Every morning thousands of people launch new tools and apps on Hacker News, but nobody clicks. The barrier to creation has collapsed — AI tools now ship a dozen products before breakfast while human creators struggle for visibility. Josh Pigford, who has built internet products for 25 years, recently noted this is the first time he's found it genuinely difficult to make money from new products.

Creation used to be the scarce resource; now attention is. When human thinking was valuable, skill differentiated successful products. Today, with AI enabling anyone to build anything, reach becomes the new moat. Past some threshold, products accumulate attention automatically — posts find people, people find posts, creating a self-reinforcing cycle. Below that threshold, identical effort produces zero results, not because the product is bad, but because it launched on the wrong side of the line.

The uncomfortable reality is that new entrants without existing reach or capital to buy it may already be locked out. Every channel has quietly worsened — search, social media, newsletters, communities. As one Hacker News commenter observed, AI tools allow anyone to build stuff, even those with no ideas or knowledge. The effort that once filtered quality has disappeared. If you're not already moving with momentum or money, you might never take off.