When Software is Commoditized, Trust Matters Most

Earlier I wrote a blog post exploring the changing calculus of build vs. buy for enterprises. The TLDR was that as the cost of creating software asymptotically decreases, the bar for SaaS becomes much higher.

Here, I want to explore the question from the other side of the aisle. If you are someone who wants to build SaaS products, either for enterprises or directly for the public, how do you navigate this new landscape? In a sea of endless software products, and with an effectively infinite capacity to generate more software at will, how do you stand out?

You can, in theory, market your way to success, but we’ll assume you don’t have millions of dollars to spend on advertising. You can also succeed through virality, and there are many examples of this—but that isn’t a strategy; it’s a lottery. So what do we have left?

My argument is simple: in a world where software is commoditized, what matters most is trust.

Shoe making is commoditized, yet we buy Nike (or your favorite shoe company) because we trust them. Crucially, that trust carries across products created by the same company. Even if you’ve only ever owned Nike tennis shoes, you probably also trust them to make good running shoes.

Companies build trust over many years and through a variety of means. Having a good product is table stakes—obviously, you need a good product. But you are no longer the only one capable of building a good product. Trust goes beyond product quality alone. It is earned by building a brand that conveys an image resonant with end users. It is earned through distribution channels that reliably deliver the product. And it is earned through a public commitment to values that reflect a long-term vision, even when standing by those values risks alienating certain segments of the market.

What does this dynamic look like in software?

Trust is fundamentally built over time. It is not tied to the product itself, whose lifespan may be short or ephemeral, but to the system that created the product. Once established, trust follows that system forward, carrying over to future products created by the same source.

In software, this means building a reputation that extends beyond any single web app or service. When one person can create in weeks what once required teams of dozens of engineers, what distinguishes your implementation from someone else’s? It is not just functionality. It is the story that echoes beyond the product itself. It is your reputation—the reputation that precedes the product. It is the memory users have of previous products they’ve used, enjoyed, and now trust enough to try again.

Building and sustaining a brand capable of delivering multiple high-quality software products, one after another, is not trivial. It is not simply vibe coding. It requires engineering infrastructure that can securely support and scale many independent applications. It requires striking a careful balance between what components are shared across products to capture economies of scale, and what must remain isolated so that complexity—and the context required for AI-driven development—remains manageable. It requires committing to durable patterns that can support many different kinds of software, from web services to native applications, while maintaining a consistent standard of quality and reliability.

If done correctly, each new product benefits from both the infrastructure and the trust accumulated by the system that created it. In the case of web applications, this means being able to go from an idea to multiple ready instances of an application—development, staging, and production—along with the necessary infrastructure and operational guardrails, in a repeatable way. For non-web software, such as desktop or mobile applications, it means having established build systems, release pipelines, update mechanisms, and distribution channels that users already understand and trust.

Over time, this is how trust compounds in software. Not around a single application, but around the system that repeatedly delivers useful, well-built tools. Companies like JetBrains illustrate this dynamic well: individual products evolve, new ones are introduced, and old ones may fade, but the underlying trust in the builder persists. In a world where software itself is increasingly cheap to produce, that durable trust—and the system that earns it—becomes the real differentiator.