The age of “move fast and build SaaS” is here — and it’s accelerating. With platforms like Reclin and Lovable, spinning up a minimum viable SaaS product takes hours, not months. What used to require deep engineering teams and venture capital now looks more like an afternoon project for a solo founder.

But this hyper-efficiency cuts both ways. When software is this easy to replicate, the product itself loses scarcity. The moat is no longer the code — it’s distribution, branding, and positioning. In other words: the story you tell and the channels you control matter more than the app you ship. The commoditization of product

In past SaaS cycles, speed to market was gated by development costs, infrastructure complexity, and technical expertise. That friction was itself a moat: if you built the product first and better, you won.

Today, the friction is gone. A founder can point-and-click their way to a functional SaaS MVP with authentication, billing, and dashboards in place. AI copilots can design the UX, write boilerplate code, and even generate marketing copy.

The implication: product parity arrives almost immediately. Features can be cloned. UX patterns converge. Any “product-led” advantage is inherently temporary. Two faces of fast SaaS

1. The advantage of incumbents

Big players with existing distribution networks now wield unprecedented leverage. They don’t need to build the best product — they only need to build a “good enough” one and push it through their established customer channels.

Microsoft can bolt a mediocre new tool into Office 365 and instantly expose it to millions. Salesforce can roll out a “starter” version of a product vertical and funnel it through existing accounts. When distribution is owned, even subpar products can capture market share.

2. The opening for challengers

But speed also favors the scrappy startup. When building costs near zero, the real game is go-to-market creativity. Small teams can build a polished MVP for a fraction of what it used to cost, then differentiate on:

Positioning: finding an under-served niche, reframing the problem, or packaging the solution differently. Novel distribution: viral loops on LinkedIn, Discord community seeding, influencer integrations, or direct user-driven marketing. A challenger doesn’t need to out-engineer Salesforce. They just need to find a growth channel incumbents can’t exploit — and get traction before the copycats arrive. Distribution as the core moat

As products flatten, distribution becomes the scarce asset. It’s the defensible edge that can’t be cloned overnight. The “fast SaaS fashion” era rewards:

Audience ownership: Companies that directly control communities, newsletters, or distribution ecosystems. Brand authority: A reputation that attracts users even when the product is baseline. Network effects: Users inviting users, creating lock-in at the community level rather than the feature level. We’re already seeing this play out. LinkedIn leveraged its distribution dominance to turn basic job tools into sticky revenue streams. In fintech, Cash App won market share not with better payments tech but through viral positioning and cultural adoption. The road ahead

The cost to build will continue to collapse. The cost to be discovered will only rise. This inversion flips the classic SaaS playbook:

It’s not about “build it and they will come.” It’s “get them to come, then you can build it.” For incumbents, the lesson is to leverage distribution without becoming complacent about product quality. For startups, it’s to weaponize speed and creativity in distribution, even when the product itself is disposable.

In fast SaaS fashion, the MVP is table stakes. The go-to-market strategy is the real innovation.

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