Software is deflationary because of the power user.
I'm currently waiting for Claude to ship the next feature on one of our vibe-coded internal sales tools. Which left me time to think. Dangerous.
For years, software teams have built for the needs shared by the most users.
That's the most sensible take.
But anyone who has worked in product knows the tension: power users often push a product forward, while their more specific needs are hard to prioritise for everyone else.
They want the weird workflow, the extra button, the feature that's been "on the roadmap" since 2022.
They grumbled. They stayed. And they always paid.
Where would they go? Building and maintaining code is cumbersome.
Well, now they have somewhere: Coding agents.
A power user can build a custom copy of their favourite software over a cup of coffee.
No roadmap. No sales call. No "it's planned for Q3"
Software isn't deflationary because everyone will build their own tools.
It's deflationary because the power users who pay the bills, will.
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2 years ago today, I did not want to work on our startup anymore.
We were unfunded, building TTS models, ofcourse all of that was a pain, but that was not the reason.
We were having the best time of our lives building, one rainy evening, my best friend, cousin, cofounder @the__UT had a case of a burst artery.
Nobody knew why, but I when I reached emergency unit of St john medical college, I found myself waiving the right to sue anyone if his ultra risky first operation, just to stem the flow of blood did not go well. And if it did not, it would have meant something really bad.
What followed was an ordeal.
24 straight days of trauma.
Ventilator was on again, off again.
And then I started evaluating everything. Was working like a missionary, day and night even worth it.
What if instead of spending 9 months in the trenches fighting over voice quality, we had done long vacations.
What if the pressure of working got to him.
The spiralling thoughts as I used to spend nights outside the ICU were both existential from a personal perspective but also left me double guessing the decision of starting up.
He was doing pretty well at Blinkit, and I literally dragged him out a well paying job along with kali, put us on a timeline chasing what...
All of that changed when he first spoke to me after 24 days of intensive ICU care, maybe 5 minutes after his ventilator had been put out,
"Bhai din ka revenue kitna ho gaya"
It was the craziest thing someone could have said after what had happened.
All my second guesses went away that day, because he brought the feeling of fun back into our work. He showed why we were doing this. For fun, for the love of it.
Doctors said it would take him 24 months to get back to normal.
He was back in 8 months, full monty, doing what he loves, training models again.
And we have never looked back.
I rarely talk about this story in public because, I think I'll jinx the journey.
But I have not seen resilience up-close, of this level, in my life.
And I love that we are building alongside each other, everyday, having the time of our lives.
Some slack messages on our general channel from that time and the first video I took of him in the hospital because anything before this one, was a picture I would never want to see again.
To @the__UT and the guy he is.
And to the team who held us all together during the time.
A "leading voice ai company" sends us cease and desist. We take down the comparison page because who cares. They still have theirs up.
Now hiring product designers and asking them to sign up to look at our UX everyday.
At least use personal emails guys.
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I talked ~20 YC founders after Demo Day and learned a brutal lesson about fundraising:
Startups that raised the most ($5-10m) often have ZERO traction but fresh, insightful, and huge-if-true ideas.
Startups that fail to raise ($1-3m), often have TONS of traction, but their ideas are boring and incremental.
Traction is seen as a bad thing, because it signals you're in a competitive market with a clear incumbent/winner.
When talking to VCs, it's much easier to sell a dream than to justify numbers.
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We need to pace the frontier
We updated our default star and “Important” label colors from yellow to blue to meet modern accessibility standards. This change ensures inboxes are clearer, easier to read, and more inclusive for everyone.
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The instinct for phone calls is @getosmoapp
It answers all the calls that sell loans to me and says no. Legit saved an entire day of for me in the last 2 months.
Magical stuff by @anbh27
apps.apple.com/app/id6761623…
