The pitch used to be clear: hire an agency, get a professional website, and trust the experts. The agency had the Figma licences, the developers, the copywriters, and the domain knowledge to navigate what was genuinely complicated. For most small businesses, that made sense. The alternative — doing it yourself — meant something truly terrible.
Then came the first wave of disruption: Squarespace, Shopify, Wix. Suddenly you didn't need a developer for a lot of things. You needed someone who could make decisions, understand your customers, and use a slightly-better-than-basic tool. Whole categories of agency work evaporated. The agencies that survived moved upmarket, specialised, or diversified. The ones that didn't are no longer around.
Now Replit, v0, Lovable, Claude Code, and their peers are promising something else entirely — not just templates, but actual custom software, built through conversation. A small business owner can describe what they want and, in some cases, have a working prototype within hours. The barrier isn't technical literacy anymore. It's knowing what to ask for.
But this is exactly where expert thinking still matters — and probably always will. The question isn't "can I build this?" It's "should I build this? Is it solving the right problem? Will users actually trust it? Is it secure?" Tools democratise execution. They don't democratise judgement. The agencies and consultants who understand this shift will reposition around the questions AI can't answer yet — and there are still plenty of them.
