News take
If anyone can rebuild the app, what are you defending?
By Pat Villaceran · 13 October 2026
Think of Photoshop. Most of us have used it, or watched a designer live in it. Now the ArtCraft team have put out PhotoCraft. They call it "an open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop, rebuilt in pure Rust". The README says there's "No proprietary code, shaders or assets." Its first release came out on 2 October. It's an early version, so it's far from finished. Still, someone set out to rebuild Photoshop. That alone.
Chamath's take
On the All-In episode released on 10 October, Chamath Palihapitiya talked about open-source rebuilds of Adobe's apps. Going by third-party transcripts (there's no official one), he said software IP had effectively been rendered worthless.
That's his opinion, and it's a big one. Yes, for sure, he has a point worth hearing. If a team can rebuild a famous app this way, features get easier to copy. I won't pretend otherwise.
But I'm not here to argue about Adobe. I'm here for the founder whose whole plan is to copy the market leader.
Copy pasting was always a weak plan
In the episode on the sameness trap (S1 E1), I said this about the startup version of innovation: "Innovation might be probably copy pasting something and then, you know, adding in 10 more features and then we call that innovation."
That plan was weak before. It's weaker now. If the leader's product can be rebuilt, your copy of it can be rebuilt too. Then you have nothing of your own to point to. Could you imagine pitching that now?
So ask yourself. What exactly are you defending? The features? Someone can rebuild them. The interface? Someone can rebuild that too. What is left when they do?
The part nobody can rebuild
For me, what's left is you. It's what you've seen and lived that your competitors haven't. I said it to Nathan about a founder's vision: "It is so unique to you, no one else can copy this. It's a vision made from when you were a child."
I believe that's the thing to build on. It's the problem you see differently because of where you come from. It's the customer you understand because you were that customer. Nobody else has your reasons for starting.
There's research on this. Studies of design fixation show that once you've seen someone else's solution, your own ideas drift towards it. That happens even when the example is flawed. So the order matters. Write your own idea down before you look at the market.
Do this today
Take a blank page. Write three things you know about your problem from your own life. Leave out anything you read online. Then write one thing you'd do that only works because of those three things. Do it before you open a competitor's site.
Then ask one more question. Would that idea still hold if someone rebuilt your product tomorrow? If it wouldn't, start the page again.
The button below puts you on the waitlist.
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