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Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

(martinalderson.com)
413 points martinald | 1 comments | 08 Dec 25 19:00 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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nine_k ◴[08 Dec 25 20:15 UTC] No.46197061[source]▶
Had the cost of building custom software dropped 90%, we would be seeing a flurry of low-cost, decent-quality SaaS offering all over the marketplace, possibly undercutting some established players.

From where I sit, right now, this does not seem to be the case.

This is as if writing down the code is not the biggest problem, or the biggest time sink, of building software.

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raw_anon_1111 ◴[08 Dec 25 23:36 UTC] No.46199214[source]▶
Well, because no self interested decision maker in any company of size is going to ever trust their business to an unknown company run by a one person operation.

And why would the benefits of being able to code faster accrue to a small independent developer over a large company that already has an established reputation and a customer base?

“No one ever got fired for buying Salesforce”.

I once had influence over the buying decision to support an implementation I was leading. I found this perfect SaaS product by a one man shop who was local.

Working with my CTO and lawyers, we made a proposal to the founder. We would sign with him and be 70% of his post signing revenue if he agreed to give us our own self hosted instance and put his latest code in escrow with a third party (Green Mountain) and we would have non exclusive rights to use the code (but not distribute it) under certain circumstances.

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pdimitar ◴[09 Dec 25 11:53 UTC] No.46203909[source]▶
Did he agree?
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1. raw_anon_1111 ◴[09 Dec 25 15:03 UTC] No.46205667[source]▶
Yep and he agreed to let us verify that the code he installed on our servers were built from source and the same code was in escrow at Green Mountain.

The terms weren’t as onerous as it sounds. It was basically if he stopped supporting it or got hit by a bus, we would get access.