The Zombie App Apocalypse

"Talk is cheap. Show me the code."
- Linus Torvalds, 2000

"Code is cheap. Show me the users."
- Me, 2026

The Death of the Dev Moat

In 2023, if you had a bullshit idea (like a social media app for cats), you still had to find $50,000 or 6 months of your own life to build a prototype. 

That cost acted as a bullshit filter.

In 2026, that filter is gone. Code has become cheap, and the bullshit has become infinite. If you can’t find a single user before you hit 'Generate' you haven't built a tool; you've just automated the process of adding to the internet's infinite landfill.

We’ve been here before. In 2000, millions of bullshit apps came out of Microsoft Access and VB6. For the first time, a department manager could drag-and-drop a few components, click a wizard, and 'build' a billing system. It felt like magic, but it mostly resulted in a million fragile .MDB files on desktops and a nightmare to maintain. Today, we aren't dragging buttons; we're vibe-coding entire repos. The tech changed, but the delusion remains: just because you can build it doesn't mean you should.

Zombie Apps

With tools like Claude Code or DeepSeek-V4, a non-technical founder can go from napkin sketch to a hosted, functional web app in a single afternoon. Due to this, we're in a supply-side explosion of Zombie Apps - AI generated apps with no users - beautiful, functional, and completely hollow. Because the cost to maintain a web app with a negligible userbase is less than a cup of coffee per month, they can stay online forever, creating a graveyard of functional software that no one ever logs into.

We'll end up with a long tail of these apps that never get used. Think of it as the YouTube-ification of software. 90% of all uploaded videos on YouTube never break 1000 views, and 25% get exactly zero views. A vibe coded SaaS is the same... a perfectly rendered concert performed in an empty stadium. 

Building an app may be almost free, but getting someone to care about it has never been more expensive. The truth is that with a SaaS, the code has never been the most important part, it's always been "product/market fit", and the ability to grow an active community of users who need your product. There is still a massive market for a focused SaaS that solves a real problem, but in 2026 shipping it isn't the victory - growing a real user base is.