When we talk about a software product’s value, I don't think the asset or the game is the whole story, or the moat. Sure, it's part of it.
There's a reason people get invested in this stuff.
But I think the power of it is in the relationship, and the storytelling you do as creator and as an engineer.
And I think people pick up on the fact that copying by itself... is boring.
I wanna say it was 2005.
I got wrapped up in the magic of clone-site apps. I loved how subversive the idea was. Build the infrastructure of a simple Facebook or MySpace out of pure spite, then sell it to the world and watch the giants crumble as power is returned to the people.
It was such a magical idea, that I spent two years building clones, carefully researching.
Sold a few.
I think I made $20k on the whole deal.
Not bad for an obsessive weekend hobby.
And I guess I shouldn't have been surprised by what happened.
With the hundreds, even thousands of other people out there making these things at the time.
Millions of dollars spent by normal people hoping to build the next big thing by copying what's already worked.
A handful of these sites managed to build niche audiences, but overall the entire social experiment for the entire corner of the industry was a total failure.
There were no big success stories like I had hoped there would be.
I feel like the lesson there was, that the mechanical pieces of process are less important than the trust you build and the audience you gather.
Every good software product feels like falling in love a little if you can reach the right people.
And that's the real place where all of my opinions fail, I think. I've been at this for 30 years. I have a network and social capital. I can sell anything and have an audience for it in a way that people just coming into this wouldn't.
I'm wrong to think of a world without gatekeepers, I think. Might have been a thing once. Maybe I was always delusional about it.
My first thought was that we needed more distribution channels, which we do. If we're talking little guys, fragmented markets with high quality stuff is a net positive.
But now I'm thinking that we need better tools for filtering out the entropy.
I'll work on that.