Software has always been expensive to write, so we wrote it once and used it for years. One program had to serve thousands of people to justify its cost. Everyone got the same screens and the same buttons.
What AI Changes
AI changes the first step. A model can now write a working program in minutes, for almost nothing. And when writing is nearly free, the logic reverses. You no longer need thousands of users. One user and one task is enough.
These are programs made for the moment, used and thrown away. This is discardable software. It is more like a note you jot down than a book you publish.
A Worked Example
The video uses round numbers. A custom tool takes a developer two weeks and costs $10,000. It must be used 1,000 times to be worth it. Spread over those uses, that is $10 each, which is this publication’s arithmetic on the example.
The same tool, generated in a minute, costs about a dollar. It can be used once and still be worth it.
Round numbers for illustration. The $10 per use is this publication’s arithmetic on the video’s example.
What Still Has to Last
Not everything becomes discardable. The data must last. The rules of the business must last. And the checks that tell you the program did the right thing must last. The code in between can come and go.
So the value moves away from the code itself, which anyone can now generate, toward what stays the same: the record of what happened and the definition of what is correct.
Discardable Software builds on AI Evaluation as Acceptance Test. The checks that tell you the program did the right thing must last even when the code is thrown away.
Discardable Software contrasts with Operating Leverage. Software once had to serve thousands of users to justify its cost; near-free code reverses that build-once logic.
Discardable Software builds on System of Record(lesson unlocks soon). When code becomes disposable, value moves to what must last: the data and business rules kept in one place.
Verification Cost(lesson unlocks soon) constrains Discardable Software. Code that is cheap to make is not cheap to check, so checking caps how freely throwaway software can be used.
Generative UI(lesson unlocks soon) is an example of Discardable Software. A screen the model builds for one question, every time, is software made to be used once, the idea of the discardable software lesson.
The Business Engineer framework maps where each part of the AI stack sits and who holds the leverage. These pills are short lessons from the same library.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
Scroll to Top
Discover more from FourWeekMBA
Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.
