Open Models and the Solo Maker's Edge
Nobody owns the internet. That's easy to forget now, but it's the reason a kid with a laptop could build on top of it without asking permission.
I keep wondering if raw AI intelligence ends up the same way. Right now it feels locked behind a few big labs, but open models keep closing the gap faster than most people expected. Every time that happens, the value shifts up the stack — away from owning the model, toward what you build around it.
That's actually good news if you're a solo maker. You don't need to win the intelligence race. You need to find a real problem and wrap the model in something people trust and want to use.
Which is where I spend my time. I built SoloVault to pick up early market signals and turn them into concrete things worth building, so the hard part stays where it should be — deciding what to make.
Do you think open models actually win, or do the big labs keep the good stuff walled off?
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