Stop Building Worthless Software
Most of you are playing the wrong game.
I see people celebrating because they built a "Second Brain" app in three hours with AI. They post it, get 10,000 views, maybe even get 100 users.
And they think they’re building a business.
They aren’t.
They are digging a hole in the sand while the tide is coming in.
This pattern isn’t new. It’s the same dopamine loop we’ve seen before—just with a new coat of paint.
Dropshipping stores. Low-effort ecommerce brands. Affiliate marketing funnels. Day trading Discords. Now: vibecoded apps.
Different tools. Same story.
Here is the uncomfortable truth I learned after burning cash on three B2C startups:
The easier it is to start, the harder it is to build value.
Cash Flow vs. Enterprise Value
Let me be crystal clear: You can still make money.
People make real cash dropshipping commodity junk from Alibaba. People make cash arbitraging traffic with affiliate links. People make cash trading volatility for a few lucky months. People make cash launching viral apps.
But cash flow is not a business.
Cash flow is income. Enterprise Value is wealth.
If you stop running ads, the Shopify store dies. If TikTok bans your account, the affiliate funnel dies. If market conditions shift, the trading strategy dies. If you stop posting, the app dies.
That’s not leverage. That’s fragility.
Real wealth is building something someone else would buy even if you walked away. And nobody wants to acquire your zero-moat habit tracker any more than they want your one-product dropshipping store.
The Valuation Trap
Founders come to me and say, "I'm doing $50k MRR, I'm worth $5M."
No, you aren't.
In B2C apps—and especially in low-barrier online businesses—the math is brutal:
- Churn: Users leave the second novelty wears off.
- Acquisition: You are bidding against everyone else chasing the same arbitrage.
- LTV: Lifetime value collapses because switching costs are zero.
This is the same reason most ecommerce brands sell for peanuts. The same reason affiliate sites trade at low multiples. The same reason most “profitable” trading strategies never survive scrutiny.
Buyers aren’t stupid. They know revenue disappears the moment the arbitrage closes or attention shifts.
So you grind for years, and the exit—if it exists at all—is a rounding error.
Zero Barriers Mean Zero Mercy
There is this massive lie that if you just “ship fast” or “out-iterate everyone,” you’ll win.
Stop it.
Volume negates luck.
In zero-barrier markets, volume is the minimum requirement just to stay alive.
That’s why dropshippers launch ten stores. Why affiliates spin up hundreds of pages. Why traders overfit a thousand backtests. Why app builders crank out endless clones.
It’s not strategy. It’s survival.
But here’s the problem: when anyone can enter, nothing compounds.
If an LLM can replicate your product in one prompt, if a YouTube tutorial can recreate your funnel, if a Notion doc explains your entire business—you don’t have a moat.
You have a temporary exploit.
The "Pick Your Hard" Paradox
In economics, there is a concept called Perfect Competition.
When barriers to entry drop to zero, competition goes to infinity. When competition goes to infinity, profits collapse.
This is why most get-rich-quick schemes feel crowded within months. This is why margins race to zero. This is why attention becomes the only currency left.
You have two choices. Both are hard.
Choice A: The Zero-Barrier Game
You build what’s easy to start.
- The Hard Part: You fight everyone. Constantly. Forever.
- The Reward: Cash flow with an expiration date.
This is the world of dropshipping, affiliate marketing, day trading, and now most B2C apps.
Choice B: The Boring, Painful Work
You build what’s hard to start.
- The Hard Part: Sales. Operations. Regulation. Reliability. Trust.
- The Reward: Retention, pricing power, and enterprise value.
The Barbell Strategy (What I'm Building Next)
I’m done betting my future on attention arbitrage.
For my next play, I’m focusing on the intersection of Hardware and Software.
Why? Because it naturally creates friction—and friction is protection.
This is a Barbell Strategy:
- Extreme Novelty: Problems that physically cannot be solved with a weekend project.
- Extreme Pain: Old, ugly problems with entrenched buyers and real budgets.
The Middle is the Kill Zone. The “slightly better SaaS,” the “cleaner ecommerce brand,” the “smarter trading bot.”
That’s where ambition goes to die.
I want problems that are:
- Older than me
- Expensive to ignore
- Catastrophic if solved poorly
Regaining Focus
None of this is new.
This isn’t anti-AI. It isn’t anti-speed. It isn’t elitism.
It’s just Business Fundamentals.
Focus on what doesn't change.
If the answer to “What happens if my product shuts down?” is “Users will just switch”—
You don’t have a business. You have a tactic.
Go find real pain. Go do the boring work.
PS: You can choose the hard work of building a moat, or the hard work of fighting off copycats for the rest of your life. Pick one.