Moltbot went from zero to 60,000+ GitHub stars in weeks, becoming one of the fastest-growing open-source projects in GitHub history. It didn't come from a well-funded startup with a go-to-market strategy. It came from Peter Steinberger, the founder of PSPDFKit, building something useful out of passion.
Watching this unfold made me question something we rarely talk about in developer tooling: where does the moat actually lie?
Many would say technology, infrastructure, or brand. I don't think so. The real moat, for most of these companies, is developers' lack of confidence to step into their market. Plenty of developers have the skills to build alternatives. What they lack is the belief that they can turn those skills into sustainable ventures. Open source has always posed a risk to these businesses, but founders tend to dismiss it. "You know nothing about business," they'd say. "Companies pay for liability, reliability, support, and all the things that surround software itself."
True. But here's what's changing: software is getting cheaper to write. A recent study by Upsilon suggests vibe coding can reduce MVP development costs by 50-70%. The gap between building side projects for fun and building them as a business is shrinking fast.
Think about companies that ship SDKs to integrate with their services, some even letting you pass a URL to configure the endpoint. What stops someone from taking one of those MIT-licensed SDKs, pointing it at their own vibe-coded backend, and offering it as a hosted solution? Or open-sourcing it for anyone to self-host? The leaked Google memo declared "We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI." That sentiment extends further than most want to admit.
And it's only accelerating. In a world of agents, maintaining open-source software will get cheaper. When AI handles issue triage, documentation, and basic bug fixes, the barrier to sustaining an alternative drops significantly. Developers will do more of this, not less.
A founder recently told me they had "powerful infrastructure" they'd invested heavily into, as if no other player had done the same. As if everyone else was just throwing darts at the wall. The reality is that tech-based advantages are often short-lived, with competitors catching up or open-source alternatives appearing within months.
The moat we believe we have is often fictitious. Something we made up, upon which we built promises of endless growth, lights and fireworks fueled by capital spent on brand recognition.
This applies to Tuist too. We need limitations in place for things to work out, like any business. But our moat isn't infrastructure or technology. It's closer to what Moltbot represents: people being enthusiastic about the future being built, not just the product that exists today. That makes us less attractive to outside capital seeking rapid returns. That's fine.
We never sleep on the idea that we're unique. We embrace that someone could replace us tomorrow, especially in the age of AI. So I avoid saying we have a moat. We have people who are passionate about what they do, and that goes a long way. Sometimes you can't capture as much value as you'd like, and that's okay too.