fontain

“I do believe that cost of producing code is approaching to zero, and that means hundreds or even thousands of offerings will exist in every shape, way and form we can imagine.”

What proportion of T does R need to be to see thousands of Ashbys appear?

Ashby is a good example to discuss because it is serious software for serious businesses, it isn’t a calorie counting app. Serious business expects so much more out of their suppliers than software, Ashby is so much more than a bunch of code.

So, a thousand people generate their own ashbys, then what? Are companies like Shopify and Ramp going to trust their ATS to some person who generated some software in a day?

I agree that the cost of building software has gone down a lot and that lowers the barrier to entry for building a software business. I completely disagree that the market could support even 10x the number of companies in each vertical, let alone 100x or 1000x.

You could clone Ashby today and go to Ramp and offer them a 50% discount on whatever they’re paying Ashby and there is zero chance you win their business. You could clone Ashby and the add 10x the features and go to ramp and offer a 75% discount and there is zero chance of you winning their business.

“What happens to the SaaS markets when the cost of code approaches zero?” … “Few people truly grasp how hard bringing a software product to market is.”

Are these related? The difficulty of bringing a software product to market has never been that it takes time to produce code. We’ve had the concept of MVPs for decades and pre-AI companies have raised hundreds of millions off of no code prototypes.

YC has always preached that you launch. Launch today. Launch as soon as is humanly possible. And learn. And iterate. You get something into the market as soon as possible. Spending years building the perfect software has never been the strategy pursued by technology startups, and not because of the time it takes, but because you need users to know what to build.

I think we could even go as far as to counter your argument. We know that constraints are powerful. Constraints force us to focus. Imagine you decide to build an ATS. You spend a bunch of money on Claude Code to generate hundreds of features, every little idea you can think of, you include it. You launch with the most complete ATS on the market. Ashby can’t hold a candle to the depth of your software. Do you have a better chance of success than if you had launched with a much smaller surface area, experimented, found the right area of focus, and iterated according to user behavior?

I encounter a lot of vibe coded software products that people are launching and I am not precious about code, a good product is a good product whether it was hand crafted over a decade by a thousand well paid programmers or generated in an afternoon by Claude Code from a laypersons prompt. I can name one single vibe coded product I pay for that is genuinely good software. All that the AI age has done is show that most of us absolutely suck at building products, and that even with free code, what we produce is garbage.

“How could the market afford to build and sustain each offering?”

I think you’re conflating build and sustain here. Nothing fundamental about business has changed. Sustaining a business isn’t about being able to generate code. Even in a world where code is free, how could the market sustain 10,000 Ashbys? Where are the customers coming from?

As a concrete example: how many customers does Jira have despite Linear being better software in every single way? Would generating 1,000 more Linears change Jira’s market position? Or Microsoft Teams, Teams is awful, there are so many better options. Will generating 1,000 more better options change Microsoft Teams’s position?

The subscriptions are not available to enterprise users. Enterprise users must pay per-token. A $200 subscription gives you roughly the equivalent of $1500 in per-token billing.

is this with a subscription or pure API billing?

Days ago he said…

“I'm finding that coding agents can take me from a vague idea to a working solution, one with tests and documentation and that looks like a carefully considered project evolved over the course of many weeks... in less than an hour.

Even if the code is rock solid, there's a limit to how many projects like that I can sensibly care for - and if they're instantly abandoned, what value was there from creating them in the first place?”

https://simonwillison.net/2026/May/31/the-solution-might-be-...

Here is Simon questioning a fundamental belief held by the pro-LLM lobby. Would a paid shill question that?

Simon is, without question, an enthusiastic pro-LLM person. I disagree with what he says often, the product market fit post was a bad take. But I don’t believe he is shying away from sharing his thoughts when they’re not favorable to the industry.

oh come on, a paid shill?

Simon is very fascinated by AI and at times he can be a little too optimistic but he is generally balanced and his perspective evolves over time which can be seen in his writing.

Nerd who loves nerd things a little too much? Sure. Paid shill by Big LLM? Nah.

No, we know from the financials of these companies that API prices are close to being at cost and the individual developer plans are heavily subsidized (because they are roughly 10% of API cost per token[1]).

If plans were at cost and API pricing was marked up that would mean there’s a 90%+ profit margin on tokens and instead of raising money and talking about revenue, Anthropic and OpenAI would be talking about their obscene profits.

[1] the caveat is that the average plan user probably doesn’t use all of their quota, I guess maybe 30% is the average across all users.

That’s a very simplified view of HR. Human Resources does a lot of things. During the cash rich days a tech company HR department might end up doing a bunch of nonsense[1] but the fundamental value of the department is there and will continue.

HR is rarely involved in hiring decisions, that’s the responsibility of the hiring manager which is typically the new hire’s manager. At a very big company you might have HR screening applicants but that’s to save time for hiring managers.

[1] just as engineering ends up doing a bunch of nonsense when the money is flowing.

As people in tech we live very expensive lives but if you are in a major city and own your own home and have worked for a decade or more you probably have a lot more opportunity to retire today than you might think. Even with children, life can be much less expensive by moving to a low cost of living area. Often in online discussions about FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) high income people will discuss needing many millions to retire, but you can retire on less.

Switching industries is a romantic idea but it is very difficult, especially going from the tech world with big money to the normal world with small money. You can still work to keep yourself busy but thinking about it as retirement will better help you plan. Going part time in tech is usually more sustainable than trying to switch industries.

A good place to start is thinking about what you want from life without work. Where do you want to be? Where does your partner and your kids want to be? What do they want out of life? From there you can assess the financial needs and plan accordingly.

“Mythos Preview continues a long-term trend that we’ve been warning about for some time: within 6 to 12 months […]”

The only trend Mythos continues is Anthropic’s trend of warning that disaster is always 6 to 12 months away.

The race is pretty much designed to be a difficult for horses as possible to give humans a chance. Except for the parts that are extremely difficult for horses, horses steamroll the human competitors.

https://youtu.be/FY9Ee6-CIFM?t=342

I thought you wrote the convincing explanation:

“One could argue that Groq’s datacenters alone could make them worth billions of dollars.”

Groq is a successful datacenter business with a high-revenue cloud product. That’s a compelling investment in its own right, right?

I could be completely off the mark but I thought the non-exclusive license was necessary because Groq’s datacenter business uses the technology already? Nvidia acquired the assets but Groq needed to retain rights to use the technology for their own product.

I’m confused by the confusion. Groq licensed their technology (sold part of their business) to Nvidia for a large amount of money and distributed the spoils to their investors. Seems quite normal? But then the Axios article says…

“Existing shareholders will receive the remaining cash distributions and then have the opportunity to invest into a new company”

New company? But Groq still exists and continued to exist.

“The bottom line: Don't be surprised if this becomes a new transaction template in the AI private markets.”

A transaction template? I don’t follow what was novel about this situation. The Meta not-acquisition-acquisition of Scale seems more novel.

I guess I feel like Zach’s confusion is because of the way Axios has presented what is happening to Groq. Looking at why actually happened with Groq, it seems like Axios are reporting it weird.

Unless Groq really is starting a new company in which case I am equally as confused.

edit: when announced last year it was announced as an asset acquisition https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/24/nvidia-buying-ai-chip-startu...

Hiring outside your network has always been difficult. A rigorous hiring process should be able to withstand the bad actors. Some people have a good eye for candidates, others do not. Impersonation should be the easiest problem to solve, i.e: if someone is claiming to be someone else based on their LinkedIn profile or website, you can ask that they verify it is theirs. If their profile itself is fraudulent, it will be obvious from their lack of connections and registration date. If you cannot confirm the person is genuine, move on to the next candidate. A good hiring process doesn’t pick people based on where they have worked.

I’ll bet you £1,000,000 I’m British. What’s your email address?

If the Orphan Crushing Machine is just a machine you don’t need to worry about it being put on wheels.

Does it qualify as something fresh? I guess fresh to cinemas but it is well established IP that has a readymade audience. Certainly a risk compared to Spider-Man: Another Adventure Again but the risk was in the execution. A lot like the Slenderman movie. Something like Iron Lung would be a better example of fresh cinema?

Unfortunately, Meta’s ad business is so effective that they would need to charge hundreds of dollars per year for an ad free service just to keep revenue stable. I suspect anything less than $25 per month would be loss making for them.

The main problem is that premium subscriptions don’t generate that much revenue when compared to ads alone. The users who pay are the most valuable users to advertisers and the users who don’t pay are the least valuable. Discord generates about $1 in revenue per user compared to Facebook at closer to $100. For Discord at $1 per user, any subscription that’s a few dollars or more is probably paying for the lost advertising revenue, but it wouldn’t translate for Meta so they aren’t including ad free which drastically reduces the value.

I’ll be surprised if Meta’s subscriptions are as popular as Discord’s without being advertising free. Cosmetics are liked amongst Discord’s audience of nerds, but not Meta’s audience of normal people.

Very interested to see how this works out for Meta. Since they’re not excluding ads, it’s basically free money, so they may as well offer these subscriptions.

Right, the security is all theatre. My comparison is specifically to show that the security at Sky Garden (free) is not implemented to discourage free visitors when The View from The Shard charges lots of money and wants as many visitors as possible and has the same security.

My beautiful bloo passport would disagree.

I lived and worked in that area for many years. I have walked through Whitechapel day and night. Yes, there are a lot of Muslims in the area due to the nearby mosque. The only violence or trouble I ever experienced in the area was with other white people. Whitechapel is a busy part of central London, if you're going to choose a part of London to claim that there is a no go zone, at least try somewhere that isn't on the tourist track, like Poplar (although that isn't a no go zone either, but it's at least a little more plausible).

"Auditing" videos are antagonists causing trouble and videoing it, often either deceptively editing or outright fabricating interactions. People, of course, have strong views, regardless of race or religion, and antagonising them is going to bring out the most extreme of those views. Going to an area with many muslims and trying to antagonise muslims does not make a no-go zone. You can go to whitechapel any time day or night and the only risk is a pissed up local, which, ironically, won't be a Muslim because they don't drink. Alcohol is the main cause of danger in London.

Have you visited The View from The Shard? A very expensive visit, with exactly the same security checks as Sky Garden. Security in tall buildings is high (even if that security is mostly theatre).

"Certain items cannot be brought into The View from The Shard including large bags and backpacks, over the size of 22 x 15 x 8 inches (55 x 38 x 20 cm) or other large equipment."

"We ask guests to walk through metal detectors, which use a low-frequency electromagnetic field to look for metal items."

https://www.theviewfromtheshard.com/frequently-asked-questio...

The City of London is a novel anachronism making up a square mile that nobody British would ever refer to as “London” nor do they complain about it being “private”.

I am no less British than you. I was born in England, raised in England, educated in England, voted in England, my parents were born in England, my grandparents were born in England, my great grandparents were born in England… so on and so forth. I am very sorry that my choice to use American spelling on an American website offends you.

The irony is that the beliefs you’re espousing are an infection caused by U.S. cultural dominance of politics on the Internet. Anti-woke right wing people are heavily influenced by American political attitudes. Do you also believe in Birmingham’s no-go zones?

British people are miserable and cynical and hate everything about our godforsaken country but London being “privately owned” is not one of those things. Civilized protest is not one of those things.

How many protestors did the U.K. police kill in the last few years, compared to, say, a very free country… like the U.S?

edit: responding to your edit, of course many British people hate London and for many valid reasons, but your reasoning is very American. Very few British people share that American view of freedom and would describe London as “privately owned”.

You must book in advance because they’re incredibly popular, huge queues, long waits, and capacity limits. The Sky Garden (Fenchurch Building) is huge, beautiful and absolutely packed with people. Many people consider it a London must visit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20_Fenchurch_Street#Sky_garden

The case was a very big deal in London. The outcome was not one of bias, but complicated circumstance.

The apartment building was built years before the Tate Modern opened their viewing floor. After the Tate Modern viewing floor opened, visitors to the Tate Modern began photographing and videoing and watching people in the neighbouring apartment building.

The judge reasonably determined that there is some sacrifice of privacy made when choosing to live in a glass apartment building, but the Tate Modern's viewing floor's compromise of privacy was so egregious that it should not be allowed regardless of planning permission.

There are many buildings all over London that look over one another, many of those occupied by very very rich people, it was not corruption.

I think some people might not count Canary Wharf's various gardens as examples of this because while Canary Wharf is a private estate that is open to the public, the parks and green spaces aren't a quiet strategy to get buildings approved, they're part of the estate's broad strategy to be green and welcoming. Canary Wharf actively encourages visitors to all of their green spaces.