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.

Here is the uncomfortable truth I learned after burning cash on three B2C startups:

The easier it is to build, the harder it is to sell.

The Two Games: Cash Flow vs. Enterprise Value

Let me be crystal clear: You can still make money.

There are people right now making absolute banks creating viral content. If you are a master storyteller, if you can evoke emotion, if you can capture attention—you will win the Content Game.

If you win the content game, you get cash flow. But cash flow is not a business.

Cash flow is income. Enterprise Value is wealth.

If you stop posting, the money stops. That’s a job. A high-paying, stressful job.

Real wealth is building something you can sell. And right now, nobody wants to buy your "vibecoded" habit tracker.

The Valuation Trap (Do The Math)

Founders come to me and say, "I'm doing $50k MRR, I'm worth $5M."

No, you aren't.

In B2C mobile apps right now, the math is brutal:

• Churn: You are losing 20% of your customers every single month.
• Acquisition: You are fighting for the same eyeballs as TikTok and MrBeast.
• LTV: Your lifetime value is capped because nobody sticks around.

Because of this, we are seeing B2C apps with real revenue getting acquired for less than 3x ARR.

Think about that. You slave away for 3 years to build a product, and the market values it at barely 3 years of profit. Why? Because the buyer knows the second you stop feeding the content machine, the revenue goes to zero.

You Are Not Steve Jobs

There is this massive lie going around that "Vibes" are the new moat. That if you just "vibe code" a beautiful interface, you win.

Stop it.

Volume negates luck.

In any industry, volume is the only thing that creates quality.

The reason Steve Jobs and Jony Ive won wasn't because they "vibed" it. It was because they iterated thousands of times. They obsessed over every detail, every pixel, every detail you couldn't see.

Most of you aren't craftsmen. You are blurring a background div, slapping on Inter or Geist, and calling it "state of the art".

That is not a moat.

If an LLM can copy your "craft" in 30 seconds, it has close to zero value.

The "Pick Your Hard" Paradox

In economics, there is a concept called Perfect Competition.

It means that when barriers to entry drop to zero (thanks to AI), competition goes to infinity. When competition goes to infinity, profit margins go to zero.

You have two choices. Both are hard.

Choice A: The Rat Race (B2C)

You build what everyone else is building.

• The Hard Part: You are competing with millions of low-skill engineers, designers, and content creators. You have to be in the top 0.001% of "Attention Getters" just to survive.
• The Reward: Low margins, high churn, low enterprise value.

Choice B: The Boring Work

You build things that suck to build.

• The Hard Part: It is operationally heavy. It requires sales calls. It requires navigating regulations. It is painful. It is boring.
• The Reward: massive moats, high retention, huge enterprise value.

The Barbell Strategy (What I'm Building Next)

I am done playing games with no exit.

For my next play, I am looking at the intersection of Hardware and Software.

Why? Because it's a Barbell Strategy. You want to be on one of the two extremes to make real money.

1. Extreme Novelty: Solving a problem that has literally never been solved before (often requires hardware/software integration).
2. Extreme Pain: Solving a boring, existing problem better than anyone else.

The Middle is the Kill Zone. The "somewhat better to-do list" is where startups go to die.

I want to solve problems that are:

• Older than me. (Lindy Effect)
• Expensive. (Customers already paying real money)
• Critical. (If I fail, something bad happens)

Regaining Focus

Don't call this a "new paradigm." Don't call it "new calculus."

It is just Business Fundamentals.

Focus on what doesn't change.

If the answer to "What happens if my app shuts down?" is "My users will just download the next one"...

You do not have a business. You have a feature.

Go find some 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.