One Person Copied a $93 Billion Company

Video Transcript

Adobe has a market cap of $93 billion and one dude clones its entire suite of software. That is insane. Building software is a solved problem and it's totally okay if you don't believe me. But this is where we're at.

And if you want to build an app, a website, a landing page, a Mac app, or any other software today, you can. Even if you're not super technical and even if you haven't raised a ton of funding. 20 years ago when I started building tech business. No, no, wait.

10 years ago. No, that doesn't feel right either. Five years. Four maybe four years ago.

Okay. Three 3 years ago. Roughly 3 years ago, building software was costly, complicated, and reserved for experts or specialists who understood a lot of intricate and complicated concepts, tools, coding languages, and paradigms. Today, this is not true.

Today, building just about any kind of software is a solved problem. There's a guy who just this week released cloned versions of Adobe's entire suite of products. Photoshop being the one you probably know the most. Software is a solved problem.

Anyone can build anything. There are websites you can visit where you can just enter a URL and it clones the site for you. So if software is a solved problem and anyone can build anything, what happens next? Well, not much for a short time and then who the [ __ ] knows?

Adobe has a market cap of $93 billion and one dude cloned its entire suite of software and that is insane. What that means for the broader world is that software will likely be open sourced by default meaning everyone can get the code for anything they want ever. Now here's the thing I tell the solo founders building with me on nobleship.co. Building software is not the same as building a business.

Building a business involves a lot more than shipping code. Building a business involves a lot more than AI produced copy, design, and thinking. Building a business for now means figuring out a whole bunch of things that are not reliant on your ability to ship code. There's a lot that goes into building a business that is hidden behind that app icon that you tap to get food delivered to your door to book a flight or write a note down.

There's a human being who sat and toiled over the user journey, the design system, the sections you see, the colors they choose, the app structure, the website copy, and all the other things that have to happen to make a user not only pay you, but well before that discover you and then trust you and then stay focused enough to pay you and then register and stick around long enough to generate meaningful lifetime revenue for the app creator. And here's the what's next part that I want to focus on for the rest of this video. What's next is figuring out what you enjoy doing. Because if you end up trying to solve a problem that you don't really enjoy or love, then you're going to be beaten by somebody using AI who does love that problem you're trying to solve in a half-hearted way.

What's next is laying a good foundation. If you have an idea you want to turn into a business, thinking has become more relevant when building is basically free. Planning matters now at an individual level, not just a broader corporate level. What's next is figuring out exactly who you are building and working for.

I don't mean broadly, I mean specific. I believe that specifics are going to matter a lot in the future because acquiring a huge number of generic users is going to be difficult and competitive when everyone can build the same thing. Figuring out your opinion matters in the coming few years. Breaking out of the AI algorithms and feeds that force everyone to extremes or to the boring middle is going to be difficult but important for career survival.

Base Camp is one of my favorite companies in the world and I don't even use any of their product. I just love them because they are opinionated. Even if I don't agree with their opinion, I respect and admire that DHH and Jason Frerieded the founders build with such determination and focus on their opinion and how software should be. What's next is the emergence of the solo founder as a real economic player in the global economy.

Fortune 500 companies will likely hire fewer people to do more in the coming years and solo entrepreneurship is on the rise and we're moving into a time when everyone can and should have a side business of their own. I run multiple businesses using Grockbot and various other AI tools which act as my operations, my finance, my marketing and tech employees. Most importantly in my mind is that everyone right now needs to look inward and define their own version of success. Do not continue to inherit your idea of what a successful life or person look like.

Success is not a single measurable quantifiable and universal idea. It's personal and it needs to be understood as such. The more closely your ideas of success align to your ambitions, your capabilities, resources, and lifestyle choices, the easier living is going to be mentally and pragmatically. If you spend your days pining for a better car, a bigger house, a prettier boyfriend, more money, or just something somebody else has that you don't, then life in the near future is going to be continually difficult for you.

I'm not saying you have to lower your ambition or have no ambition. I'm saying figure out the tradeoffs for the things you want and then move towards your version of success quickly and aggressively. Building software is a solved problem whether you want it to be or not. But it's only one problem to solve.

If you are building a business or a life in the coming years, then don't obsess over things you can't control. AI has solved software. Now figure out how you can capitalize on that and get moving.