A threshold is a good thing. Going through the narrow gate is the right choice.
The wide gate is always livelier. It promises low friction, quick feedback, and broad coverage. The result is a lot of homogenized output, rapidly depleted attention, and the illusion that “everyone is pretty much the same.” It is easy to get in, and easy to be replaced.
The narrow gate is far harsher. It requires you to pay a real cost upfront—sustained focus, repeated refinement, trust in your own judgment, and persistence when no one is cheering. But precisely because of that, it has a filtering function: separating those who are truly willing to pay for long-term value from those who only want to pick up easy bargains.
The things worth investing in for the long term, worth building a moat around, and worth remaining irreplaceable in even in the AI era, are almost all hidden behind the narrow gate.
This road is quieter, and harder. But where it leads is somewhere the wide gate can never go.