Rob Walling

Now, I guess then there's a whole plugin ecosystem. I don't know what happened with there. So that's an I don't know. It feels like there's risk there, but they have options.

If you were a SaaS company and you had built your entire SaaS or your, I guess, no low-code SaaS or your entire productized service, say, around WordPress, and suddenly WordPress changed their licensing or they, I don't know, broke all the plugins that you use and they just broke your business. What would be the replacement for that? Well, you'd have to go and build it somewhere else, right?

If you were a SaaS company and you had built your entire SaaS or your, I guess, no low-code SaaS or your entire productized service, say, around WordPress, and suddenly WordPress changed their licensing or they, I don't know, broke all the plugins that you use and they just broke your business. What would be the replacement for that? Well, you'd have to go and build it somewhere else, right?

You'd have to go build it in no code, have code written, do it manually. I don't think a replacement in this case, it's the job to be done. I know Ghost is similar to WordPress, but the job to be done of what you've built in WordPress, I don't know that it translates so well to just another CMS.

You'd have to go build it in no code, have code written, do it manually. I don't think a replacement in this case, it's the job to be done. I know Ghost is similar to WordPress, but the job to be done of what you've built in WordPress, I don't know that it translates so well to just another CMS.

And so this one's interesting in that longer term, I have this at four right now, meaning it's higher risk than, say, your AWS GCP or cloud provider. This would have been probably down around two or three before the WP Engine WordPress kerfuffle.

And so this one's interesting in that longer term, I have this at four right now, meaning it's higher risk than, say, your AWS GCP or cloud provider. This would have been probably down around two or three before the WP Engine WordPress kerfuffle.

And this is how weird these things are, is that given that WordPress has shown that they are going to be aggressive, not making themselves out to be a friendly platform right now. And so I think that is why, for sure, I kicked them up in terms of the actual risk. The big question is, if you had a business built on WordPress, how hard would it really be to switch?

And this is how weird these things are, is that given that WordPress has shown that they are going to be aggressive, not making themselves out to be a friendly platform right now. And so I think that is why, for sure, I kicked them up in terms of the actual risk. The big question is, if you had a business built on WordPress, how hard would it really be to switch?

And if, oh, in a week or two we could build it in Bubble, then this really should probably be down more around SendGrid, you know, the number two, right? SendGrid SMS providers are where it's a commodity and it's easy to switch. That's more of how I would feel about it.

And if, oh, in a week or two we could build it in Bubble, then this really should probably be down more around SendGrid, you know, the number two, right? SendGrid SMS providers are where it's a commodity and it's easy to switch. That's more of how I would feel about it.

But if your business is a $2 billion business that completely relies on the plugin ecosystem and you're at the mercy of WordPress, then I do think that there is a significant level of platform risk. So level five is high switching cost, but there are replacements. And there's no lead flow or customer concentration. The best examples I can think of here are no code.

But if your business is a $2 billion business that completely relies on the plugin ecosystem and you're at the mercy of WordPress, then I do think that there is a significant level of platform risk. So level five is high switching cost, but there are replacements. And there's no lead flow or customer concentration. The best examples I can think of here are no code.

It's building on air table bubble. I was putting Stripe in there. I don't know if I don't know that Stripe fits or doesn't. I guess switching from Stripe is kind of a pain. And I guess it depends on, you know, are you in their subscription ecosystem as to whether it's like a medium or, you know, a high switching cost.

It's building on air table bubble. I was putting Stripe in there. I don't know if I don't know that Stripe fits or doesn't. I guess switching from Stripe is kind of a pain. And I guess it depends on, you know, are you in their subscription ecosystem as to whether it's like a medium or, you know, a high switching cost.

But in any case, this is where in order to switch, you kind of have to rebuild everything from scratch, right? There is no export your code from any no-code platform I've heard of. And if you could, how do you import it into a different platform where it's all just proprietary tech, right?

But in any case, this is where in order to switch, you kind of have to rebuild everything from scratch, right? There is no export your code from any no-code platform I've heard of. And if you could, how do you import it into a different platform where it's all just proprietary tech, right?

And this, again, is where the argument that some no-coders make or just some people make is like, everything has platform risk. And it's like, Yeah, but they're not all the same. It gets worse. If you're a Shopify app, it's a super aggressive platform. That's worse than all the ones I've mentioned so far, you know, and we'll get to that one in a minute.

And this, again, is where the argument that some no-coders make or just some people make is like, everything has platform risk. And it's like, Yeah, but they're not all the same. It gets worse. If you're a Shopify app, it's a super aggressive platform. That's worse than all the ones I've mentioned so far, you know, and we'll get to that one in a minute.

And so the idea here is that if you've built a million dollar business and it's a bubble app, how long would it take you to completely rebuild that in another platform? if Bubble 10x their pricing, if Bubble went out of business, if Bubble had two weeks of outages. And one might say, well, couldn't AWS 10x their pricing? Yeah, highly, highly unlikely. I just don't see it.