Over creamed chipped beef this morning, I subjected my friend Antonio to my latest rants on challenges and opportunities in the software business.  He helped me crisp up a major theme:  being smart is no longer a barrier to entry.

Software used to be really really hard:  there weren’t a lot of developers (and few that were superstars), languages were primitive, tools were primitive (and expensive), the stack was expensive and buggy, and servers cost real money.  Dev cycles of 12-18 months weren’t crazy, because it sometimes took that long to build something meaningful.  Sometimes merely having shipping software was enough of a barrier.

Today, things are much easier:  dynamic languages are hugely productive, the tools+stack are free, free code libraries are everywhere, and fast servers can be rented by the hour.  Smart developers abound (they may not want to work at your company, but they’re out there competing with you).  Useful functionality can be built in days, weeks or a few months.

So what does this mean?  It means that software efforts doing things that are easy and plentiful generally aren’t going to be worth that much — it’s supply and demand.

For the effort to be truly valuable, it needs some barrier element beyond “we have really smart people with a clever idea”.   There are LOTS of smart people out there that can re-implement your idea, or cherry-pick the essential parts.  If you only spent 2-3 months building it, you don’t have much of a head start.

The key is to attach the software to some non-replicable element.