Why I am open-sourcing my SaaS startup idea
I made the source public.
A few months ago I started working on a new startup idea: you chat with an AI in a voice-to-voice interaction and try to sell a product to an AI character. I had fun building this SaaS but because of not having enough time I abandoned it with some to-dos left open. The project was running in production but some nice-to-have features for the market as well as a payment system were not integrated yet.
After leaving the project on pause, wanting to continue and publish it to the market in the future, I decided to make the project open-source.
I am proud of the work I’ve done – UX wise it’s one of my best projects yet. But the project didn’t feel purposeful to me.
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AI in software is a nightmare …
Almost any new software startup today is an AI wrapper.
This has been true for the last 3 years. This SaaS space has lost its focus on usability. The added value is low. This may merely be because the amount of software on the market has become so high. But the transformation of AI being pushed into any software is nothing great.
Think of the intrusive Microsoft Copilot. It’s everywhere. You can’t escape if you have Windows 11.
And the integration of AI assistants has no character. It is all the same.
A lot of people are referencing 📎 Clippy with this argument. I am not here to talk about wether Clippy was a good or bad idea or made good or bad quality-wise. But Clippy was fun. It was a personification; a character.
I feel like we will never see something like Clippy again in big or successful software. The latter has become mundane; everything now feels overly professional and too tidy.
AI is supposed to personalise, maybe even take a step backwards with regard to formalism/tidiness.
My project also became like this. This is why I abandoned it. By sharing it with the open-source community I allow other people that might have a usecase for my software to adapt it to their needs. Without selling them something with no soul.
The imposter syndrome
It feels like all software projects are just symbols. They don’t mean anything. Code has no value for me anymore.
Especially since AI IDEs have started to exist (and actually became good for basic things) development is not meaningful. Anyone can develop anything in as little time as never before.
Especially full-stack development is affected by this. Nothing couldn’t be coded by AI. You just need the correct natural language. It somehow feels like it isn’t a skill anymore.
I learned coding way before AI took over and especially before it became as good as it is now (2022/2023 GPT couldn’t solve any of my tasks back then).
Now, everything I’ve learned about development and programming languages feels like just words on my resume with little meaning.
Anyone can be good at Python or TypeScript today. What’s more important than ever is to demonstrate your ability to develop rather than just to program.
Development =/ Programming
This is why I made my startup open-source. Anyone can now review the development process and how I work. One can vibe-code and ship a startup idea very fast now. Make some money off something that adds minimal value. No matter how, you gain no credibility with it. This is the point: the product could be built by anyone. The engineering behind it is unique, since AI wasn’t the author.
”Ship fast”
Shipping fast is a trend in modern fullstack development where vibe-coders think of a SaaS idea and then try to build a MVP as fast as possible.
They sell this MVP.
Results are sales to customers (mostly B2C SaaS) of some AI-slop software, adding little value. Software that has a few features and no character. Boring software. Bad software. Software that leads to data-breaches as often shared about fast-shipped softare on X (Twitter).
But they make money with it – there’s no question.
What about credibility gained from this SaaS? In my opinion: zero.
I want more transparency again.
I want more transparency of software. In regard to the backends of software we use, how the data that is being collected is used and stored and in regard to privacy-first design.
Modern software doesn’t earn anyone credibility anymore.
This is why I am open-sourcing my startup idea.
Anyone can now review my code, maybe even learn from it. See that the development process is real and thought of. Engineering instead of “Fast shipping”.
Summary
- Software is often low in value today.
- AI integration can lead to poor development quality.
- I am open-sourcing my project:
- To rebuild trust and credibility, allowing others to see my genuine development process.
- Because the project was abandoned, I can share my work without introducing another AI-dependent solution to the market.
- To promote ethical practices and transparency in software development.