5 ms·
> My app's value is its simplicity With or without the advent LLMs, it's an uphill battle to build a moat around a small (but nice!) wrapper around the output
by jffry 1y ago
> My app's value is its simplicity
With or without the advent LLMs, it's an uphill battle to build a moat around a small (but nice!) wrapper around the output of a command-line tool shipped with MacOS.
> what is the moat?
Increasingly, and sadly, it's online services with a monthly subscription and no data portability. Get users in with a generous free tier and pull up the drawbridge so they can't get out easily.
- tTarnMhrkm 1y agoThanks, I really appreciate the honest take. With this app, I'm intentionally trying to go against that dominant modern playbook. My goal was to build a classic, single-purchase utility that does one thing well and doesn't require an account or a subscription.
- jffry 1y agoI appreciate you having a go and it does look very attractive. It's not a problem I have but $5 is a reasonable request for something that gets the info into an understandable format for somebody. I do think that small, single-purpose apps are probably the easiest lunch to eat. Narrowly scoped greenfield projects are where the LLMs seem to excel right now so that game seems like a race to the bottom. As far as the cloning goes: your only recourse is probably the DMCA angle for the exact duplicate text. It's a shame they're so lazy as to straight copy it, but I suspect the response (if any) will be them lightly laundering it through ChatGPT so it's no longer the same. Good luck! And I hope you find more useful ideas people might pay for
- tTarnMhrkm 1y agoYeah this makes sense. Thanks, this app is just one pit stop of many!