I disagree. I think creativity is still a valid moat. You still need to build good products. Its like a restaurant anyone with some money can open a restaurant but you need to has the creativity to make a good one.

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CGMthrowaway 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The only moat that can beat the money moat, in fact

Money (better thought of as credit, since we are talking about fiat here) is an attractor so much as it can stand for or purchase productive energy. If that fails (central bank failure, currency failure, government failure), creativity takes its place

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giancarlostoro 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You don't need a ton of creativity for a good restaurant if you have good staff, and upkeep. I'll take a boring well maintained and staffed restaurant over an overpriced "creative" restaurant where the waiters are terrible and the chef is even worse.

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trashb 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This assumes the market is not oversaturated. It does not work if there are only a couple of people trying to find a place to eat in a street with 30 similar well maintained and staffed restaurants.

Correct me if I'm wrong but, you may be thinking of restaurants where their defining factor is "having a very creative atmosphere", which will not suit all customers. However it is a differentiating factor which will serve a big audience that is under served in a location filled with "boring well maintained and staffed restaurant".

In my view the creativity comes in in finding solutions to a problem, in a oversaturated market the problem may be "how do I persuade customers to come to my restaurant instead of my competitor?". And following that question may be (in the restaurant example) "what can I offer that is under served in the current market?" The solution to that may be "a biker cafe" or "an overpriced "creative" restaurant where the waiters are terrible and the chef is even worse" (perhaps even rude on purpose).

Additionally I assume you want the restaurant to grow. If you want the restaurant to just survive the bar is lower and you may be able to do that by doing the same everyone else is doing as long as you meet the minimum.

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pixl97 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

And you'll still probably get beat by a restaurant in a better location or one with better marketing

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giancarlostoro 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I can't remember the last time I ate anywhere because of an ad. I eat out a lot too, used to uber eats nearly every single day. I wont reorder at places that mess up my order, but consistent quality I reward. Chick Fil A gives me the best service out of any fast-food restaurant, so they earn my repeat business.

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boplicity 3 hours ago | parent [-]

People almost never admit it when they respond to an ad. Even when they very clearly do.

Don't underestimate the effectiveness of advertising, or its ability to influence you.

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Jensson an hour ago | parent | next [-]

You don't even see ads for local restaurants, you just go there because its close or a friend recommended it. How could you get influenced by something that doesn't exist? Their marketing is just the storefront, people go there since they are interested in this new place.

	▲	boplicity an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Google Ads, especially Google Maps, has tons of paid ads for local restaurants. So does Uber Eats and similar ilk. I particularly despise these ads in Maps because the ad often obscures the search result I'm looking for -- and I end up accidentally clicking on an advertisement for some other restaurant than the one I was looking up.

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giancarlostoro 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I distinctively remember when ads have worked on me to buy something. Sometimes I blacklist a brand if an ad is deceptive and makes me click on something, but I don't watch TV much if at all, and the streaming services I do use I pay to have ads removed.

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sowbug 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Creativity is a kind of labor. Like all labor, it never earns pay more than once.

	▲	esseph an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Then what are acting and music royalties?

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AstroBen 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Your creativity will be copied within days

	▲	fuzzfactor 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Some peoples' yes, others no.

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HPsquared 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What's to stop someone copying your creations? Creativity is the reason a moat is needed.

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trashb 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think creativity is still a valid moat. And I think creativity will become a very important moat!

I am a firm believer of "limitation breeds creativity" and being able to make what you want with immediate result will lead to less diverse solutions. In a world of in-diverse products you need more creativity to stand out as it will become harder to conceive of something "outside of the box".

Similarly to how anyone can basically create any image they desire in Photoshop (with some limited training). Leading to a lot of images of a similar style instead of a lot of different styles (ai slop anyone?). This is because between the idea and the result the roadblocks are reduced, the process is smooth (tools aim for 1:1 conversion). In the creative process these roadblocks are usually where you will find interesting new directions or ideas. And very often the original idea was not that interesting to begin with (and perhaps not as original as we would like to believe).

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jonathanstrange an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's my hope, too, since I've had the unfortunate luck of practically being forced to fulfill my lifelong dream and create a software company as a solo dev in 2025. Great timing...

However, I've gotten doubts about the value of creativity and having a vision. Plenty of people have great creativity and a fantastic vision, and we can see already how AI allows people to churn out interesting and useful projects at much faster pace than just a few years ago. The problem is that it seems more and more impossible to actually make a living of that.

Anybody with the money to have access to enough AI will be able to create a clone of software X. We might not be there quite yet but it's just a matter of time. That seems to be a death sentence for any small software business.

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gorgoiler 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The claude.ai web UI has a bug right now. If you inline some code by typing an opening backtick then the closing backtick swallows your space, puts the next letter you type after the code, then everything else back inside the code span.

One day we might be able to write software without bugs. That day is clearly not here yet.

(Firefox in Linux if anyone wants to repro. Can’t file a bug as it’s a closed, proprietary piece of software.)

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52-6F-62 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think, in time, it will be shown to be the real, persistent differentiator. And far more valuable.

But it's also not a moat in the same way. It's accessible to everyone, but you have to actually disregard the parts of yourself that want to drive hard in some direction just for money or power or external validation.

From the look of things right now, it may take some pain before that really gets to shine.