Everyone can build an app. Who answers the phone?
Custom software used to be a pretty big undertaking. Now you can have an idea, open an AI tool, and get something working that afternoon. That is wild. I love it. More people should be able to build the weirdly specific thing they need.
So if making software keeps getting easier, where do companies compete?
My bet is support. Someone who understands what you built, why you built it, and what needs to happen when it breaks. Someone you can actually get hold of when your team is stuck.
There is still a lot of judgment involved. A business says it needs an app. You look a little closer and find that inquiries are getting lost between a form, an inbox, and whoever was supposed to follow up. The useful work starts with understanding that handoff. Maybe the answer is a small custom tool. Maybe the software they already pay for can handle it. Either way, the goal is to stop losing customers.
Then there is all the stuff underneath: accounts, permissions, hosting, backups, integrations. Somebody needs to know how that works. “It worked on my laptop” is a terrible disaster recovery plan.
Paying someone who knows how to use AI, actually enjoys using it, understands the standards and expectations in your industry, and can handle the infrastructure makes a lot of sense to me. Add the ability to spot the business problem before opening the code editor, and that is a pretty damn useful combination.
This is what I’m building Beach Intelligence around. Websites, business technology, automation, custom tools, and the support to keep them useful. Help people pick sensible projects, connect the tools they use, and understand what they own. A business should be able to get on with its work without accidentally adopting a second job as an IT department.
I think AI gives small businesses a lot more options. The people I’d pay are the ones who can help choose among them, get the thing working properly, and still be helpful six months later.
— Jakob