Financial technology has you covered: spend your finite life energy providing the feature until the bigco implements it themselves, then buy an annuity with the profits you made in the meantime.

Almost all businesses have a limited shelf life and/or a business cycle of growth and decline. The scale is just different.

Does Exxon stop drilling for oil just because it won’t be possible someday?

I mean, the fact that this guy was making $7.2MM a year in revenue from his software seems relevant.

Quantity has a quality all its own.