Real Velona

and the spawn of a new services sector

I’ve been pondering AI and job destruction recently as I’ve been working with vibe coding platforms like Replit, Hostinger Horizons, and AWS Kiro. There is so much commentary out there about the destruction of development jobs, and I’ve been wondering whether these platforms will contribute to this paradigm. I’ve had numerous people reach out about building apps using the approaches I’ve been writing about, and I’ve been thinking about how many of these builds is Replit actually stealing development jobs from.

In my honest opinion, I believe that these platforms will be value accretive for the development industry rather than value destructive. Let me explain.

The Reality of App Development Demand

In most cases, I don’t believe these apps would be built at all. The barrier to entry for getting an app built is actually pretty high. Think about it – most of the best engineers are tied up in full employment, and most of the reputable engineering firms are pretty busy. There’s a fundamental supply-demand mismatch that’s been brewing for years.

This leaves you with agencies, who would likely be one of the main customers of a platform like Replit. But here’s the thing – in most cases, these agencies are already using 4GL or no-code platforms to build these apps anyway. Any acceleration in development due to platforms like Replit will likely be competed away into cheaper development pricing for customers. That’s just market dynamics at work.

The Untapped Market

What this leaves us with are apps that can and will be built by people who are savvy enough to navigate a platform like Replit. And in my opinion, I believe that these apps previously would never have been built. We’re talking about that massive long tail of ideas that never make it past the “wouldn’t it be cool if…” stage because the economics just don’t stack up with traditional development approaches.

There’s a whole class of founders, small business owners, and entrepreneurs who have genuine problems that need solving, but the minimum viable budget for custom development has always been out of reach. These platforms are democratising access to app development in a way that’s genuinely creating new value, not just redistributing existing work.

The Birth of a New Services Sector

In addition, I believe that this new industry of vibe-coded apps will eventually spawn a services sector around it. We’re already seeing the early signs of this ecosystem emerging.

Once an app gets to scale, the current orthodoxy seems to be you raise money and rebuild the app from scratch with a “proper” development team. But I do worry for founders who go from the pace of development they might be used to in a vibe coding environment, to what the experience would be with a full stack development team.

The slowdown in development, the organisational friction, more stakeholders, less control of your destiny. The runway problems you will inevitably run into when you’re suddenly burning through cash at 10x the rate you’re used to.

A Third Way Forward

But what if there was another option?

Stay in bootstrapped mode, retain your equity, and find someone or an agency who can take on support for your app, without the need to completely rebuild it, and without the need for an expensive full stack development team.

This is where I see a real gap in the market. Imagine a services sector that specialises in:

• Optimising and maintaining vibe-coded apps rather than rebuilding them from scratch
• Scaling infrastructure without requiring a complete architectural overhaul
• Adding enterprise features whilst preserving the rapid development cycle that got you there
• Bridging the gap between scrappy MVP and enterprise-ready without the traditional “rip and replace” approach

The founders who choose this path could maintain their agility, keep their burn rate low, and scale sustainably without sacrificing the speed and control that made them successful in the first place.

The Opportunity Ahead

This is an area that interests me. I wonder whether there is a real opportunity here, and what setting this up would look like.

The traditional consulting model doesn’t quite fit – these aren’t greenfield projects requiring months of requirements gathering and architecture planning. They’re living, breathing applications that need thoughtful evolution rather than revolution.

Perhaps what’s needed is a new breed of development partner: one that understands the constraints and advantages of AI-assisted development, can work within those paradigms rather than against them, and can help founders scale without losing what made them nimble in the first place.

The question is: are there enough founders who will choose this path over the traditional raise-and-rebuild route? And can a sustainable business model emerge around supporting this new category of bootstrap-focused, AI-assisted development?

I reckon we’re about to find out.