> On the contrary, he's solving a real business need for these small businesses at a fraction of the cost with a product that's easier to use and with better features.

He's doing the digital equivalent of drop-shipping. No one is making money at that anymore either, although people did well at first.

Drop-shipping software products isn't a long-term thing.

> Yet he's had no churn because there's so much value being delivered.

In a market that is tolerant enough of broken software that they won't churn after getting notice that it broke, it only takes another "ideas guy" to vibe-code a competitor product and take all the customers because they can charge less than he is charging[1].

[1] Because, as you said, he now has to retain a real dev to fix it, which costs money, which will have to come out of the customers., said customers being willing to switch to a cheaper replacement, which will be the vibe-coded low-cost competitor, which will eventually need a real developer, which will raise costs, which have to come from the customer, which ....

In a few months, his customers will be vibe-coding that app for themselves.

His early assessment when I talked to him abut this was "it's the end of SaaS".

But the reality is that the users are first and foremost concerned with their day-to-day business. Just because you can do X doesn't mean you will do it.

It's also true that there still remains some foundational knowledge required like knowing what a database is, what React is, how to prompt. There's a big generational divide on this so I do not think we are the point (yet) where "anyone" can do it. There is still a need to have some background knowledge and some technical friends that can guide you.