I had a chat with a friend who shared a story with me. An entrepreneur needed someone to build an MVP of the software she needed. She was connected with a developer who knew AI like the back of his hand. He agreed to build the app for $10,000. Over a weekend, he vibe coded her MVP in six or eight hours. The entrepreneur was happy to finally have a working MVP she could demo with customers and immediately started reaching out to potential customers.

One school of thought around this was that the developer charged the entrepreneur too much. Ten thousand dollars for something he did on the couch while he was doing other things might sound slightly predatory. Especially when you consider that he was paid $1,200 to $1,500 an hour. Some would say he was taking advantage of the entrepreneur.

I have an different perspective. What matters is the output and how quickly it can be created. What the developer got paid for was his skill and expertise, which allowed him to move faster than others. His expertise allowed him to charge based on the value of what he created, not the effort put into the creation process. As for this entrepreneur, I’d imagine she was happy to pay the $10,000 for two reasons. First, she got the app she’d been struggling to build lightning fast, in three or four days. Second, she knew she could sign up customers who want what her software offers and can generate way more than $10,000 in gross profit.

With AI moving so fast, many people don’t know what’s possible or how to use all the AI tools. Skill and expertise in knowing what tools exist, what they can do, and how to use them are highly valued now. But as more people learn these skills and tools, the value of that expertise will go down. Developers and others with this skill set won’t be able to charge as much to build products quickly by leveraging their AI expertise. The market will become more efficient as understanding of AI and its tools is more widely disseminated.