In the past and in my experience, you would require a deep bag of cash to build any multi-feature software. There has never been an easy way to build software under $50k unless using freelancers from UpWork or other freelance platforms where the developers try to lower bids on jobs to get the work.
But this has changed and thanks mainly to AI you can build multi feature software for as low as $100.00 give or take.
Looking at the evolution you start to see just how low cost it can be now to build your own software:
Cost of Software Creation:
2000: $1,000,000
2010: $100,000
2020: $10,000
2024: ~$1,000 (with LLMs)
2025+: Approaching $0
This is the mathematics of software’s future. Custom software is becoming more accessible for the everyday person.
I’ve said this so many times this year ill say it again here highlighted so you can quote me 😉
We are heading towards an age where if you dont like the price or features of mainstream software that you can literally clone the platform and add your own spin on it and have a customised software in a matter of days.
– Shane Pollard of TechGiant
Lowering the cost of entry creates a very interesting scenario:
When Software Development Cost → 0:
– Supply of software ↑ exponentially grows
– Technical advantage ↓ to zero its open to everyone
– Distribution becomes only moat the better marketers will win out
– Niche focus > broad solutions
We’ve seen this before with mobile phones and with that said I see a divide between new vs old tech companies:
The OLD Traditional Path of Software Development:
– Cost: $1-5M development team
– Time: 18 months to market
– Risk: 80% failure rate
– Target: Mass market
– Moat: Technical complexity
= Lower probability of good outcome, no soft release, huge upfront capital risk.
The NEW Software Development Path:
– Cost: Near $0-100 (LLMs)
– Time: Days/weeks to market
– Risk: Test fast, fail cheap
– Target: Specific niche, start niche then branch out to a broader market
– Moat: Distribution
= Higher probability of good outcome, lower capital risks and significantly lower go-to-market speeds.
It always seemed like the OLD way was broken, you had to hire a million developers, forty UIUX designers and a tonne of sales people just to make the software a success for the board, the investors. But not anymore my friends we can build fast and fail fast to learn and pivot with the market.

Let’s look at the math of distribution in media for 2024, where the barrier to entry (cost of content creation and distribution) was basically driven to zero over a decade ago:
Video Content
Mr Beast has more than 240M subscribers across his channels
Disney by all means a far bigger operation has just 28M subscribers
Audio Content / Podcasting
The Joe Rogan Experience has just over 11M listeners
ESPN Radio has just on 1.2M listeners
What’s the takeaway?
When the barrier to entry is removed and everyone has access production ready codec without needing 20 engineers and a $800k a year platform to run it, distribution becomes everything.
The New Formula for Success:
1. Niche Focus
2. Personal Brand
3. Distribution Power
4. LLM Development = Sustainable Growth
In this new world, there’s a new logic of success:
Old: (Technical Talent × Capital) = Success
New: (Distribution × Niche Focus) = Success
This means:
– Technical programming skills have become commoditized
– The company that can market and get distribution best becomes everything
– Individual founders > Build startup empires
-VC investors will be throwing large wads of cash at promising founders and product talent (like in sports/entertainment), and the people will hold the leverage (just like in sports/entertainment)
In my eyes this NEW way allows me to keep a small agile tight-knit engineering team that focuses on product releases. I don’t need teams of teams for overcomplicated, bloated development cycles where I lose multiple people to long-term development projects.
The next couple of years will see what founders have their ears to the ground and are listening to the builder community. They will listen and hear about the dynamic shift in engineering workflows and embed this new way into their teams and become x10 more productive then competitors.
If the hard work being the development of software is stripped back to a week or two then the real challenge will be the marketing and distribution of the product. This will be the space that separates the wheat from the chaff.
I expect investors and advisors to scramble for the next hit company. I would also expect developers and marketers to do the same, although I believe that a small percentage of developers will scramble to join companies using the OLD methods so that they can cruise and still get that fat pay check.
What a time to be in tech. The world is yours.