I built a tool that automates a piece of the financial close. The engine and the interface came together in a couple of days.
The other three-quarters of the time went to what nobody demos. Who can approve what. How every entry traces back to the model and the person behind it. How you prove a number came from the live system and not a stale test value someone forgot to rip out.
AI made the first part cheap. It did not make the second part cheap.
That matters if you are building a company rather than a weekend project. A solo builder with an AI coding stack can ship a believable version of most software in days. So the question is what still protects you once anyone can copy the features.
Most answers say data. Here is the 30-second test I use:
If every customer walked tomorrow and took their data with them, would what's left still be worth anything to the next customer?
If the answer is no, you are a landlord holding data your customers can carry out the door. Data protects you only when it is hard to copy, stays fresh, and compounds into something a newcomer can't shortcut.
The longer version, with the research behind the test: https://medium.com/@brnthood/cheap-to-build-hard-to-kill-5b87edfc27f2?sk=ca565a3cf255830a1bdec7349ce03008
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