AI makes copying easy. For builders, your edge is ideas, not features or price. Inventing new things matters more than ever. Consider the Flash era.

In 2006, I worked at Mutant Media, a tiny creative agency on 35th and 8th in Manhattan. We built websites, motion graphics, print design, and microsites. Flash microsites opened in fixed 640x480 popups with quasi-functionality like spinning sneakers and lo-fi music loops. I once made a Flash game for Bacardi where you mix Mojitos by dragging ingredients, with a voice actor saying “Nice” and “It’s pronounced mo-hee-to.”

Flash sparked a creative explosion. 1996: Future Splash becomes Macromedia Flash. 2000: Newgrounds launches its Flash Portal. 2006: Flash Player hits nearly 98% of web-connected PCs. 2010: Steve Jobs publishes “Thoughts on Flash.” Discontinued in 2020. The Flashpoint archive holds 157,509 works.

Flash objectively sucked—accessibility, unskippable intros—but it let many make weird, unexpected things. Like cheap synths enabling New Wave, new tools yield new genres. That’s your moat.