Lately, I’ve been using Claude Code to build small, focused software tools that solve specific problems in my work. I’ve made a simple dashboard to track inbound PR opportunities, and I’m working on a planning assistant that feels more like an interactive notebook.
These are narrow programs built around my own workflow. A few years ago, creating them would have required an engineer, a budget, and a longer development process. Now I can describe what I need, test a version, and improve it myself.
Building a small internal tool is still a long way from developing and maintaining a secure, production-ready application, which requires technical judgment, testing, and experienced developers. But non-engineers can now experiment with software, test ideas, and solve specific workflow problems that previously wouldn’t have justified a full development project.
It's an enormous opportunity for anyone with a problem worth solving, and it changes what makes a software company difficult to compete with.
If more people can build useful software, a functioning product is no longer enough to guarantee attention. Companies still need to earn an audience, become recognizable, and give people a reason to choose them over the next tool that offers similar features.
How AI Is Changing Software Competition
AI isn’t making every software company easy to replace. Complex enterprise systems, proprietary datasets, network effects, and deeply embedded workflows remain difficult to reproduce.
The immediate pressure is on simpler products at the edges of the market. A focused tool that summarizes meetings, reorganizes research, or automates a narrow workflow can now be built much faster. More founders can enter the market, but competitors can also respond quickly when an idea starts gaining traction.
Products that once had years to establish themselves may soon have months. When multiple companies can build similar features, they begin competing on price, speed, and small differences in functionality. Those advantages can disappear with the next product release.
Brand is harder to reproduce. So are trust, recognition, and a direct relationship with an audience. And unlike a new feature, those relationships take time to develop.
Cluely Turned Content Into Distribution
Cluely is a meeting assistant that provides real-time answers and notes during calls. The company and its founder have drawn plenty of controversy, but its approach to visibility is worth studying regardless.
Cluely became highly recognizable online through short videos. The content was designed to entertain first, and many videos traveled well beyond an audience actively searching for meeting software. People encountered Cluely repeatedly in their feeds, learned its voice, and began recognizing the brand before they had any immediate need for the product.
The company created a path to its software that didn’t depend entirely on paid search, app-store discovery, or a product comparison page. Not every viral view turned into a customer. Cluely’s founder has said that some videos with tens of millions of views produced almost no downloads.
Millions of views can make a company recognizable without producing millions of customers. The company has to figure out which stories attract people who might actually use the software. Attention creates opportunities to test those ideas, but companies still have to turn that attention into adoption.
Start With Creators, Then Scale What Resonates
A company doesn’t need to build a massive media operation overnight. Creators are a practical place to start because they already understand how to earn attention from specific audiences. A software company can begin with smaller partnerships, test several messages, and see which ideas people actually respond to.
Early partnerships can help reveal which ideas have the most potential. Maybe one creator explains the problem in language that immediately connects. Another discovers an unexpected use case. A third produces a format that generates unusually strong conversation or qualified traffic.
What a company learns from these partnerships can extend well beyond creator marketing. The feedback can reveal how potential customers describe their problems, which features interest them, and what might persuade them to try a new product.
The company can take the strongest ideas and expand them across its own social channels, paid campaigns, website, and sales materials. It can also use what it learns to refine the product itself.
At RAD Intel, we’ve been studying how organic creator content can inform paid advertising decisions by revealing which creative ideas already resonate with an audience and deserve more distribution. For a software startup, that same approach can help test demand before the product is finished.
Why Software Distribution Should Start Before Launch
Companies often treat distribution as something to solve after the product is ready. That sequence is becoming riskier as the time required to build an initial version gets shorter.
If you are launching a software company in 2027, begin building an audience before writing the final line of code.
Talk publicly about the problem. Work with creators who understand the people experiencing it. Test language, formats, and ideas while the product is still taking shape. The response can help determine what to build, how to position it, and which use cases deserve the most attention.
Jeremy Barnett has argued that as AI makes software easier to copy, an audience becomes one of the few assets a company can’t rebuild overnight. For a startup, the practical implication is to start developing those relationships early, rather than waiting until launch to find out whether anyone is interested.
I think about this with my own tools. The PR dashboard works well for my workflow, and the planning assistant is getting there. But anyone with the same problems could build their own versions. If I ever wanted to turn one into a product, building the first version might be the easiest part. I'd still need to find people who share the problem, understand what they'd actually pay for, and give them a reason to trust something I made.
As software becomes easier to build, more useful products will enter the market. The companies that stand out will be the ones people already recognize and want to hear from. The product still has to work. Distribution determines how many people ever discover that it does.
