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falloutxyesterday at 8:53 PM5 repliesview on HN

Everyone says that but I don't see anyone cooking up the next photoshop and selling it at $3/month. Why are we not seeing more options of every tool? Most Saas companies are sales companies at their core rather than software companies. And those sales people are so good that they can sell a todo list for millions.


Replies

coliveirayesterday at 9:24 PM

In the case of Photoshop it is the software itself that is becoming useless. In a few years, using photoshop will be viewed the same as developing physical film, a process from a by-gone era that is still possible, but impractical.

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marcus_holmestoday at 12:59 AM

> I don't see anyone cooking up the next photoshop and selling it at $3/month.

That's not the situation we're talking about though. It's someone saying "hmm, I need to edit this picture. Can I get ChatGPT to do it?" where 3 years ago they would have had to buy Photoshop and learn how to use it.

Similarly, if they need a tool to batch-convert a thousand images, they're getting an LLM to construct the specific tool they need in a couple of hours and then running that, rather than buying a software product that can do it.

You don't need a whole dev team to build a one-off tool for a specific job, which is probably 90% of the demand for those software products. LLMs are becoming the general-purpose tool for a lot of use cases.

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CreepGintoday at 1:00 AM

> Everyone says that but I don't see anyone cooking up the next photoshop and selling it at $3/month.

Yup, same reason you can't throw manpower at a software project and expect a proportional outcome (Brooks's Law). AI amplifies what's already there; it doesn't conjure taste or product vision out of thin air.

bandramitoday at 2:09 AM

"Where is the output?" remains the giant elephant in the AI room. You can tell because people get mad when you ask that.

walkersniceyesterday at 10:49 PM

> Everyone says that but I don't see anyone cooking up the next photoshop and selling it at $3/month. Why are we not seeing more options of every tool?

I expect the markets are reflecting that soon there will be more competition.

It'll take time, and as LLMs improve, it'll take even less time.

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