kyle @ scrivium

My pal @iristenteije has been saying for a while that software is becoming more like content. Here's what I think the 'software is dead' crowd are missing: 1. The internet commoditised the distribution of content. Suddenly, you didn't need the approval and distribution engine of a newspaper to have millions of people read what you wrote. 2. The same happened with software's distribution, but the barrier to entry was still higher than with content. People with no formal training can create a blog post in an hour that's consumed and enjoyed by thousands or more. Historically not true with software. 3. So as software gets easier and cheaper to make, there are imperfect, but useful analogies for what already happened in content, and what's happening now. Some predictions: - the number of people creating software will continue to explode. - the amount of software (great, okay and bad) will grow accordingly, think 10,000x in a few years, but with similar ratios of each bucket as before. - the business of software will change rapidly, in a similar fashion to content. - lots more software will be free: as a funnel to something else, to build people's profiles, for the love of the game. - people will still make plenty of money from directly monetising software, but it'll become increasingly important to (as @nikitabier) says, have one or more of these: network effects, proprietary data & physical components. - I'd suggest tech commentators are underestimating the importance of brand/personality in this too. more influencers will run software companies. - just having the greatest product/distribution/intensity will still matter though, whether you're monetising directly or not. the difference in output between a great person and good person is even wider post-AI than pre-AI. - the number of people required to build useful software will keep shrinking. just like content creators are typically a single person, software products/companies will increasingly be a solopreneur or smaller team. - the type of software that's built will drastically expand, as more people (and agents) participate and build for themselves and their people/ideas. - finally, in the immortal words of @GRITCULT, things will get weirder.

Introducing The Ramen Index, a fun, up to date directory of the cheapest (and most expensive) cities to live ramen profitably off your startup revenue. We're on Product Hunt today and would love your support. Link in comments. "Ramen profitable means a startup makes just enough to pay the founders' living expenses." – Paul Graham 😱 The problem ❌ Makers want to find cheap(er) cities to travel and live in to build their startup ❌ But it can be time consuming figuring out the *total* cost of living there *cheaply* (aka 'ramen profitable'). 🍜 Enter The Ramen Index 🍜 ✅ Get accurate cost of living (ramen profitably) data for 387+ cities around the world ✅ Up to date as of November 2024 from Numbeo, the most trusted cost of living data source Thanks to my friend and @RamenClubHQ member @ssp6sean for all the help making this, couldn't have done it without you! This always inspires a healthy debate, so let me know what you think!

Nobody showed up to the first meetup I did. 🙁 5 years and thousands of members later, we're launching @IndieBeers in New York City! 🍎 Making it the FIFTH city we're in (New York, London, Lisbon, Lyon & Tokyo). You can RSVP at the link in the replies. 🔗 Please tag any local friends/indie makers/tech folks! I'm still surprised how hard it is to find a regular, informal, high signal makers meetup in big cities. If they exist, they're either irregular or overly complicated/short lived. IndieBeers was designed from the outset to be: - regular - informal - high signal People who attend are actually making shit. Not tourists. In any city we're in. Some of them are even running giant businesses now (cough, @veedstudio @tickettailor @TiinyHost @findymail etc). I'm super proud of the work our hosts have been doing worldwide @_baretto @taka_shirasu @jean__gatt @iamgdsa @valentin_wln 🔥 And excited to welcome my old friend @DannyAziz97 to host these in NYC! I can't wait to get started. Hopefully see a bunch of you there. If you can't attend, plz RT or tag a friend if you support 🙏 Let's do this 🤠