# It's Time to Go Bigger (Theo) > [!question] Lingering Questions > - Where exactly is "the wall" for agent-built horizontal apps — load, data volume, or security? > - Does "bad but functional everywhere" erode user trust faster than it captures breadth, and where's the quality floor below which the horizontal play is worthless? > [!tip] Article Ideas > - Draft a short note connecting "boil the ocean" to WordPress's existing extensibility model — Theo is reinventing the "users go deep via plugins" pattern from scratch, worth an explicit comparison piece. > [!link] Cross Reference > - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/Zero Build Cost Shifts Advantage From Depth to Breadth]] — the existing Permanent capturing this talk's core claim > - [[3. Resources/MOCs/Product & Startup Instincts MOC]] — a contrarian product-strategy heuristic for the AI-build-cost era > [!quote] Vocabulary > - *"boil the ocean"* — attempting a broad, all-in-one horizontal product instead of a deep single-vertical one, made viable once per-feature build cost collapses > - *LakeBed* — Theo's in-progress demo platform ("the shitty cloud for shitty apps"), used to demonstrate spinning up 10 working apps in ~8 minutes ## Metadata - Source: [[3. Resources/Readwise/Full Document Contents/Articles/It's Time to Go Bigger]] - Speaker: Theo Browne (T3 Stack, tRPC, UploadThing) - Format: YouTube, expanded from a CascadiaJS talk ## Author's thesis AI has made building software so cheap that the old startup playbook — pick one vertical and go deep — is obsolete. Developers should now build deliberately mediocre but functional all-in-one horizontal products that previously made no economic sense, architected so users extend the parts that weren't built out. The response to AI-driven job-fear isn't despair, it's doing more: attempting work that didn't make economic sense before. ## Key arguments (≤3) 1. **AI lowers build cost the way the cloud lowered scaling cost** — a precedent-backed reframe of AI-displacement fear as opportunity rather than threat. 2. **AI makes horizontal breadth viable; depth becomes the user's problem** — building a "shitty horizontal play" across many categories can now beat a single polished vertical, if the platform is architected for user-extensibility. 3. **Don't automate the work you already did; attempt work that was previously impossible** — the core exhortation: "push until you hit the wall," betting the wall is farther than most assume. ## Claim atoms ### AI lowers build cost the way the cloud lowered scaling cost > [!quote] ID:rw_pending > "we've been through this before and just because AI is this crazy thing changing how we build doesn't mean our jobs are going away" The central analogy: cloud made experimentation cheap; AI does the same for building. Reframes AI-displacement fear as a precedent-backed opportunity. ### AI makes horizontal breadth viable; depth becomes the user's problem > [!quote] ID:rw_pending > "building a really good vertical isn't the only path to success anymore. And instead, building a shitty horizontal play" Architect so users extend unbuilt parts; range, not depth, is now achievable — countering 20 years of "pick one vertical and go deep" startup doctrine. ### Build time collapsed but deploy/integration glue didn't > [!quote] ID:rw_pending > "I could build the same app in 30 minutes, but deploying still takes just as long. This pissed me off." The build-to-deploy ratio inverted; integration glue is now the bottleneck — motivates reinventing the whole stack instead of building more glue. ### Don't automate old work; attempt work that was previously impossible > [!quote] ID:rw_pending > "Developers are still trying to use these tools to automate the existing work they did before. They're not realizing that it enables different types of work." The core exhortation; "push until you hit the wall." ## Permanent candidates - This talk's central claim is already captured — see [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/Zero Build Cost Shifts Advantage From Depth to Breadth]] (existing note, sourced from this same doc). No new Permanent created; connect only. ## Processing checklist - [ ] Note the WordPress/Playground parallel — Theo is reinventing the "users go deep via plugins" pattern from scratch; worth an article - [ ] Open question: where is "the wall" for agent-built horizontal apps — load, data volume, or security? - [x] Connect into the relevant MOC — [[3. Resources/MOCs/Product & Startup Instincts MOC]] ## Links - [[3. Resources/MOCs/Product & Startup Instincts MOC]] — a contrarian, AI-era product-strategy heuristic (breadth over depth once build cost collapses) - [[3. Resources/MOCs/AI & the Future of Knowledge Work MOC]] — reframes AI-displacement anxiety as an argument for attempting previously-uneconomical work