They Will Build Your Product

Your Competition is Coming

Your competition is already here, but your real competition is coming. That image is the army of people on their way to build your product.

Anyone can clone it today and offer it for a cheaper price. So why do I focus on people from “other countries?”

Most Indie Makers and creators of online products are from Western countries. But the Internet is changing that. Creators from non-Western countries have dramatically lower income needs. They can afford to build your product and offer it at a fraction of the price.

Recreating Today vs. Cloning Tomorrow

I’ve been thinking about this idea for awhile. A conversation on Twitter convinced me to write about it.

It was already possible to use your product, build a competitor, and offer it for a lower price. But now, the ability to clone your exact website is here. The tools to recreate the code itself exist.

Some will argue “that’s just the frontend UI. What matters is the business logic on the backend!” Perhaps.

I uploaded a screenshot of Pieter Levels’ Photo AI site to Perplexity (to keep with the example above). I asked it to tell me both the landing page and backend tools I need to make a functioning replica. Replica of Photo AI

A few more prompts and I would have working code for both the frontend and backend needed. The answer might not be exactly correct, but it will be as these tools improve. The functionality of your site will be as easy to clone as the landing page is today.

However easy it was for you to build, it will be easier for them. The existence of these tools guarantees it. You already showed them the way.

All they need is to understand what your business does and ask the tools to create a product that does the same.

You will have competition that can offer your product at 5%-10% of the price. What are you going to do about it?

Is This Strictly a Bad Thing?

No, not exactly.

It’s easy to get wrapped up in the ethics of this while discussing cloning a product. One someone worked hard to build.

But cloning aside, competition is good.

Consider this from a different perspective. New companies will be able to offer all existing services at better prices.

This is the one of the primary effects of the Internet, the total globalization of the market. Products built wherever they can at the lowest cost. Thus driving prices to near zero.

The Internet is the great deflationary force. AI might take it’s place (it continues the trend of lowering the cost to produce).

This is great for consumers. It’s only bad for you, the current producer.

So, What To Do?

First, save.

I mean your money. Recognize that we may be in the golden years of building digital products and save your money now.

This isn’t a doomer post, it’s fully optimistic.

The opportunities to create incredible products and grow your income are endless. But realize that your ability to monetize these products in the future could be more or less. The number of people you can reach will be more, the price you can charge will not.

Make that internet money and save it up.

Better yet, turn it into hard assets. For me that’s land and bitcoin, for you that can be anything you want.

Second, build a larger moat.

Build for Something They Can’t Replicate

People say “if your landing page is your moat, you don’t have a moat.” This has become “if AI can build it, you don’t have a moat.”

There’s a great concept in economics called “network effects.” A product that becomes more useful to each user as the number of users goes up.

The product becomes more valuable as more people use it.

The classic example of this is the telephone. It’s useless if only one person uses one. It’s only useful if someone else uses one as well. It’s very useful now that almost everyone does (it’s now a disadvantage to not own one today.)

Social media works like this. The value in the platform is the number of other people who use it. Their value is their reach. It’s why so few people will move to a Twitter competitor. The competitor can’t offer you access to as many other folks.

Network effects are why it’s hard to unseat a money everyone already accepts, even if there is a better one. They’re why social media platforms converge on one per medium. (Youtube for long videos, TikTok for short ones, Twitter for text, Instagram for images)

One such effect is community.

This is the one I’m building towards.

If community is part of the value, your product becomes more valuable with each new user. But there’s a better reason you should build for it.

They can’t clone your users. They can’t replicate your community.

They can build an exact copy of your product. But, if the value is in the number of users, you’re not at risk.

Your competition will always be able to offer your product at a cheaper price. But they cannot clone the community you built. You want your product to be like Twitter. No one leaves because the competing products can’t offer the community that exists.

This is how you protect yourself.

There are other things you can build for as well. Status is one. If using your product is perceived as being higher status, you can charge a higher price. That will always be the case.

But community is the one I want to build for.

How are you building it into your product? Or, what are you doing that a competitor can’t recreate overnight?