Founder university, Drama recap & Future of software
Founder university, Drama recap & Future of software
The Future of ‘Software Developer’ profession:
software developer jobs will mainly become obsolete
product builders will replace them & be huge
code itself eventually will be abstracted far away by AI builders + component/block libraries + nocode/lowcode
the number of solo product builders will grow from less than a million to 10s of millions.
1% of the best devs will be building these platforms & legacy/corporate/critical software
99% will be forced to become "product builders"
most will ignore this until it's too late and they're out of their jobs with no skills to get a new one on same pay grade
The best way to prepare for the change is to become a part-time indie hacker.
Don't quit your job; build and ship pet projects in the evenings and weekends.
When you do so, don't go for your old routine.
Use AI and NoCode. It won't be convenient at first, but it'll force you to spend most of your time doing what actually matters in the future:
UX
ideations and validation
content creation
learning to win attention
translating pain points into products
training your eye on patterns
mastering productivity
social media
My childhood dream was to teach at a university.
Not anymore.
I launched an online Founder University, sharing everything I’ve learned building profitable startups making $5-$30k/month. Not unicorns.
Using my real examples, instead of theory.
First class: johnrush.me/directory-guide/
Twitter tech drama recap #2:
GoDot (game engine) turned woke(?), the makers are leaving, mods ban wrong forks, full mess.
X Valuation Drops to $9.4 Billion (79% drop). The GFY effect.
OpenAI raised 66 billion (biggest round ever). The more people leave OpenAI, the higher its valuation. Sam is definitely inspired by indie makers and our efficiency.
Dagobert (recently unfollowed by Pieter for being a courseboi) is working on a New Product Hunt to save indie hackers.
Vercel says Cloudflare is a monopoly and it’s dangerous while suggesting that Vercel will be a good monopoly.
X removes bold font from the feed so our eyes stop bleeding.
Elon said, “Twitter must stay independent with its political views,” but goes full MAGA.
WordPress and WP engine went into full fight mode like Johny and Ember: treats, blackmailing, screenshots of sms…the court case is on.
CEO Of WordPress threatened to ruin the WP Engine boss’s career and life if she didn’t take their offer.
Pieter Levels adopted Tate’s slogan, throwing “hit the gym” and “you look insecure” at other indie makers.
Bolt(from stackblitz) has made software developers obsolete. Most devs turned on the denial. But the end is near. (btw, remember Devin? They got $175M in funding for a demo vid and disappeared)
Indie hackers started 536 product hunt clones, promising to release in a few days.
None were released.
12. PearAI and YC apologized to Continue. All friends now. But all the founders who failed to enter YC now saying “I didn’t even wanna get there, look how bad it is”.
No week without a viral “Vercel pricing is insane.” Cmon guys, it’s a for-profit biz, they charge what the fu*k they want. If I was their CEO, I'd ban indie makers. We never wanna pay for things and use vercel to go viral with these "insane pricing" tweets.
Fans and haters of Docker fought again under “Docker is stupid” tweet with 1m views. I suggest we pick best fighters from both sides and setup a real UFC cage fight to decide once and for all.
Elon jumped on a Trumps’s rally to update the meme library after Hawk Tuah update.
Amazon forces employees to return to the office. Many think they want a layoff those who won't come to cut the headcount.
Pieter Levels says course makers aren’t real founders while making 50k/mo with his book.
Bootstrapper mindset is the new default:
It happened way sooner than I predicted.
small & efficient teams
organic growth & profitability
less features & more focus
pleasing the users instead of investors
automating is better than hiring
This will happen next:
Investors still want to own equity in these companies.
bootstrapped founders will be selling their equity instead of raising money for the startup
Someone who makes a marketplace for secondaries in bootstrapped (or VC backed, who don't plan to raise again) will make a huge upside.
The rev-share models will surge, too, where investors won't buy equity but a % of the revenue.
These secondaries will even turn into NFT-like tradable assets.
Indie Makers will sell rev-share of their entire output. Not the company, but them as an individual. Imagine owning 1% of rev share of everything that Marc Loe, Pieter Levels or other good makers produce (not for life, e.g. for 5 years).
VC money (unless u need to buy GPUs) will rather look negative on a startup than positive. YC will still be positive. It's not about the money, but rather a network and a "medal".
Startup incubators will collapse as a business model, except top 1%. Being on X brings 100x more value than any average incubator.
Holdcos will be the best new way to become rich.
I see them as little monopolies that aren't illegal (for now).
Influencers will all ship lots of apps, sites, saas, marketplaces and other digital products (in addition to physical products, courses, events and things they did in the past).
the bar to build and ship tech product is so low, one need no coding skills at all with tools like V0, Bolt, Replit, Cursor. At first we will see simple products being shipped this way, but it complexity will grow as the models improve.
whitelabel model will have it's new renaissance. I bet on it myself. Have more than 10 partners working with me now to launch whitelabeled version of my tools to other markets or niches.
Let's revisit this prediction in 20 months.