This photo is from a product research session with Albert, a Thread partner who told us something ridiculous:
"Stop shipping fast. Make it actually hold up."
The most frustrating learning from 2025 was that shipping faster stopped being the right answer.
As building software got cheaper and easier, we heard this from customers:
Stop adding more features.
🧱 Quality and support are a competitive advantage in the Era of the Vibe
Tools like Lovable, Claude Code, and Cursor have forever changed how fast ideas become software. Shipping is now cheap, which means delivery alone is no longer a competitive moat.
So how do you stand out when competitors can sling similar-looking products overnight?
One answer: quality and support.
A brutally unsatisfying answer. 🤮
Our reality is that vibecoding solved one problem and created another: a sea of vaporware.
We're past the honeymoon phase of AI and starting to see fatigue with AI slop — not just ChatGPTerrible copy, but products that look right but crumble under edge cases, security expectations, or real-world usage.
I heard this feedback fifty times from our partners:
"We love when you build the thing.
Now, PLEASE, make sure it holds up when we use it."
Super different than Move Fast and Break Things. It breaks the Lean Startup part of my brain.
Despite our hesitations as a hyper-paced startup, we placed many bets on slowing down to scale the existing product.
- We ran long betas.
- Stress-tested a lot.
- Moved at a glacial pace (the deploy button is RIGHT THERE).
- Invested heavily in support and bug triage.
In spite of a velocity-obsessed industry, it worked.
- Customers stuck around.
- Power users became advocates.
- Squeaky wheels turned into passionate community members.
The boring stuff paid off, even when doing all of this wasn't sexy and we felt real pressure to ship ship ship.
In the age of vibe-driven development, slop is real, and customers need to trust the systems behind it.
Resiliency and support became one retention mechanism since it showed folks that we would be around tomorrow.
🔑 The takeaway: Build things that last. Back them with real support.
Customers won't wander to the next vibed look-alike.