Is it becoming harder to start from scratch?

Your title and body are a bit different, so I’ll try to answer both.

hard to start from scratch?

I think it is actually much easier to start from scratch in terms of building a product. There are so many amazing resources now on how to build any type of app. Makerpad makes it easier to get started from scratch with out even knowing to code. SaaS Boilerplates like Gravity make it super easy to start with a huge leg up. Since there are more people building and indie hacking, the community tools and resources only seem to get better.

harder to promote your project (often SaaS) from scratch?

This one is harder to answer. I think marketing channels are super variable based on both the product being promoted and also the fast moving trends of the industries. Just as ad blockers and digital ads are constantly battling to cancel each other out, people’s minds are constantly shifting and adjusting to new marketing plows. Marketing tactics and platforms quickly become overused or overcrowded causing the best strategies from 4 years ago to become less relevant. I think this flux will always exist, but then the main skill becomes capturing the right marketing strategy for your product. You can’t go wrong (IMO) if you try the following:

1. Read “Traction” if you haven’t already
2. Figure out who your ideal target customer is (may require trial & error)
3. Figure out where they hangout
4. Reach out and talk to potential customers (consider reading “The Mom Test” if you need help with this step)
5. Be ready to iterate and improve!

I've experienced the "law of shitty clickthoughts" on my own skill. We have a Slack community with around 6k members now, and as it grew we've been seeing people spam more and more.

Some channels had a "helpful link" policy where you could post something if it was helpful but guess what...everyone finds the stuff they write helpful :) So we had to resort to "no links policy" because I had no time to filter out all the spam really.

I really appreciate when someone reaches out and actually ASKS if they can post something promotional (you have no idea how rare this is). I think this is one thing not many people appreciate.

So it's becoming harder to start from scratch if you do permisionless things like just dump a post on a subreddit/slack/whatever that people have spent months of hard work to build. But if you just find who runs the thing and ask them...then I think things will get much easier for you.

Contrary, it is becoming easier. With the amount of knowledge, tools, hacks, communities, new market opportunities, etc. all within your reach, IMHO it is becoming easier to start from scratch.

A problem most will face is, do they go for the low-hanging fruit or not. Low hanging fruit also implies plenty of competition and stiff marker, because (depending on the business vertical) it might be easier to get into the business.

The more niche and exclusive you can be, the better it is usually. You have to put in the hours, but as I said, there are tools and avenues available today to make you launch your service/product easier to the market for a whole lot less than it was before.

Similar to @jkchu - I will also answer this in 2 part.

Hard to start from scratch?

No. It's incredibly easy to get going. You could use no-code tools, or you can find an engineer who is looking to get their feet wet with development and hire them at a decent rate or you can offer them equity. You might even be able to find a technical co-founder who wants to partner up. If none of that works, you could learn to code yourself online if you are willing to spend some time learning. There are frameworks like Bootstrap, Tailwind, and React that speed up dev too, so you could get going relatively quickly.

Hard to market from scratch

Yes. This is always going to be tough though, but when your marketing from scratch you have the benefit of being new. No one knows about you so you can still make a great first impression. This means no one has seen your posts on Reddit or Twitter yet, and they aren't tired of learning about you.

Marketing is always going to be hard though, I don't have a good recommendation here. I think you just need to start and try to to appreciate the impact it can have on your business.

I think it is alway hard it might change the way it is hard but definitely it is never easy.