Where did Matan's blog disappear last month?

And also: some thoughts about building apps with AI

“How should we track our expenses?” my friend asked as we finished our lunch at Tel Aviv international airport. It was mid-June, a day before the Israel-Iran war started, which – we had not known as we got on a flight out of the country – was going to shut down Israeli airspace. Since becoming a parent, I have traveled on business trips here and there, but this was my first time leaving my family behind for a weekend trip with friends.

“Should we just use SplitWise?” was the first idea. We were frequent SplitWise users about a decade ago, back in our young-tech-workers-with-no-kids days. We were going on many group trips back then – the kind where one person books the flights, another handles the Airbnb, etc. SplitWise was useful to balance out these expenses.

“Let me build something with AI,” another friend offered. He did not bring a laptop (a big mistake, as it would turn out once the war started and our flight back to Israel was cancelled). And he didn’t have to look for a quiet spot where he could focus. As we were walking down the terminal, he just opened Base44 on his iPhone. Our shiny new app was ready before we even boarded the plane.

It was a cool exercise, a direct follow-up for our lunch conversation about – what else – AI coding; still, I assumed we would prefer the good ol’ well-maintained and widely-used SplitWise over an untested toy-app. We found out pretty quickly, however, that in recent years SplitWise have followed the path of other SaaS companies who hit their TAM limit far earlier than expected: funding had dried out (for non-AI startups), and the only available course of action is to bully users into premium subscription programs. Viewing 10-seconds ads before entering an expense, limits on number of expenses per day, etc. “Let’s try the Base44 thing,” we concluded by day two. We weren’t thrilled about paying for SplitWise Pro.

I’m sharing this story because it illustrates where we currently are in the cycle: up until 2022, you could have raised $20M to build an app like SplitWise, which never earned enough money to justify it. Meanwhile, AI is enabling anyone to build a similar app by themselves – via their iPhone, while standing in line to board a plane – even through the free Base44 basic plan.

Said friend, however, has over a decade-long experience managing software engineers. He knows how to think about this kind of stuff. How to instruct the AI. He’s not alarmed by potential bugs or missing features. He knows he’ll figure it out. Fix discrepancies here and there. Or work around them. In the classic Crossing the Chasm model, he’s the typical early-adapter.

Things might be different for mainstream audience. They still haven’t fully adopted tools such as Base44. Folks who are non-technical, and not particularly excited about playing with new technologies. They prefer to focus on improving their yoga studio. Or artisanal coffee shop. Or whatever business they’re building. While there are some anecdotal stories, most people still find the no-code AI app builders to have too many rough edges. For now at least. Just like with every groundbreaking new technology, there’s a chasm to cross. In terms of the user experience, the brand, creation of habits, polish around the edges.

The other reason I am sharing this story is, to explain why this blog had disappeared for a few weeks; Since March I’ve been publishing on a weekly basis, but stopped around mid-June. While so many people were far more severely impacted by this war, I still took it pretty hard when my flight back was cancelled, and there was no alternative way for me to return to my family. It required some time to process.

While AI wasn’t helpful in finding our way back home when all flights were cancelled, it did help us in keeping track with the list of expenses, which grew as our trip continued more than planned. That’s also something; the last thing we needed was experiencing SplitWise trying to push us into the paid premium plan.

I have since reunited with my family, and we have lots of plans for the summer. I intend to be fairly productive for the rest of July – expect more posts – until I log off again in August for another trip. This time together with the kids.

(in the photo below: the view from one of the hotels I stayed at during the unplanned extended trip. It felt like the perfect setting, but I didn’t feel like writing nor doing anything productive).