The Software Industry Is Splitting: Companies Take the Licensed Work, Studios Take the Delivery

Companies aren't going away

Software companies won't die. What's going away is the idea that a project can only be delivered by a company.

Standardized delivery, like building websites or assembling proven solutions, where the requirements are clear and the results can be checked, is work that individual developers and studios can fully handle. I spent my first 7 years at companies and saw how quotes get broken down. Since going out on my own, I use existing systems plus AI to do what used to take a small team.

Why is this possible now? Two foundations are in place.

Two foundations

The first is infrastructure. E-commerce has CRMEB and ECShop. Content management has WordPress. Payments, login, messaging, and permissions all come ready-made. Take apart a project that looks huge, and 80% of it is assembling proven solutions. Only 20% is code written from scratch.

The second is AI. Work that used to take a small team a week, a full-stack developer with AI can now deliver in two or three days.

But here's the key: AI lowers the cost of execution, not the cost of professional judgment.

Take video production. AI can generate beautiful footage in a second. But how to cut the shots, how many drafts the script needs, how to tune the prompts, people still have to learn, think, and revise. A seasoned producer and a beginner can use the same AI tool. The difference isn't the tool. It's the experience in their heads.

Code is the same. I write code fast with AI. But are the requirements right? Is the data safe? Is the launch stable? When something goes wrong, who picks up your call? AI can't do any of that.

What you pay me for isn't code

So when you hire an individual developer or a studio, you're not paying for "code." You're paying for someone to be responsible:

• During requirements: I help you confirm the requirements are right
• During development: the code goes into a private repository with full backups, so someone else can take over at any time
• After launch: when something goes wrong, someone deals with it

A company's quote carries 40% in staffing overhead and 5% to 30% in acquisition costs. My quote is cost plus a reasonable margin.

I charge ¥600 a day. My price sheet is public, and it hasn't changed in years.