The Economics of Builder Saturation in Digital Markets — HN submission

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 21:23:41 GMT

Why AI may increase competition but not success rates

5 points; 1 discussion reply on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

The Economics of Builder Saturation in Digital Markets — HN submission

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 13:26:31 GMT

Show HN: The Economics of Builder Saturation in Digital Markets

I formalised something most of us already feel but rarely say out loud: making things easier to build doesn't make things easier to succeed with. Personal version: I've vibe-coded maybe 15 projects since the beginning of this year. Two are still alive. At work, our teams built hundreds of custom GPTs and dashboards. Handful survived. The failure mode was never "couldn't build it" - it was "nobody had the bandwidth to care." So I wrote a paper about it. It combines Herbert Simon's attention scarcity, free-entry IO models, superstar economics, and preferential attachment into one framework. The…

1 point; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

The Economics of Builder Saturation in Digital Markets · HackerPapers discussions

The Economics of Builder Saturation in Digital Markets — HN submission

The Economics of Builder Saturation in Digital Markets — HN submission