Mar 13, 2025, 4:28 PM ET

Vibe Coding is Here - How AI is Changing How We Build Online

a16zYoko Li, Justine Moore, Steph Smith

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The market is expected to evolve from a generic "everything to everyone" approach toward increased segmentation of features and customer bases, with new tools emerging for specific personas such as marketing landing pages or full-stack engineering.
Interface design is predicted to shift from text-based prompting to "Figma-esque" fine-grained control for professionals, while natural language, drag-and-drop, and visual interfaces are expected to become the preferred abstraction level for the majority of users.
A "return to the 90s vintage aesthetic" in software creation is anticipated as Gen C and Gen Alpha embrace visual and aesthetic-based prompting, complemented by AI becoming "bi-directional" to proactively suggest design alternatives.
Tools are expected to integrate external services like databases, Stripe, and authentication via single clicks, leveraging mature components from providers like Clerk and Replit to avoid building clones and enabling non-technical users to build dynamic, interactive web apps.
The industry is projected to see dramatic increases in consumer, small business, and agency usage as the barrier to entry drops, allowing agencies to take on smaller, previously uneconomical projects priced at $1,000 to $2,000 and enabling "software for one" solutions for personal tasks like plant tracking or personalized bedtime stories.
Developer productivity tools, exemplified by platforms like Cursor, are expected to evolve into "AI native" alternatives that are dramatically different from traditional tools like Git within the next two years.
The market is expected to expand continuously as models improve and new use cases are discovered, creating opportunities for startups to challenge incumbents like Google who may struggle to ship AI-native products quickly.
Pricing models are expected to shift away from token-based structures toward value-based pricing for revenue-generating enterprises, with a concurrent move to packaging models that include team collaboration features rather than simple per-seat costs.
The "software for one" trend is predicted to grow significantly as users gain the ability to run apps locally without public deployment, solve previously unaddressable personalization needs, and access complex functionality including database persistence and authentication.
Future "next generation APIs" are likely to be built on extensibility protocols like the Model Context Protocol (MCP), though uncertainty remains regarding MCP's adoption as the sole standard, while the industry anticipates solving verification problems through added testing mechanisms.