integrated into customers' everyday workflows?
    • See if the customers can use the product for their most recurring day to day work rather than occasional work.
  5. Would customers still choose us if a competitor offered the same features for half the price?
    • Determine if the customer would value your qualities like reliability, accuracy, trust, service quality, integrations, and proven results beyond the mere list of features.


It'll be a good idea to evaluate these factors before starting a new software product in the age of AI. Let me know if you can think of any more points that should come to this checklist. Leave a comment.

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