thoughts on near future software

AI is rapidly gaining ground, expanding its dominance across various domains like agents, natural language, voice, and real-time applications. Considering it's been just a year since GPT-4's release, we're only at the beginning of this acceleration. We can expect swift integrations across numerous sectors, reshaping traditional industries.

Looking at the U.S., where AI updates are most frequent, we see both AI-based startups and legacy companies implementing AI for operational efficiency. For AI-SaaS firms with minimal physical operations, AI's primary impact on the tech industry, particularly software businesses, will initially be operational. This means tasks previously requiring several people can now be handled by one, and in the long run, work that needed dozens might be manageable by a single individual.

As Peter Thiel foresaw when founding Palantir in 2002, humans and AI will likely coexist rather than replace each other. Companies that achieve early cost efficiency through operational optimization will likely gain an advantage in the nascent market. Currently, legacy firms in military, logistics, and telecommunications sectors in the U.S. that have effectively ontologized and leveraged AI are creating value through cost efficiency. Meanwhile, new startups seem to be experimenting with substantial investments rather than creating tangible value yet.

Long-term, I don't believe operational efficiency alone will create a moat. Through arbitrage, anyone can easily enter the market and replicate these efficiencies. Even individuals can now participate in arbitrage, with data collection, processing, insight generation, and storage becoming increasingly accessible. Many technologies that companies independently developed are now open-source, including OCR, LLM foundational models, vector search, STT, agents, and even code similar to Perplexity.

This threatens many technical moats or strengths that software companies were expected to possess. So, where do we start solving this problem? From a fresh perspective, I'd opt for building cornered resources and process power with a long-term view.

This means creating a small-scale "Protoss"-like team, where smart members are tightly connected through a hive mind-like synergy, maintaining high product sensitivity. It's crucial to develop an intangible moat formed by mental fortitude and an artistic obsession with creating beautiful products. This process involves building a team with an almost telepathic level of understanding and shared vision. with the help of the AI, i guess the paradigm is changing fundamentally.