Coding Isn't Enough To Build A SaaS Product Anymore

Gen AI is changing how SaaS products are developed and coding is no longer enough to build a successful SaaS product.

[eterr]

code was never an issue, crazy how ppl constantly re discover same thing over and over again

[CodingPhase]

I’ve been saying this for 7 years and people looked at me like I was crazy 😅 I’m glad people are realizing the coding part is not the most important part.. the biggest issues 98% of developers have 1. They don’t have ideas for businesses they are too comfortable with getting tickets and people telling them what to build. 2. They look down on ux design and marketing. 3. Wanting to build everything themselves and trying to make everything “optimized”. In an era of who has the best ideas most developers fall short

[hamm]

Not trying to be rude, but from watching your videos for a while, I think you spend too much time coding wrappers or saas with a low domain specific knowledge barrier to entry. If youre only building a chat gpt wrapper, then yeah, all you have to differentiate yourself is marketing and operations. *Youre going out of your way to remove programming as your point of differentiation.* As such, this seems to be biasing your perspective in this video. You are intentionally devaluing coding in your business model, and in turn, reach your conclusions that coding doesnt matter.

In contrast, I have a biology background and have been building biochemical assay modeling tools from the ground up. My point of differentiation is my business logic and coding. Marketing is secondary. I am building a mote around my value proposition with coding. Chat gpt cant do this product because its an actual software product, not just a crud wrapper.

You said that "software is incredibly cheap now". This is an incomplete statement. Low barrier to entry software is cheap now; high barrier to entry software is not cheap. An analogy would be cooking. Its cheap to get someone to produce gas station sushi. Its not cheap to produce artisanal sushi. If you're an engineer making a company, lean into your expertise. Be the artisan, not the part time rice roller.

Just my thoughts. All love.

[PatrickOakleyEllis]

Great advice, I fully agree! Thanks for sharing. We've truly entered the golden age for a solo devs (or small ~<10 person teams), if you can stay on top of new GenAI native architectures / tooling, and build a distribution channel (through a personal brand, or otherwise).

MicroConf's edu resources have been the best I've come across for learning skills as a technical founder.

[austincodes]

I'm still skeptical about the AI takeover of coding roles but I actually agree with the conclusion of the video

[bigfin]

if nothing else I do appreciate you keeping the videos succint

[nasif]

Agreed. Im coming from the design side trying to learn programming to understand how everything fits together, so im on the opposite side of the fence. AI has already changed the way we design things and ideate. It doesnt replace but rather supplement, for now. But at the speed its being developed it wont be long before it properly replaces designers and devs.

[giulia]

I'm not convinced by what you said if we have to apply it in the next few/ 10 years, Chatgpt generates bad code even on basic tasks involving just html and css, I cannot think about the mess it could do on big projects without a supervisor: and that supervisor must be a pure dev, not half dev half marketer. Would you hire somone who is just half a plummer to fix your bath tub? That would break not only your bathroom but potentially your entire home. No, we are gonna crave for pure devs, as people are going to want more from Chatgpt and this will force programmers to work more in depth with it.

[MrWarrenjday]

I do agree that AI has made software far less complex to build. But I think the result of that is we will just build more complex software.

We used have entire teams building websites, now we have “full-stack developers”. But does that mean jobs disappeared? No, the opposite in fact.

As every company continues to compete, new demands and greater expectations will be placed on developers.

[wzuuoskqo]

Marketing has always been the #1 part of a business. No point in building an product if nobody know about it / is not willing to buy it

[ibilalchaudhary]

Agreed! 100 and 10%
I was already at this point tryin' to figure out, switching focus towards outreaching stuff, cracking market and cognitive basie's stuff
Now, by this video it's sort of, validated that it's really to take chance

[CREATE-ooxg]

I’m the opposite of you! Was in the digital marketing space and now moving to the tech scene. I thank God for Ai cause I have no idea what I’m doing code-wise.

[alexreyes]

Its not even about marketing, it is about finding something that users need - a gap in the market. And then developing a product along user feedback - product market fit.

[cody_codes_youtube]

I agree with the title before even seeing the video

[foxedex]

hmm, i dont use ai that much because most of the time it gives u shit code tho by the future they should figure out a way to filter shit code from good code from theire training data and then people would really really start relying on ai

[mr.random]

Massive liability, just watch the AI hallucinates and makes wrong medical diagnosis

[Pablo-pxct]

If everyone does their own app you're also doomed because you lack attention