> Today it’s the fashion to make web services in a very “lightweight” way, to offer minimally viable web products free, and to iterate rapidly as experience is gained with initial web users.

> I really envy people doing software with the web. One could do much better these days. But we didn’t have it, and so we were forced to do many things that wouldn’t be sensible today.

It's true there's a lot less cost and overhead to build and ship software today, but this is a double-edged sword: the perceived value of the software is also lower, and so people are less willing to pay and even expect the product to be free. I would argue it's much more difficult to build a software business these days because of this. If you can't sell your product, it's impossible to build a sustainable business.