How AI is changing indie development: it's getting harder for solo developers to compete

AI accelerated development to the point where indie developers' previous advantages started to weaken. The columnist believes that along with increased speed, the market has gotten a higher barrier to entry, overheated competition, and new requirements for those who want to build products solo.

Growing Entry Threshold

The author's main point is simple: AI didn't just make development faster, it made speed mandatory. If a beginning developer could previously learn on small projects, gradually building experience, now the market expects an MVP in literally days or weeks. Against this backdrop, paid AI tools become not a bonus, but a de facto accelerator without which it's hard to keep pace.

The author gives a personal example: in just one month, he spent about $2,000 on Cursor and its usage because he didn't want to sacrifice the sharp increase in speed. The problem is that not everyone has such a budget. If someone starts a development career now, they fall into a double trap.

On one hand, without AI they work noticeably slower than the market. On the other—without fundamental knowledge, they can't truly use Cursor or similar tools effectively. As a result, beginners have a harder time gaining experience: they need to learn on real tasks, but the environment already requires delivering an almost finished product very quickly.

Solo Formula Breaks

Previously, a strong indie developer or solo founder could keep almost the entire product creation loop in their head: the idea, code, launching ads, first sales, user feedback. This was the main advantage—minimal syncs, high decision speed, and the ability to create value without a large team. AI didn't completely cancel out this model, but it sharply reduced its uniqueness.

The same set of tools is now available to thousands of people, and each of them can assemble an MVP much faster than before. Because of this, not only the number of products grows, but pressure on marketing as well. The number of users hasn't grown proportionally, and some of them can now actually make the needed tool themselves.

The author believes this heats up advertising auctions and raises acquisition costs. A flood of new MVPs hit the market, and they all compete for the same limited demand. In such an environment, it's no longer enough to just be a good developer: the middle tier loses value faster than before.

AI ruthlessly raised the minimum entry threshold into the game.

What Are the Solutions

The author sees two practical scenarios. First—build a team that does development, design, and marketing better than AI does by default. Second—become the specialist without whom such a team can't earn money. In both cases, the stakes shift from simple technical execution to a combination of skills, quality of solutions, and the ability to influence results. The point is that the advantage now comes not from the fact of launch itself, but from execution quality and actual distinction from dozens of similar MVPs.

• Build a team that's strong not only in code, but also in design, distribution, and product decisions
• Find people who can do creative and marketing better than templated AI generation
• Develop communication skills to inspire people with your idea and keep strong participants around you
• Learn to be responsible not only for development, but also for money, metrics, and final results

The author especially emphasizes soft skills, which technologists have long made fun of. By his logic, the time when you could lock yourself away with a laptop, coffee, and internet is gone. If you want to make a notable product, you need to be able to negotiate, gather interesting people around you, explain the meaning of the work, and find resources. Otherwise, AI will indeed leave the solo format only for very strong players who can be better than the machine in a specific narrow area.

What This Means

The text captures an important shift: AI didn't kill indie development outright, but it removed its previous advantage. Quick launch became the norm, competition grew, and value increasingly shifts toward unique products, strong teams, and human skills that can't yet be simply bought with a subscription.