The Cost of Building Just Dropped to Near Zero. Now What?

The cost of knowledge is approaching zero. The cost of building software is approaching zero. And since almost everything runs on software, this changes... well, everything.

If you're running a company, investing in one, or building one from scratch, the implications are massive and we haven't fully internalized them yet. Here are some of the things I don't hear people talk too much about.

The 10x Myth (and the 10x Opportunity)

Here's what I think most people get wrong.

Yes, one person can now produce what a team of ten was delivering just a few years ago. That's real. I've seen it firsthand. But the knee-jerk reaction of "great, let's cut the team by 90%" is based on a fundamentally flawed assumption: that users' expectations will stay the same.

They won't.

Customers won't keep accepting the same products you can now vibe code in a few hours just because you can now build them with fewer people. Competitors won't sit still. The bar is going up, not staying flat.

The real opportunity isn't doing the same thing with fewer people. It's doing something 10x better with the same people. And that, it turns out, is a much harder problem than headcount reduction.

The End of the 10,000-Hour Moat

Malcolm Gladwell popularized the idea that 10,000 hours of deliberate practice are required to achieve mastery. For decades, that rule shaped how we thought about expertise, hiring, and competitive advantage. Deep domain knowledge was a moat. Years of experience were currency. That moat is evaporating.

When AI can compress years of domain expertise into hours of interaction, the value of "I've been doing this for 20 years" shifts dramatically. I'm not saying experience is worthless. Context, judgment, "taste"*, those still matter. But raw technical knowledge? That's becoming a commodity and can be acquired much much faster.

• *Taste: I dislike the term of "taste" since I read Bourdieu's Distinction, in which he argues that the dominant class (bourgeoisie) tends to define what counts as "good taste" or "legitimate culture", like certain art, music, language registers, cuisine, manners. This is powerful because it looks "natural" and "universal", but it is actually classed. Tastes correlate with social position because they come from habitus, and “good taste” is not neutral, it is often a disguised form of power (symbolic power) that makes inequality feel deserved or natural.

The almighty aura of the engineer is fading. Not because engineering doesn't matter, but because the barrier to entry just collapsed. When anyone with clarity of thought and a clear problem statement can build functional software, the scarce resource is no longer the ability to code. It's the ability to see what should be built and why. And yes, I do believe that my years of experience do help me, but I have to stretch myself, re-evaluate where and how I bring value to a company or product.

Who Are the Key People Now?

If domain expertise is no longer the differentiator, what is?

The people who will unlock the next wave of value aren't necessarily the ones in place today. Companies need fewer pure domain experts and more product visionaries, human behavior specialists, and people who are driven by a relentless desire to make things genuinely better. Not incrementally better. Fundamentally better. The era of MVPs is gone but the shipping timeline will also shrink, making things really challenging, especially if leadership doesn't understand this new tension.

The new key hire isn't the person who knows every edge case of a legacy system. It's the person who can look at a broken user experience, feel the friction in their bones, and articulate a path to something radically simpler, better and execute on it.

Innovation. Vision. Empathy. Conviction. These are the new competitive advantages that can directly turn into gold, without having to convince technical gate keepers to build things.

The Equity Question

This near-zero cost of building also rewrites the startup playbook.

If a founding team can go from idea to functional product in weeks instead of months, and if they can do it for a fraction of what it used to cost... do they still need to give away 20-30% of their company for an early funding round? The traditional venture model was built on the assumption that building is expensive and slow. That assumption is crumbling.

Founders should be asking hard questions about how much capital they actually need and what they're willing to trade for it. The math has changed. The leverage has shifted.

The Big Company Problem

Here's where it gets uncomfortable for established players.

Many large companies are already struggling with a lack of vision, a deficit of passion, and roadmaps that read more like maintenance schedules than statements of ambition. They've been coasting on incumbency, distribution advantages, and the sheer difficulty of building competitive alternatives.

That last advantage just disappeared.

When building is cheap and fast, the moats shrink. What remains is brand, network effects, and most importantly, the quality of your ideas and the conviction behind them. If your company doesn't have a compelling answer to "why does this exist and why should anyone care, why can't it be easily copied?", the clock is ticking.

The Jobs Question

We have to talk about this honestly.

Our economy only works if people have income to spend. If AI enables massive productivity gains but those gains only flow to a shrinking number of company owners, we have a systemic problem, not just a business challenge.

This isn't about being anti-technology. It's about being intentional. Companies that choose to leverage AI to help their teams do more meaningful, more creative, more impactful work will build better products and stronger cultures. Companies that simply use AI as a headcount reduction tool will find themselves with cheaper operations but hollowed-out organizations.

The jobs of tomorrow will center around things that are hard to automate: judgment, creativity, relationship-building, ethical reasoning, and the ability to ask the right questions. But getting from here to there requires deliberate choices from leaders, not just market forces.

A Window That Won't Stay Open

We're in one of those rare moments where the playing field resets. Where a small team with the right vision can outmaneuver an incumbent with a thousand engineers. Where the cost of trying something bold is lower than it has ever been.

But this window won't stay open forever. As AI capabilities become universally understood, the advantage shifts from "having access to AI" to "knowing what to do with it." First movers who build truly exceptional products will establish the new incumbencies.

A Personal Note

Before you sprint through that window, take a breath.

This is also a moment to be honest with yourself about what you actually want. What problems excite you enough to spend the next 4-10 years on them? What are your real energy levels? What trade-offs are you willing to make? It’s not about what you can build, it’s about what you want to put into the world for others to experience.

The tools have never been more powerful. But tools don't provide purpose. That part is still entirely on you.

The companies that will thrive aren't the ones that figured out how to cut costs the fastest. They're the ones led by people who know exactly what they want to build and why it matters, and who use these extraordinary new capabilities to make something the world has never seen before.

That's the real opportunity. Don't waste it optimizing for less when you could be building for more.

Originally published on LinkedIn.