9 ms·

This is just a bet that the models will get better and that all the half baked never seen production Lovable apps will be able to be brought life because of tha

by asdev 1mo ago

This is just a bet that the models will get better and that all the half baked never seen production Lovable apps will be able to be brought life because of that. I am fading that bet personally and am bearish on non technical people building software

echelon 1mo ago
This is a sign that distribution matters. Doesn't matter how many Lovable clones there are. Everyone knows the name Lovable. This caters to the overwhelming majority who cannot use tools like Claude Code or that prefer an all in one solution. Open source models only help Lovable improve its own margins. They can stop paying the Anthropic or OpenAI tax and tailor the models to exactly their use case and UX.
- ZeroCool2u 1mo ago
  I don't disagree about distribution, but absolutely no one I know outside the tech bubble knows what Lovable is or has even heard of it.
- tikhonj 1mo ago
  It's a sign of how much distribution matters to VCs. Whether that is enough in the medium- and long-term is unclear. I'm a bit skeptical but not very confident either way... which is part of the reason I am not a VC!
  - shimman 1mo ago
    I think it's time we start questioning more of the valley's mindset when it comes to good business and software practices. From lived experience it typically results in unhealthy work environments at best and society destroying at worse. Is this really the best way to write software? I'd but my life's savings no, it's not. No way in hell.
    - conqrr 1mo ago
      Agree with this fully, I'm sure a lot of software engineers do too. Yet software is dominated by the valley. It's funny how easily money and greed manipulate the narrative while the majority suffer.
- dominotw 1mo ago
  > Everyone knows the name Lovable. not really. maybe last year.
- asdev 1mo ago
  Depends what you mean by distribution, they are spending an arm and a leg on paid acquisition
- brazukadev 1mo ago
  > Doesn't matter how many Lovable clones there are. Everyone knows the name Lovable. That's AI hallucination.
himata4113 1mo ago
To put it more accurately: people who don't do software use loveable to build apps for people who do not use software.
- adamnemecek 1mo ago
  It's easy to be dismissive when it's this early.
chao- 1mo ago
>I... am bearish on non technical people building software. I can't bring myself to be bullish or bearish in such broad strokes. Over the years, I have met and worked with a number of people who were "non-technical", but who nonetheless built their own internal rough software tools with a cobbled-together combination of spreadsheets and SaaS services, connected by something like Zapier. They are a particular kind of person, but I would not call all of them them "technical". They are experienced in their business domain, are detail-oriented, and are persistent in making improvements by any means they could. I have seen those people be supercharged by AI app builders like Replit and Lovable, even if I don't personally have a need for either. This might be a matter of definitions: Is such a person "technical" because they value systematizing human processes and put effort into it? Or is such a person "non-technical" because they are not experienced in software engineering best practices, or programming in the conventional sense? In addition to the nature of the user, I suspect the fulcrum that success and failure rests on for these kinds of apps and tools is long-term maintenance. How frequent? How involved? How breaking are the changes? On this topic, there is a quote I think about a lot (paraphrased, and I forget who said it, or I would credit them): >AI app builders mean that anyone can experience the joy of building software, but also that they will experience the joy of maintaining software.
- edgyquant 1mo ago
  I have seen and worked with a number of “non technical” people ship apps and automations over the last year that are making real money so it’s past the point where you can be bearish. Sure these people are probably just a class in themselves and not “the average person” but they never would have done this if they had to write code by hand
  - asdev 1mo ago
    show me an example and what do you mean by real money?
    - edgyquant 1mo ago
      I mean 200k/MRR for one company most of these are not pure tech but people in a domain (the 200k one, while I don’t feel comfortable outright stating it is a car buying application you could likely find with a cursory search) who use tech to scale. So I have worked with lawyers, therapists, people from other countries etc to bring apps to that market using their domain/market knowledge as an edge.
JamesSwift 1mo ago
Im bullish on more people being able to build software than pre-AI but bearish on the general population being able to. The unfortunate truth of AI is that it requires you to think like a dev to be effective. And thats just not how a lot of people think or want to think. Thats fine. But that means AI wont be a huge unlock for the masses.
- gosolozero 1mo ago
  I think we might underestimate the evolution of these tools as AI gets both better and cheaper. The current form factors are like trying to setup a website in early 90s, cumbersome and not user friendly. Coding infra, AI coding UI, etc are not solved problems yet. If things progress, I think there will be a time when a whole app can be developed and deployed with a single prompt. In that kind of world, who can’t write code?
  - oblio 1mo ago
    Good stuff isn't a single prompt. It's multiple prompts, refinements, building a moat. Otherwise the single prompt stuff is fodder for a million clones.
    - somenameforme 1mo ago
      I think you're failing to see the forest through all those trees. The value of software will plummet as barriers to entry fall and people become more capable of creating exactly what they need for their own specific purpose.
      - oblio 1mo ago
        Meh. Have you tried to sell basic software? It's been cheap or free since the shareware days of the early 90s. Most devs weren't being paid out of that.
      - brazukadev 1mo ago
        That's exactly the opposite? Fast food software will be cheaper (but not cheap, McDonalds is considered expensive in many countries). The value of software will skyrocket and it will be hidden behind an API so to not be copied fast.
sailfast 1mo ago
If the models get that good you won’t need Lovable at all. That’s the strange part - the model companies will instead eat the infra layer (at least I’d imagine that’s what happens - Claude just knows how to manage AWS for you). This seems like a very shallow moat into which to pour $400M.
- paxys 1mo ago
  They’re good enough already. You can one-shot a website with Claude Code or Codex of the same or better quality than Lovable. I have no idea what the appeal of the product is at this point.
  - berkay 1mo ago
    may help thinking through what you'd have to do to go from the generated web app to get it running on a website, may be with subscribers, payments, etc. and then operating it. There are so many concepts, constructs, terminology one needs to know to do it without ongoing headaches. Lovable at least takes away some of those pains.
- oblio 1mo ago
  > at least I’d imagine that’s what happens - Claude just knows how to manage AWS for you AWS has $100+bn reasons per year to not let that happen. As techies learned slowly through the evolution of the internet: political power > money > tech.
  - satvikpendem 1mo ago
    Amazon doesn't care, they let all sorts of wrappers work on their platform, like Vercel.
    - oblio 1mo ago
      Because they don't threaten their platform, they're a customer. If Vercel ever becomes more than a flea and somehow realistically threatens AWS' success, they will either be acquired or hobbled.
jongjong 1mo ago
I was open minded about it until I did a job search for "Lovable" on the biggest career website in my country and couldn't find a single job related to it in the entire country. For any other tech stack, any major town or city would give you many pages of results. Surprising.
- alchemism 1mo ago
  To be fair, I doubt a job role would include the name of a specific product. A business posts a hiring ad for a Graphic Artist, not for an Adobe Photoshop Artist.

by asdev 1mo ago

echelon 1mo ago

This is a sign that distribution matters. Doesn't matter how many Lovable clones there are. Everyone knows the name Lovable. This caters to the overwhelming majority who cannot use tools like Claude Code or that prefer an all in one solution. Open source models only help Lovable improve its own margins. They can stop paying the Anthropic or OpenAI tax and tailor the models to exactly their use case and UX.

ZeroCool2u 1mo ago
I don't disagree about distribution, but absolutely no one I know outside the tech bubble knows what Lovable is or has even heard of it.
tikhonj 1mo ago
It's a sign of how much distribution matters to VCs. Whether that is enough in the medium- and long-term is unclear. I'm a bit skeptical but not very confident either way... which is part of the reason I am not a VC!
- shimman 1mo ago
  I think it's time we start questioning more of the valley's mindset when it comes to good business and software practices. From lived experience it typically results in unhealthy work environments at best and society destroying at worse. Is this really the best way to write software? I'd but my life's savings no, it's not. No way in hell.
  - conqrr 1mo ago
    Agree with this fully, I'm sure a lot of software engineers do too. Yet software is dominated by the valley. It's funny how easily money and greed manipulate the narrative while the majority suffer.
dominotw 1mo ago
> Everyone knows the name Lovable. not really. maybe last year.
asdev 1mo ago
Depends what you mean by distribution, they are spending an arm and a leg on paid acquisition
brazukadev 1mo ago
> Doesn't matter how many Lovable clones there are. Everyone knows the name Lovable. That's AI hallucination.

himata4113 1mo ago

To put it more accurately: people who don't do software use loveable to build apps for people who do not use software.

adamnemecek 1mo ago
It's easy to be dismissive when it's this early.

chao- 1mo ago

>I... am bearish on non technical people building software. I can't bring myself to be bullish or bearish in such broad strokes. Over the years, I have met and worked with a number of people who were "non-technical", but who nonetheless built their own internal rough software tools with a cobbled-together combination of spreadsheets and SaaS services, connected by something like Zapier. They are a particular kind of person, but I would not call all of them them "technical". They are experienced in their business domain, are detail-oriented, and are persistent in making improvements by any means they could. I have seen those people be supercharged by AI app builders like Replit and Lovable, even if I don't personally have a need for either. This might be a matter of definitions: Is such a person "technical" because they value systematizing human processes and put effort into it? Or is such a person "non-technical" because they are not experienced in software engineering best practices, or programming in the conventional sense? In addition to the nature of the user, I suspect the fulcrum that success and failure rests on for these kinds of apps and tools is long-term maintenance. How frequent? How involved? How breaking are the changes? On this topic, there is a quote I think about a lot (paraphrased, and I forget who said it, or I would credit them): >AI app builders mean that anyone can experience the joy of building software, but also that they will experience the joy of maintaining software.

edgyquant 1mo ago
I have seen and worked with a number of “non technical” people ship apps and automations over the last year that are making real money so it’s past the point where you can be bearish. Sure these people are probably just a class in themselves and not “the average person” but they never would have done this if they had to write code by hand
- asdev 1mo ago
  show me an example and what do you mean by real money?
  - edgyquant 1mo ago
    I mean 200k/MRR for one company most of these are not pure tech but people in a domain (the 200k one, while I don’t feel comfortable outright stating it is a car buying application you could likely find with a cursory search) who use tech to scale. So I have worked with lawyers, therapists, people from other countries etc to bring apps to that market using their domain/market knowledge as an edge.

JamesSwift 1mo ago

Im bullish on more people being able to build software than pre-AI but bearish on the general population being able to. The unfortunate truth of AI is that it requires you to think like a dev to be effective. And thats just not how a lot of people think or want to think. Thats fine. But that means AI wont be a huge unlock for the masses.

gosolozero 1mo ago
I think we might underestimate the evolution of these tools as AI gets both better and cheaper. The current form factors are like trying to setup a website in early 90s, cumbersome and not user friendly. Coding infra, AI coding UI, etc are not solved problems yet. If things progress, I think there will be a time when a whole app can be developed and deployed with a single prompt. In that kind of world, who can’t write code?
- oblio 1mo ago
  Good stuff isn't a single prompt. It's multiple prompts, refinements, building a moat. Otherwise the single prompt stuff is fodder for a million clones.
  - somenameforme 1mo ago
    I think you're failing to see the forest through all those trees. The value of software will plummet as barriers to entry fall and people become more capable of creating exactly what they need for their own specific purpose.
    - oblio 1mo ago
      Meh. Have you tried to sell basic software? It's been cheap or free since the shareware days of the early 90s. Most devs weren't being paid out of that.
    - brazukadev 1mo ago
      That's exactly the opposite? Fast food software will be cheaper (but not cheap, McDonalds is considered expensive in many countries). The value of software will skyrocket and it will be hidden behind an API so to not be copied fast.

sailfast 1mo ago

If the models get that good you won’t need Lovable at all. That’s the strange part - the model companies will instead eat the infra layer (at least I’d imagine that’s what happens - Claude just knows how to manage AWS for you). This seems like a very shallow moat into which to pour $400M.

paxys 1mo ago
They’re good enough already. You can one-shot a website with Claude Code or Codex of the same or better quality than Lovable. I have no idea what the appeal of the product is at this point.
- berkay 1mo ago
  may help thinking through what you'd have to do to go from the generated web app to get it running on a website, may be with subscribers, payments, etc. and then operating it. There are so many concepts, constructs, terminology one needs to know to do it without ongoing headaches. Lovable at least takes away some of those pains.
oblio 1mo ago
> at least I’d imagine that’s what happens - Claude just knows how to manage AWS for you AWS has $100+bn reasons per year to not let that happen. As techies learned slowly through the evolution of the internet: political power > money > tech.
- satvikpendem 1mo ago
  Amazon doesn't care, they let all sorts of wrappers work on their platform, like Vercel.
  - oblio 1mo ago
    Because they don't threaten their platform, they're a customer. If Vercel ever becomes more than a flea and somehow realistically threatens AWS' success, they will either be acquired or hobbled.

jongjong 1mo ago

I was open minded about it until I did a job search for "Lovable" on the biggest career website in my country and couldn't find a single job related to it in the entire country. For any other tech stack, any major town or city would give you many pages of results. Surprising.

alchemism 1mo ago
To be fair, I doubt a job role would include the name of a specific product. A business posts a hiring ad for a Graphic Artist, not for an Adobe Photoshop Artist.