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.

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Google's fiber leeching caper

Back in 2000, Google only had data centers on the US west coast and were planning an expansion over to the east coast, to reduce latency to end users. At the time, Google was not hugely profitable like today, and were very conscious of costs. One of the biggest costs of the move was duplicating the data contained in their search indexes over onto the east coast. Google had just passed indexing 1 billion web pages, and had around 9 terabytes of data contained in their indexes. They calculated that even at the highest speed of 1 Gigabit per second, it would take 20 hours to transfer all the data, with a total cost of $250,000.

Larry and Sergey had a plan however, and it centered on exploiting a loophole in the common billing practice known as burstable billing, which is employed by most large bandwidth suppliers. The common practice is to take a bandwidth usage reading every 5 minutes for the whole month. At the end of the month, the top 5% of usage information is discarded, to eliminate spikes (bursts). They reasoned that if they transferred data for less than 5% of the entire month (e.g. for 30 hours), and didn't use the connection at all outside that time, they should be able to get some free bandwidth.

So for 2 nights a month, between 6pm and 6am pacific time, Google pumped the data from their west coast data center to their new east coast location. Outside of these 2 nights, the router was unplugged. At the end of the month the bill came out to be nothing.

They continued like this every month until the contract with their bandwidth supplier ended, and they were forced to negotiate a new one, which meant actually paying for their bandwidth. By this time, Google had started buying up strategically located stretches of fiber, paving the way for its own fiber network to support its increasing bandwidth needs.

Source:

In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives [Amazon]
By Steven Levy
Published: April 12, 2011
See pages 187-188, Steven Levy's interview with Urs Hölzle and Jim Reese.

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Pricing hacks of online retailers

1. Free stuff

When retailers offer products and services for "free" there's usually an ulterior motive. For online shops, "free" provides the initial incentive for buyers to use their web site, and may be effective in retaining customer loyalty. One of the most common uses of "free" is free delivery.

Example

UK-based The Book Depository is without doubt using the power of free. The title of their home page is "Free delivery worldwide on all books from The Book Depository". This title shows up in google when searching for "book depository", along with the site's description, which is "The Book Depository offers over 8 million books with free delivery worldwide". The site's byline is "The Book Depository. Free delivery worldwide on all our books". Also in a prominent position on the home page is: "Free worldwide delivery" which links to a page listing all of the countries where they offer free delivery.

2. Per customer limits and the perception of product scarcity

Per customer limits leads buyers to think that a product is scarce, and increases their incentive to buy now. It also entices people to buy more than they originally intended. The legitimate reason for doing this - to avoid products getting sold on the gray market - is hardly ever a real concern. Retailers will also impose a time limit during which the product is available, along with a ceiling on the number of products that can be sold, after which the deal will end.

Example

Living Social Deal - Laser Nail Therapy Clinic - 70% Off Laser Nail Fungus Removal for Feet ($450)
This group buying deal shows a "Limit 4 per customer" in the fine print. Most group buying sites have per customer limits for all their deals. In additon to the per customer limit, there is an absolute limit on how many deals can be sold, as well as the deal only being available for a limited amount of time, in this case, 7 days.

3. The 9 factor - prices ending in 9, 99 or 95

Using prices that end in 9, 99, or 95 is called 'Charm Pricing' or 'Psychological Pricing'. We've been culturally conditioned to associate these prices with discounts. And because we read numbers from left to right, we mentally encode a price like $7.99 as $7, especially when we quickly glance at the price. That's called the "left-digit effect" - it's encoded in our minds before we have finished reading all of the digits.

Example

Pricing of the Amazon Kindle family of products - $499, $199, $119.
As opposed to $500, $200, $120.

4. Easy math

Most sites, when putting a product on sale, will show you what price it was marked down from. It might be "was $20, now $15". You will rarely see something like, "was $20, now $14.22." The reason is that if the difference is easy to calculate, we tend to think it's a better deal. It's called "computation fluency". Another method employed by many sites is to display the amount of the total saving along with the percentage saved.

Example

The Body Shop USA - 50% off Sitewide - After Christmas Sale. Everything is 50% off, making the amount you are saving obvious; you don't need to check any prices or fineprint. Anything you buy on their site will include a significant saving.

5. Sale price font size and color

A common practice in online sales is to display the sale price in a different font size and/or color to the original list price. Typically, the original list price will be shown in strike-though.

Example

Amazon uses red text to denote a sale price, shown below the original list price, which is struck out and shown in light gray. However, products which are not on sale and are being sold at the original list price continue to use this red (sale price) font. One theory says that customers will become accustomed to seeing red text as a saving, and will be more inclined to buy, even when the product is actually not on sale.

6. Dynamic Pricing (also known as Time-Based Pricing)

The airline industry is often cited as a dynamic pricing success story. It employs the technique so well that most of the passengers on any given airplane have paid different ticket prices for the same flight. By responding to market fluctuations or large amounts of data gathered from customers - ranging from where they live to what they buy to how much they have spent on past purchases - dynamic pricing allows companies to adjust the prices of identical goods to correspond to a customer’s willingness to pay.

Example 1

During Thanksgiving week, The New York Times tracked the price of Dance Central 3, a popular Xbox game, as it dropped on Amazon from $49.96 to $24.99 to $15.

Example 2

Coca-Cola tested dynamic pricing in automated vending machines where prices would fluctuate based on the surrounding temperature. Their theory was a soft drink would be worth more when it is hotter outside, and correspondingly, demand for soft drinks would decrease if it were cold outside. It was an unpopular idea and luckily, Coca-Cola abandoned it.

Sidenote

Oren Etzioni, a computer science professor at the University of Washington, became incensed when he found out that the traveller sitting next to him on a flight got a much better price for his ticket than he did. Etzioni started collecting online price data from all US airlines, then he created his own formula that could predict when the airlines would raise or lower their prices. His company was bought by Microsoft. And today, when you search for flights on Microsoft's Bing Travel site, you'll see colour coded arrows (called the "price predictor") letting you know you if the price of that ticket is likely to head up or down.

7. Pay what you want

Pay what you want is a pricing system where buyers pay any desired amount for a given product or service, sometimes including paying nothing (i.e. free). Sometimes a minimum (floor) price may be set, or a suggested price may be indicated to the buyer. The buyer can also pay an amount higher than the standard price.

It has the benefit of reducing buyer's remorse, which is what happens when you decide afterwards that you've paid too much for a product. It also can result in a viral increase in popularity or visibility for a product when used in highly competitive markets.

It is often used for products which use digital delivery, such as software and music. There is usually no additional cost per download to the seller anyway, since the site's bandwidth would usually be paid for on a capped, monthly basis.

Example 1

Freeware software is often distributed under this model. For example, on the home page of Paint.net is the message "Show your appreciation for Paint.NET and support future development by donating!". Typically, a PayPal donate button is used.

Example 2

In October 2007, Radiohead released their seventh album, In Rainbows, through the band's website as a digital download and requested fans just pay whatever amount they thought it was worth.

Example 3

Introduced during May 2010, the Humble Bundle was a set of six downloadable indie games which were distributed using a pay what you want system (with inclusion of a buyer-controllable charitable contribution).

8. Freemium

Freemium is a business model that works by offering a base product or service free of charge (typically digital offerings such as software, games or online software - software as a service). A premium is then charged for advanced features, functionality, or for related products and services.

Example 1

LinkedIn - Basic features of the social network are available for free. For the ability to see the profile of members outside your network, and to access advanced features, you'll need to pay.

Example 2

The New York Times paywall. A limited number of news articles can be read for free per month. To get full access to the site, you'll need to pay.

Example 3

Zynga publishes games for Facebook and the major smartphone/tablet app stores. Typically there are in-game actions (e.g. farming) which result in being rewarded with an in-game currency (e.g. loot/coins/points). The in-game currency can then be used to buy additional game features, or to progress further in the game. The in-game currency can be topped up, via a payment to Zynga in real dollars via an in-app-purchase.

9. No dollar signs

A 2009 Cornell University study found that diners in upscale restaurants spent significantly less when menus contained the word "dollars" or the symbol "$". Restaurants use the technique of omitting dollar signs to get you to focus on the product being sold (the food) rather than the price. They may also mention or profile the chef who is cooking the food. Apart from the websites of restaurants, its difficult to see this being used much in general online retailing.

Example

Gramercy Tavern, New York City
According to Urbanspoon this is the most popular fine dining restaurant in New York City.There's no dollar signs at all on their website, and their a la carte lunch menu (pdf) doesn't feature any dollar signs either, only numbers.

10. "X for $X"

Buyers will often buy more of a product than they originally intended, if it means they will secure a bargain.

Example

Bath and Body Works - 5 for $5 sale
In this case you need to buy 5 products to realise a saving of 33% off the original list price.

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Startups for Dummies

The problem with Steve Blank’s How to Build a Web Startup (Lean Launchpad Edition) article ...

There’s little to no focus on the actual product being built.

Only 1 out of 50 points listed is actually about building a product: Its listed under step 7, which is: “Add the backend code to make the site work”.

The rest is mostly cruft and admin type work that an outsourced worker could do. No doubt its important, but 98% compared to 2%?

The article comes across as a guide to building an over-hyped marketing vehicle, solely to receive funding, rather than actually building something useful that people want to use. There’s no mention of innovation or of making people’s lives easier. This is Startups For Dummies.

Full respect to Steve Blank (a 34 year veteran of Silicon Valley) and his views, but in my view, this particular article has a glaring weakness.


Some further reading on the topic:

This Starting a Startup article by Paul Graham is simple but contains three great points he says you should focus on:

• People/a good team
• A product that customers want
• Low overheads

This 12 Ways To Make Your Web Startup Investable article by StartupSmart, recommends:

• People/a good team
• A clear market gap (i.e. a product that customers want)
• Timing is everything

Incidentally, Steve Blank has just announced he is giving a free online course over at Udacity - Entrepreneurship: The Lean Lanchpad (EP245). It starts on 14 September, 2012.


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EMPORI: The original Amazon Locker from 12 years ago

Amazon Locker is a new delivery option offered by Amazon which provides secure, self-service pick-up stations located in a select number of cities in the US and UK. Once your package is delivered to the Amazon Locker, you receive an e-mail informing you that your package is available for pick-up.

This Amazon service came about 1 year after a Canadian startup called BufferBox started offering a similar secure dropbox service. BufferBox has lockers installed in two locations in Waterloo, one at the university and another a nearby corporate office. The company is nearing a launch in Toronto and plans to roll out lockers across Canadian and U.S. cities.

But back in 2000, another Canadian company launched a similar service. On July 24, 2000, Canadian property management company Oxford Properties Group launched a startup called EMPORI.COM. Customers could order products from affiliated online retailers via  Empori.com, which were then delivered on the same or next day to a secure depot containing lockers. The original depot was located in an office building in Toronto (Royal Bank Plaza) and over the course of a year this expanded to three more sites around Toronto. Oxford Properties Group saw this as a way for their commercial real estate customers to get additional value out of their prime inner city locations. The idea was that city workers would order products online and then, after receiving an email notification with the locker location and locker combination, would pick their order up at the end of the day, on their way home from work. A host of a products from 31 vendors were offered, from books to running shoes to groceries and even liquor.

The upmarket secure lockers offered by Empori

From the launch press release: "Empori.com is the one-of-a-kind retail solution to those barriers that discourage people from purchasing online. Our delivery system addresses the online shopping fulfillment problem."

Less than 1 year later, on July 17, 2001,  Empori.com closed after a $5 million loss. The blame was initially placed on the general business environment which included the bursting of the dot com bubble: "With recent changes in the dot-com environment, [Empori] was unable to find another strategic and financial partner to support further development of the business-to-consumer business,"

As the dust settled it looked like the single biggest factor in Empori’s failure was its inability to secure a critical mass of online retailers.  They tried to do too much - secure depots for pick-up was only one piece of their ambitious plan - they were also reselling goods via their website, which was the sole point of contact to access their secure depots. In effect they were trying to launch a new online retail site, coming off a base of zero customers, while in the general dot com gloom of 2000/01. Maybe what they should have done is to focus solely on their unique selling point - the secure depot - and offered it as a service, available to any online retailer, much as BufferBox is doing today.

The business burned $5 million in one year before closing

As of today, the Empori.com domain name is offered for outright sale for €3540 ($4351) by a European domain reseller. "Empori" is Italian for "Stores".

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