YouTube Video — Transcript

Uh, so I'm really excited about this talk, and kind of fair warning, the way I like to think about this talk is, um, like I sent it to Rob and Sonia ahead of time. As I said, this is about as close to like religion and politics as I think we get here. Uh, because there are some kind of personal beliefs and biases that I'm going to share. But I think this is the message that you all and I like need to hear. Uh, this is not the message that you might want, but I think this is the thing that we all need, and this is not all good, just to kind of preface it. Um, but there is like the silver lining at the end. Uh, and so in micro, micro tradition, uh, this is my why. Uh, we're all here for a reason. This is my family. Uh, when I very first started listening to the podcast and following Rob, uh, we were only three, and now we're four, and my son on the right here is taller than me. Uh, so 13, 15-year-old kids and my wife Amanda. Um, this is why I do everything I do, right? Uh, to make as much money as possible and have as much freedom as possible so I can do things with them. Uh, and so I think as we talk about this really sensitive subject, uh, I want you all to keep your why in mind because, uh, I think it helps us frame what's going on in our lives with AI and SAS a little better.

So that's it. I told Rob this is going to be a quick talk. No. Uh, I do think some of us are in big trouble because of AI. Uh, I think to ignore this, and this is the part that I think you need to hear, uh, is me not doing justice to y'all because I'm just like you. So Casto, my SAS business, been doing it for 8 years. Um, I am worried a lot about what's going on with AI and the longevity of my business. And I wouldn't lie to you, uh, and say that I think it's all just like sunshine and rainbows because, because I think it's not. And if you assume that the next 8 years for me or 10 years for y'all or, where's Harry, 20 years, right? Maybe. Yeah. Uh, are the same, like I think you're lying to yourself.

And so I'm going to walk through kind of why I think some things are different and will never be the same. Uh, what we can all do to protect ourselves and our businesses and our wise against [snorts] uh, the things that are coming, and then how we can lean into and take advantage of these to be productive and proactive and take advantage of the biggest technological shift I think I've ever seen, uh, since the internet. Um, because the fact is SAS is greatly affected by AI, and it's not just SAS, right? And it's not just tech that's disrupted by AI, and it's not just our jobs. Like I think we all have jobs, right? But it's not our roles in our companies or jobs in general. I think it's the whole economy. And if you pay attention to the news, like this shouldn't be a surprise.

So this is about two months old, the beginning of the SAS apocalypse. Uh, this big drawdown, $285 billion of equity erased from the markets. Anybody remember this? Why did this happen? This was as a result of a blog post by Anthropic about a bundle of skills in the legal space.

So, a blog post erased whatever, over $300 billion in stock market valuation. Uh, you know, whatever. You might think people in the public markets are idiots, I think, sometimes. Uh, but, but not like that much. They're not that wrong, I don't think. Uh, and so when things like this happen, I think we should pay attention and generally kind of be aware of what's going on.

Uh, this is a pretty cool looking graph, I think, right? It's like, uh, what is it like? Uh, what do you see when you see this graph? Like this is like one of those Dreamscape things. Uh, so this is a pretty cool graph again by Anthropic. And again, like they're really good marketers, right? Like we're going to talk about some of the stuff they're doing later and why you maybe shouldn't pay attention. Uh, but this is in the blue potential disruption of jobs by AI, uh, by job type, right? So up top like management, business, finance, developers, uh, and then the red is like what's actually been actualized already. And so if I can come over here and see my notes, uh, 94% of jobs could be replaced, um, and so far like less than a third have been, and we've seen layoffs every week, right?

Um, and so, you know, this is from, uh, Andre Carpathy, one of the co-founders of OpenAI. Uh, all of the red here are jobs who will be negatively impacted by AI over the course of the next few years. Uh, with a score of like between one and 10, between seven and higher. Uh, and this is $3.7 trillion of wages that could be lost.

Um, so is this like everybody happy? Everybody like, "Yeah, this is [ __ ] great." Like I can't believe we're ending the conference on this. Uh, this just one more, uh, the Eyesshares, uh, ETF that tracks like, you know, SAS generally down 30% in the last 6 months. Told you this is like what I think we all need to hear. Um, but like hey, we're entrepreneurs. We're founders.

We've like seen this stuff before, right? Uh, so yeah, you know, web frameworks, Laravel, Ruby on Rails, Nex.js, Django made everything easier for us, right? Yeah, totally. Um, cloud computing, right? I don't have to buy the $10,000 server to start my thing. I can just go to Versell and launch this thing for 10 bucks. Totally true. Uh, lowered the barrier, made it easier for us all to do stuff.

Payments, right? This is, uh, Stripe's seven-line implementation of payments, like again, uh, made things easier for us all to do as entrepreneurs and founders, and I would argue a lot of AI is doing similar things, but I think it's also a little different. And so like all of these have enabled us to do more with less, and I think this time is different, and you might be like, yeah, it's different in ways, and maybe that's true, but I do think it's different because before all these advancements kind of lowered the barrier and made it easier for us to do stuff, but AI to me is just entirely replacing jobs and roles. And if I take like a half a step back, I think that's the big existential risk to us all is just like there's not going to be people with jobs in the medium term. And I'm going to talk about like the long term because I'm actually really bullish on the long term. But I think in the medium term we have a rough couple of years. Not because of someone vibe coding our product. Like that's a medium kind of risk. I think the risk in the next couple years is just going to be the economy, and there's not much we can do about it. But I want us to be ready to like prepare ourselves and our businesses to weather this time. And so, um, does anybody remember this micro? No, this is a Gemini, uh, image, but I wanna [laughter]. But I want to, uh, I want to see like talking about replacing roles. Uh, okay, so if you've been in business for a couple of years, raise your hand if you were like hiring two years ago.

Come on, raise them. Okay, cool. Uh, so like half, two, two-thirds of the room. Okay, keep—no, keep them up. Keep them up. Uh, keep your hand raised if you were hiring a year ago. Cool.

Like most of us, uh, keep your hand raised if you're hiring today. Yeah. I don't—Okay, that's a lot more than I thought, honestly. So, I'm like, "Oh, fuck." Um, I talked to, uh, Lyanna mentioned like I serve as adviser and resident at Tiny Seed where, uh, you know, companies coming in are between like a couple thousand dollars MRR to like, gosh, I don't know, 50 grand. Um, and they just got funding, right? So, they're like, I got to go, I got to go spend this money, right? Because that's the whole trade-off. It's like, hey, we're going to give up a little equity, get a little bit of money so we can grow faster. Uh, even within Tiny Seed, I don't talk to a lot of people who are hiring. Uh, I certainly don't talk to a lot of Tiny Seed companies who are past like a year who are hiring. And I don't talk to a lot of bootstrapped SAS businesses who are kind of established who are hiring right now. You know the comment, um, from—oh, Victor is not here. Victor Keller, I've known Victor a long time. He's like, why would I hire anyone anymore?

how we can lean into and take advantage of these to be productive and proactive and and take advantage of the biggest technological shift I think I've ever seen uh since the internet. Um because the fact is SAS is greatly affected by

AI and it's not just SAS, right? And it's not just tech that's disrupted by AI and it's not just our jobs. Like I think we all have jobs, right? But it's not our roles in our companies or jobs

in general. I think it's the whole economy. And if you pay attention to the news, like this shouldn't be a surprise.

So this is about two months old, the beginning of the SAS apocalypse. Uh this big draw down, $285 billion of equity erased from the markets.

Anybody remember this? Why did this happen? This was as a result of a blog post by Anthropic about a bundle of skills in the legal space.

So, a blog post erased whatever over $300 billion in stock market valuation. Uh, you know, whatever. You might think people in the public markets are idiots, I think, sometimes. Uh, but but not like that much. They're not that wrong, I

don't think. Uh, and so when things like this happen, I think we should pay attention and generally kind of be aware of what's going on.

Uh, this is a pretty cool looking graph, I think, right? It's like, uh, what is it like? Uh, what do you see when you see this graph? Like this is like one of those Dreamscape things. Uh, so this is

a pretty cool graph again by Anthropic. And again, like they're really good marketers, right? Like we're going to talk about some of the stuff they're doing later and why you maybe shouldn't pay attention. uh but this is in the

blue potential disruption of jobs by AI uh by job type right so up top like management business finance developers uh and then the red is like what's act been actualized already and so if I can come over here and see my notes uh 94%

of jobs could be replaced um and so far like less than a third have been and we've seen layoffs every week, right?

Um, and so, you know, this is from uh Andre Carpathy, one of the co-founders of OpenAI. Uh, all of the red here are jobs who will be negatively impacted by AI over the course of the next few years. Uh, with a score of like

between one and 10, between seven and higher. Uh, and this is $3.7 trillion of wages that could be lost.

Um, so is this like everybody happy? Everybody like, "Yeah, this is [ __ ] great." Like I can't believe we're ending the conference on this. Uh, this just one more uh the Eyesshares uh ETF that tracks like, you know, SAS generally down 30%

in the last 6 months. Told you this is like what I think we all need to hear. Um, but like hey, we're entrepreneurs. We're founders.

We've like seen this stuff before, right? Uh so yeah, you know, web frameworks, Laravel, Ruby on Rails, Nex.js, Django made everything easier for us, right? Yeah, totally. Um cloud computing, right? I don't have to buy the $10,000 server to start my thing. I

can just go to Versell and launch this thing for 10 bucks. Totally true. Uh lowered the barrier, made it easier for us all to do stuff.

Payments, right? This is uh Stripe's sevenline implementation of payments like again uh made things easier for us all to do as entrepreneurs and founders and I would argue a lot of AI is doing similar things but I think it's also a

little different and so like all of these have enabled us to do more with less and I think this time is different and you might be like yeah it's different in ways and maybe that's true but I do

think it's different Because before all these advancements kind of lowered the barrier and made it easier for us to do stuff, but AI to me is just entirely replacing jobs and roles. And if I take like a half a step back, I think that's

the big existential risk to us all is just like there's not going to be people with jobs in the medium term. And I'm going to talk about like the long term because I'm actually really bullish on the long

term. But I think in the medium term we have a rough couple of years. Not because of someone vibe coding our product. Like that's a medium kind of risk. I think the risk in the next couple years is just going to be the

economy and there's not much we can do about it. But I want us to be ready to like prepare ourselves and our businesses to weather this time. And so um does anybody remember this micro No, this is a Gemini uh image, but I

wanna [laughter] But I want to uh I want to see like talking about replacing roles. Uh okay, so if you've been in business for a couple of years, raise your hand if you were like hiring two years ago.

Come on, raise them. Okay, cool. Uh so like half two two/3 of the room. Okay, keep No, keep them up. Keep them up. Uh keep your hand raised if you were hiring a year ago. Cool.

Like most of us uh keep your hand raised if you're hiring today. Yeah. I don't Okay, that's a lot more than I thought, honestly. So, I'm like, "Oh, fuck." Um I talked to uh Lyanna mentioned like I serve as adviser and residents at Tiny

Seed where uh you know, companies coming in are between like a couple thousand dollars MR to like gosh, I don't know, 50 grand. um and they just got funding, right? So, they're like, I got to go I got to go

spend this money, right? Because that's the whole trade-off. It's like, hey, we're going to give up a little equity, get a little bit of money so we can grow faster. Uh even within Tiny Seed, I don't talk to a lot of people who are

hiring. Uh I certainly don't talk to a lot of tiny seed companies that are past like a year who are hiring. And I don't talk to a lot of bootstrapped SAS businesses who are kind of established who are hiring right now. You know the

comment um from oh Victor is not here. Victor Keller I've known Victor a long time. He's like why would I hire anyone anymore because I can do everything I need to do with AI to run my business.

Does anybody like resonate with that? Yeah. Like almost as many people hands that went up originally. I think that's I think that's kind of the meta theme here is like because I feel super empowered and like that's a good and bad

thing sometimes, but I think that's like the immediate effect on kind of the economy and how we run our businesses.

Um, okay. So, I want to talk about three and there's probably more, but there's kind of three that step out to me as like immediate kind of threats to my business and and probably yours. Uh, and again, I say all this like I'm not like

hopefully preaching, but like I think about this all the time because like again my why, my family like Castos pays our mortgage and our kids to play volleyball and stuff like that. And so I want to be really aware of this stuff.

Um, the first is probably the most obvious, right, is that like our product just gets commoditized. And yeah, you might like roast me for saying someone can vibe code my product in a weekend and like yeah, they're not going to vibe

codeastos or salesforce or whatever, but I think a lot of times we know like our customers don't need all of the things that we do, right? And could they do just like this one little thing to get this one report or this one way to store

a file or this one API or something like yeah like they probably could. And is that good enough to get on the other hand like the benefit of customization and like owning the data and and kind of having control of everything? Like heck

yeah. Um I was talking to one of the conversion factory guys and I said like we uh at Castus we charge $19 a month. So like first of all don't [laughter] ever [gasps] start a SAS business where you

charge $19 a month. It is just it's rough. But uh chatbt is 20 bucks a month. Claude's 20 bucks a month. For us to have the gall, I think, in some ways to say we are equivalent value to the

most impressive piece of software ever. I I think is weird, right? Like I don't know like we we we churn hasn't really changed for us, but I think increasingly people are going like gosh, I can do kind of like everything with Claude for

20 bucks a month and I'm going to pay Castos 20 bucks a month. Uh, I think that like the psychology is is kind of changing there, especially for like new customers. I think like we're starting to see some early signs

of this and talking to some of my peers and they're like, "Yeah, like churn really hasn't changed, but like new trials are dropping that that's that's kind of like the early sign of this, I think." And so, like willingness to pay

for a dedicated SAS solution, and you see this on Twitter, right? It's like, why would I pay like 500 bucks a month for a HubSpot when I can just make this myself?

Not true, right? But like not false either. I think um you could use notion and claude [snorts] code and air table or whatever and get like a good CRM that does most of what you need from HubSpot for relatively free. So I think like the

perception of the value of your product changing over time is absolutely a thing we need to pay attention to. And again I think this is what we need to hear uh even if you don't like it. Um, I think

the most interesting one is your team. I'm going to talk about what we do uh in empowering our team to lean into AI in a minute, but I think the most interesting thing here is us getting kind of like is

the word labbotomize where you just like go brain dead, right? I [laughter and gasps] I think uh I think this is a real risk especially in kind of creative ventures like hey if all I can do is talk to cloud code or codeex

or something like what real value do I bring as a founder or a marketer or a developer especially for kind of non-deterministic things like marketing right creative things um and then I think there's this existential threat that we all are feeling right now of

like what the heck am I doing here if the robots can do everything like what unique value do I bring and what unique value does each person on my team bring when yeah not today like AI can't do

everything but gosh like think about 6 months ago think about 3 months ago what it was doing uh and then if we kind of extrapolate forward two years like where are we going to sit in all this and then I think this is the biggest one

this is the biggest one by far like I know there are products maybe here today that are basically a skill Right?

Like I think the reality is most people have no idea what cloud code or codeex is and they don't know what skills are and so they haven't caught on yet. But if your business is a skill the frontier

models like just deliver this already. They have enormous distribution like literally everyone in the world uses them and the functionality for this will be free.

Hey, Rob Walling here. If you're watching this and thinking, I wish I could be in the room for talks like this. You can, and you should. So much of the magic at our events happen in the hallway track. That's where you connect

with two to 300 like-minded founders who are trying to solve many of the same problems you are. I hope you'll join us at our next event. Head to microconf.com/events to grab your ticket. Our next one is in Iceland in September of 2026 and then

we'll be in Austin in April of 2027. So, who was it that stole this slide earlier? I loved it. I was like, [ __ ] I can't believe that that you asked this, but I think this is the

Formspree. Was it who's Yeah, this is so cool. I use Formspree. Uh and I I use Formspree exactly how uh this like is described. Uh it was suggested to me by claude code. I'd never heard sorry I'd never heard of form spree before like 3

weeks ago when I converted my site over and it was like hey you need a way to send contact form and you should just use form free spree go here they good free plan get an API key and and give it

to me right um so this is a graph of stack overflow traffic over the last whatever 20 years.

That's not great. Um, I mean this is not surprising, right? Like this was the way that many of you learned to develop is like I'll just go to stock over and copy and paste stuff in and see how it works

and we'll kind of figure this out. Uh, like times change, right? This is not the most effective way to get value anymore. Uh, and so as a result, like the market spoke and they just get no traffic anymore.

This one's super sad to me. Um, Adam Wam, founder of Tailwind CSS, three months ago, maybe laid off 75% of their team, very unfortunately because the agents and the models knew the documentation of Tailwind CSS so well that no one had to go to their site.

They had an 80% drop in traffic to their site and that they sold, you know, premium products or whatever. But the models and the agents were so good at implementing their free product that nobody had to upgrade to a paid plan.

And like Adam's a super smart guy like I know him like this not his fault at all.

And this is none of our faults. Like I think that's the one thing I want to say is like what's happening in this transition of AI is not like my fault or your fault or any it's not Rob's fault

even. Uh [laughter] we didn't ask for this, you know, like the good and the bad. Like the I definitely asked for the good, but we didn't ask for the bad, which is we all are forced to reinvent ourselves like as

of today. And I hope that's the one thing that you leave with is like [ __ ] is going to get bad if you don't think about yourself and your business in a different way.

Uh so, you know, moving to the good way. This is uh you know, the folks at linear are amazing. Like this is an image that they put out in their blog post about kind of the new version of linear. And

everybody in here uses linear. like we don't use linear but no it's like the cool issue tracker uh we just use GitHub but like they went from like we're an issue tracker that replaces GitHub issues to like surrounding the entire

ecosystem of agents rules context and kind of that customer product feedback loop which like to me as a non-technical founder is the most important thing in SAS right like listen to your customers make the [ __ ] they want and deliver and

keep doing that over and over and they're like pretty smart folks and they're like, "Hey, why don't we just like say that we are the tool that lets you do that really well?" So, this is like an evolution, right, of

we're not an issue tracker. We're like the thing that lets you deliver on the most important function of a SAS tool, SAS business. So, that's cool. Uh, like these guys are like the epitome of a microy type business, right? Base camp.

Base Camp coming out with a CLI, right? This this is like where the puck is going, right? Is you have to have these kinds of tools to enable your customers to get value from your product the way they want to in the future. And like

like Rob said, we are super early in this. And very fairly, we do not have a CLI or an MCP at Castos. Uh partly because like we're not the kind of product that like has to have this today. I don't think Anthony. Yeah,

maybe maybe we're not. We we uh we we debated it as of like two weeks ago. We think we have kind of bigger fish to fry here. Um but we we consider putting off a very very valuable feature to do this

and it was really close. In the end we decided this is going to wait. Um but I think this has to be part of the calculus one for discovery talking about formspray like hey how do people find us

incre in increasingly it's like well claude code said to use form spree or claude code said to use casto or savvyal or whatever uh that's a that's a as you know to Amanda's talk yesterday impressions maybe going up but clicks

are going down I think part of that is like we're just getting the answer from a different way and if you're showing up where that answer is generated, you're missing a big opportunity.

Okay, so very early, right? When it comes to MCP and CLI and SDK and ABC, uh we're like really early with all this stuff, but I don't think that you can ignore where this is going. Cool. I promise

this is going to get better. Um okay, so is it Britney like what a girl wants? Is that is that right? Yeah. What a girl wants. What does an agent want?

What does an agent want? Context. Oo, okay. Agents don't want. Uh, okay. Humans. Yeah, rent a human, right? Who would have thought we'd have a website that's like rent a human? That like isn't that really like wrong and illegal

and uh Okay, what does an agent want? Anybody else? money, energy, water. Yeah. Yep.

Uh not a really pretty website, right? Like uh I hate it for the designers out there, but uh they want an API, right? They want clean, visible documentation. And just like pro tip, uh a lot of our documentation is rendered

on the page in JavaScript and agents can't read that. So if you're not like outputting your documentation as like whatever JSON or markdown or something like that like probably take the five minutes today to do that so that agents

can see and index that uh an MCP CLI or SDK and then like they want it free. They want it free and at most they want to like pay per outcome or something or pay per token or pay per usage. I think AI

is overall incredibly deflationary. Uh we're all expecting more for less money. Uh we saw this with Hrefs. Hrefs historically is like [ __ ] gated everything and pricing tiers and overages and stuff and then they roll back and they're like, "Hey, yeah, our

API is like included in every plan now." They're kind of seeing the pressure of what we all expect in a um in a like given more away kind of mode. and they're the market leader in their space. And so question for everybody

like if an agent, you know, if my open claw tries to go use your product right now, like could it?

Yes. Yeah. Cool. That's the form guy. That's awesome. Um yeah, I mean for me for me the answer is no, but we're working on it. Um, so this is like [laughter] this is like uh how I imagine myself,

right? Like I'm like Dumbledore, right? I'm like a wizard who can run my company from the mountains in France or a boat in the Bahamas or whatever and we provide value and it's like 247 always on. Anybody else like resonate with this a little

bit? Like developers especially like I I this is like a developer to me. It's like, God, you guys are magic. Like, you guys can write code and develop products and all this kind of crazy stuff.

Software developers aside, I think the the playing field has been leveled a lot. I I I I I do some coaching and I work with someone here and and they sent me a message about a month ago and they

go they they had kind of just learned claude code and they were like what the [ __ ] like if I can do this everyone else can do this and so what what do I what do I do now? What value do I provide?

How can I and they're an incredible founder and marketer. How do I continue to add the amount of value that I used to to my product when this is the new baseline?

I don't know the answer. I don't know the answer, but I think that's kind of the question. And so, Alex Lieberman, right? Like pretty smart guy. Uh, anyone else? [laughter] Anyone like [ __ ] uh at 30 minutes I have an existential crisis

the last 30 minutes in the last 30 years? I think uh we're all kind of paralyzed, right? like what marketing channel do I go down? What product do I develop? Do I acquire a business or not?

Right? Like I think um I don't know what to do. I don't have the conviction to follow this course that like I used to.

And again, maybe I'm maybe I'm projecting a little bit here, but uh I talked to enough founders that like they just they don't know they don't feel really good about this is definitely the course. Uh and so if that resonates with

you, like you're not alone. But but I think we'll get into how to lean into something here in a minute. Um so talked about moes yesterday a little bit. I think someone talked about Moes and I was like gosh you guys keep this is the

the curse of going last is like everybody talks about what you're talking about. Um, I think there's a there's a couple modes. Maybe there's more than four, but I think there's four for sure that we, especially as micro

founders and like mostly bootstrapped uh SAS companies can really lean into. The best is first party proprietary data. So, if your product generates data that keeps getting better and more robust and more useful over time, you're good. Like, I don't worry about you,

right? So, gosh, what's an example? Anybody have an example? Is this anybody? Yeah. What do you do?

I do a ton of design research for my clients and I gather and synthesize it among all my other clients and make them all a bit stronger in the process.

Cool. So, if anybody didn't hear like design research for a bunch of different clients and you're building this kind of library of like what great design looks like. Yeah, totally. So, you have first party data a bunch of across a bunch of

different experiences that you can apply to all your clients. That's cool. Anybody else example of first party data that you're generating? Yeah, Keith.

Segmetrics right? Yep. Yep. So, Segmetrics is uh attribution marketing attribution tool. Uh I mean so you have I think you have uh proprietary data on two levels. One is like platform level. all of your customers you see a whole bunch of stuff

like this is where people like you know stripe and chartmogul can tell us how good or about our businesses are like that's really valuable and you in a similar way and then each of your clients have their first party data that

uh that's valuable to them right and that keeps getting better and more valuable over time the more they use your product yeah that's really cool um this is where like we win right wins here we are a system of record we're a

podcast hosting platform if you want a podcast you got to have something like and if you cancel with us, your podcast goes away. So, if you're, you know, a CRM, uh, as much as that's like a bad example, like if you're the source of

truth where like this is like this is where like our data for our company lives, I I think you're good. Um, and because of this, I think these are harder to vibe [laughter] vibe code because like if you vibe code this and

get this wrong, like the data that you think you have about your company is wrong and then it's not the source of truth. it's just a source of garbage. Uh and so that's one. Uh I think especially for this crowd, this is a super

interesting one. Uh is speed. I'm much more bullish about the people in this room with SAS and AI. I am kind of want to keep using HubSpot as an example, but like a legacy big frankly bloated uh piece of software, right?

they just can't move as fast as you can to afify yourself and your team and your product and your company. And so being able to move fast, not having to report your decisions to a whole bunch of people and keeping that product

customer feedback loop really really super tight is maybe the universal advantage that everyone in this room has that you should really lean into.

And then like, yeah, hey, what if my next customer is an agent and not a human? Well, like that that's one thing.

But the other thing is like if you're selling to the enterprise, which like increasingly I think that's where SAS should go. Uh again, like don't start a SAS recharge 20 bucks a month. Um if you're charging thousands of dollars a

month, your ACV is 50 grand or something like that. Uh people always have bought from people and they will always buy from people. And maybe even more so, this relationship between you and someone else is paramount. You know,

agents aren't going to decide to buy a $50,000 a year piece of software. It's going to be you. And so, like leaning into sales, uh, I think is a really interesting avenue to continue to succeed in SAS.

Okay. So, I want to like another show of hands like how many of you feel good about how your team is using AI?

Oh, cool. Okay. A little of this, right? Uh and not like really high. Okay, cool. Um I don't do a lot of things right, but but like we [ __ ] nailed this. Like our team is crack super clawpilled.

They're amazing. And so I want to share what we're doing. Um, okay. So, uh, and I I think like to take a step back, this has to start with you. It can't be like, oh, our developer is going to, you

know, have their development team like use all these codes and develop all these best practices. Like, even if you're not a technical founder, which like I'm not, you have to lead by example. Like I I always want to be the

dumbest person in the room in our company a lot of times like I am but in this respect I led the charge and I think you have to you have to set the culture of excellence here and like

we're not messing around like this is how it's going and I'm going to talk about some really challenging times we had but you have to get this right and y'all have to lead this. It's no, you can't be like, "Okay, I'm going to

appoint like a head of AI in our company." Even if you do that, that person's not going to take you seriously if you yourself aren't fluent and proficient at these tools. Okay. So, uh, in our company, we're seven people

full-time. Everyone has Claude code support product marketing certainly development. Everyone uses it all the time. every we have a team meeting every Monday. All hands, all hands, all seven hands. Uh, every time it's like, "Hey, I was playing around with this new MCP

over the weekend and we like built this new tool. Hey, I was looking at this API for this other thing we could do. It's really cool. Like, I built this uh script that we can run to get this

report." And it's because that's the expectation. I led by example for a painful [laughter] amount of time.

uh being the person that y'all make fun of like, "Oh my gosh, Craig is going to talk about AI again and how great it is and oh my god, let's just roll our eyes." I did that for long enough and we

had some positive peer pressure in the room to where they were like, "Oh, I probably should like catch up or like I'm going to get fired." And that was the conversation a couple times. Um we have an unlimited budget for AI. Um,

I I can't imagine telling someone that you pay a h 100red grand a year that they can't upgrade their cloud plan from $100 to $200 a month. I just can't imagine that, right? And we're going to talk about what the kind of bigger

companies are doing around this in a minute. Um, we have the expectation, not the allowance, but the expectation that everyone spend at least two hours a week learning. And they're like, "Well, where would I learn?" I'm like, you can watch

my YouTube channel [laughter] because it's frankly like really good, but if you don't watch mine, like watch somebody's um around like the area where you want to like learn uh because you have to keep learning because this stuff

changes so fast. I was like just before this like they're going to release uh Opus 4.7 like tomorrow and then OpenAI has GPT 5.4 security which is kind of their answer to mythos I guess. But like literally it changes all the time. I was

talking to someone about paperclip and I was like, gosh, like I'm in this all day every day and I have a hard time keeping up. But if you as a leader don't uh set the expectation with your teams that

they have to keep up with this stuff, there's no way that they will. And so this has to start at the top and then come down.

Uh so so we have two standing meetings in our company. One is like our Monday all hands and then we do this thing called co-working which is just like hanging out on Thursday but hanging out turned into what we did this morning in

the lobby which was tell me what you learned or show me what you did with AI this week and this does something really interesting. So the first time this happens you got a couple people who show up and stuff and then I call on someone

and like hey Jimmy what did you do this week? Oh I don't know like not much.

Jimmy, next week that cannot be the answer. Like you got to show up. You have to show me what you've learned and how you are furthering yourself to be able to do your job better in the future. And and like

this just has to happen. Um and I think this is where um you guys know the the term like right person in the right seat.

Yeah. Uh was the traction guy. Um I was having this conversation with one of you this week that like you're like hey I'm super on board like I'm Claude P but uh my my development team is not and

I'm having to explain stuff to them and this was a non-technical founder person was like do do I have like a people problem here? I like [ __ ] yeah you have a people problem like that is not okay.

And we had several of these conversations with our team and the the lesson or the kind of the the question that you always should ask yourself when hiring. I got this from Ruben Gomez. Reuben's like one of the smartest founders I know. Follow him

on Twitter. Uh is knowing what I know today, would I hire this person again?

So I asked myself that of everyone on my team as it relates to AI. Knowing what I know now, would I hire this person again in the kind of AI world that we live in?

And the answer was about 50/50, yes and no. And so I just told them that like it doesn't have to be any more complicated than that. Hey Jimmy, I'll use Jimmy as an example. He's like the most amazing

human. Uh and he started off like this is just not I'm not going to do this.

And I was like, bro, like you got to get on board. Like I love you, but like for to work here, you have to participate like this or you can't work here anymore. And since he's the biggest transformation in our company. So if

y'all have those folks who are like, "Oh, I'm too good to use cloud code to write code cuz I'm an artist on the keyboard." Like that person has no place in my business and probably shouldn't in yours either.

And so right person in the right seat doing the right job had a meaning six months ago and I think has a different meaning and context today. And so y'all as leaders might need to have challenging conversations with your team.

Right on. Thanks, man. I thought y'all were asleep. Um, okay, cool. So, 200 companies in Tiny Seed, 200 founders in Tiny Seed. Uh, get to talk to a lot of them about what they're doing. You know, just as a as a side note, I have nine

minutes left. Like, we're going to go over, I think. I hope that's okay. We'll we'll still get to the bar. Um, but we might go over a bit. Um, that's the beauty of going last. Uh, so what other tiny seed companies are

doing? This is a bit rapid fire. So, uh, hired an AI native engineering manager.

I like this a lot because this is like, hey, we had this job before of like engineering manager. Really kind of tough job. I think now it's like how can I pill my developers as much as possible and get them just token maxing as much

as possible. Right? This is this person's job. I love it. Right? We had this other job before. Now we have the new version of this job. I think there's a lot of that going on. Uh automate like task audits, right? If something happens

more than a couple times, we're going to automate this because now everyone is empowered to do so much around like I'm going to build a script or I'm going to build a little tool or I'm going to automate this thing or I'm going to get

this thing in cloud code or openclaw or whatever. Right? This should be happening uh to everyone not just your developers, right? said developers are super good at like oh if I have to do this thing I'm going to build a bash

script to like automate it in the future now everyone can do this which is a huge unlock because then it's multiplying exponentially is that a thing multiplying it's happening exponentially um token consumption Brandon here right uh the expectation is

your engineer should be consuming 60% of their token quota in a week or month uh yeah like bro what are you doing like I wonder sometimes like what are my developers doing if they're not maxing out their $200 a month plan because I

can max mine out and I spend like a couple hours a day fussing around with this stuff. Uh what are they doing to not be asking for like a $1,000 a month quota? I don't know. They should be

maxing it out all the time. Uh this is kind of similar to our our weekly uh kind of showand tell two-minute demo of a thing that you did. This can be like a skill or an open source thing that you

did or a way that you're doing like codeex and uh and claude code like review or it can be whatever right like how this happens in your business can be different but you should be doing it.

This positive peer pressure is hugely uh transformative I think in instilling the culture of kind of like AI excellence.

Uh, I like this kind of like crossf functional squads. Like we've kind of always done this and now it's just has a AI flavor, right? So like pick a thing, have a couple people just go super hard on this for a period of time. Uh, and

then share what they did with everyone else. Uh, gosh, this one's pretty tough. We definitely don't have this nailed. Um, the way that we do this most of the time is we just publish our stuff open source and so everyone can kind of keep keep

track of it. But like how do you share prompts and workflows and skills amongst your company uh in a way that's like consistent and not like getting in the way? And I know like uh if you're on the

anthropic team plan, you can share skills and stuff like that, but not everybody's in that boat. So like have a way to do this. However you achieve it, I think is important.

Talking about token maxing, uh evidently at Meta, they have like a whole leaderboard around this, right? Like how can I spend the most tokens possible?

Um, this is where like again y'all y'all roast me for being so like into this stuff. This is directionally right I think. Like yeah do you want to like use the most tokens possible? Like maybe that's not exactly like proper but do

you want this culture of like I did this thing with AI and it's awesome and I want to show youall about it. Like that's definitely right to me. Um Jensen Wang, founder of or CEO of Nvidia. Uh, we definitely don't have

$500,000 a year [laughter] developers, but I think the the gist here is right. Right. If your developers aren't maxing out their plans and asking for more, you got a problem. And I would take this a step further. Not just

developers, but like if you have a salesperson or a marketing person or an ops person and you haven't given them clawed code yet and they're not banging down your door, I I would fire them like literally today cuz it's like what where what are you

doing? Like if you're working for a SAS company [snorts] and you're kind of plugged into even if it's LinkedIn and you don't know about this stuff and you haven't tried, you know, Claude Co-work or whatever and they're not asking you

for more access to tools like this, that's a person problem. And to me, that's like an irreoverable person problem. That's a person that just doesn't care to to me.

Um, I think a talk on AI would be incomplete without talk of OpenClaw. Anybody using OpenClaw in their business? Not a lot of hands. Yeah, cool. I want to talk to y'all afterwards. Um, OpenClaw, everybody know what OpenClaw

is? Yeah, cool. Um, so I I think the thing that OpenClaw and now Hermes, which is kind of my um tool of choice here, did is take us for take us from I'm at my computer doing a thing and I

have AI that's really cool, uh, cloud code or codeex, right, to this thing is always on. It's proactive. It can work on a schedule. It does things with inputs that are not me. So Peter Steinberger, right, sold Open Claw to

Sam Alman and OpenAI for a billion dollars probably, right? Like pretty cool. First billion dollar company, a single person billion dollar company probably uh not an amazing ah sort of an amazing product but much more an amazing mindset shift I think for all of us,

right? Like claude code still my daily driver and the place I derive most value when it comes to AI. Uh but if you fast forward 3 months now, you see Anthropic adding little bits of what OpenClaw is to their suite of products,

right? Remote control dispatch, right? All these kinds of things. Uh and sure enough, like the final form that I think this will take is the codeex app or the Claude app doing things that OpenClaw did.

[snorts] So again, uh, Jensen saying every company needs an open claw strategy or an agentic strategy.

Does everybody feel like they have a strategy around this? Like for customers or for your team to be empowered with agents?

Sweet. Awesome. One, I I don't two. Cool. Awesome. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. I like uh we're getting there. We're getting there. Um and I want to share something that that like I do, but this is one place like we've not rolled this out to

our team. But if you think about like amplification of someone's skills, like surely figuring this out for your team members, not just your customers, is the next like huge leverage point. Um so the place where I'm I'm kind of doing this

right now is for myself. So I call this my chief of staff. I hope the QR code works. If not, let me know. Uh, but this is a chief of staff set of skills and setup for Hermes. So, Hermes was like

the previous slide. Uh, is a thing like Open Claw, but it doesn't suck to me, right? It doesn't break. It's way more secure. It's run by uh a research lab.

So, they're like kind of, you know, not just vibe. Well, they're probably vibe coding, but like they're doing it better. Uh, the thing I like about Hermes better than OpenClaw is the memory. It's amazing. It it it learns by

itself and has kind of self-improving memory over time. It's awesome. Uh so my chief of staff here is like what a chief of staff should do, right? It clears my calendar. It checks and categorizes my inbox. Uh and like then you build on top

of it. And so that's kind of the goal of this repo is like, hey, this is a starting point. Get you two steps down the road and then build as you will from here.

Is this like resonant? Oh man, I got a minute left. Sorry, we're going over.

Um, does this like is this seem like anyone's company today? This is my like a lot of ways this is my company. Like you got you got amplitude over here. You got search columns over here. You got analytics in this place

and that place and none of them talk to each other. And I think that like if you're going to take one thing away from this, it should be this concept. So like this is life today because this is kind

of like as good as we could do, right? We have all these disperate tools in a bunch of different places and like they don't talk and that's challenging but that's like gosh we're so fortunate to have all these amazing tools many of

which are free right or cheap but like this is the vision. This is like where you want your company to go to be AI powered. I think where you want your company and your product to go to be AI

powered where you have all of the inputs, right? All of the data about your customer and where they come from and what they're doing in your product and how they're interacting with it and getting value.

And then you do AI stuff with that information and you deliver a better value to your customer on the other side.

And honestly, that's where we are in our company is we're ripping out kind of everything about how data flows and how we relate that data and value to our customers and putting in a place where we can AIify

everything that we do for our customers. Because you think about like here's a really specific example. It's just like your website, right? So your website's in WordPress, right? Right? And you're like, gosh, I'm going to write a blog

post over here in cloud code. I'm going to copy and paste it into WordPress and then I'm going to go to Google Analytics and see how that did and then I got to look at search console and then I got to

look at like Stripe to see like how many people converted and stuff. And like if you can do all that and like make sense of it, that's amazing. But what if like all of that was in one cla project and

you just be like, "Hey, tell me about my customer acquisition from the last 30 days and how we can improve it." and it would do a really good job. I think like you might need to write it to

SQLite or something like that. But this is where again like that product customer feedback loop allows for rapid uh iteration and testing and better measurement I think for everything that you do in your company.

And so something like this probably needs to be where most of us are going to interact with the things that we create for our customers in a better way.

Okay, so um this is where the talk gets better. Uh I'm actually really really really bullish on the future. Uh there's an asterisk to that, but I'm really bullish on this. Um I think that OpenClaw, this is uh is it hyperbolic changed the

world. It it changed how we think about what AI can be from a I sit at my computer and chat GPT and like ping pong mentally back and forth to like it this doesn't happen right it's like Napster right like Napster was not the

final version of what music sharing is uh but it changed how we think about it and I think openclaw is the right I think agents doing work and providing value for us to our customers is absolutely happening and will continue

to happen and I'm super bullish about it and this is the thing that tipped the scales and started us going in that direction.

Uh I think agenttoaggent commerce absolutely is happening and will continue to happen in the future.

Uh and you should probably be one side of this conversation, right? Uh is SAS dead?

Kind of kind of. I think even Rob kind of alluded to this, right? like in your Q&A is like gosh like I'm I'm not like this isn't really SAS it's like a an API tool like some some SAS are kind of just API

tools but like is the value we're going to deliver to our customers just agentic and just programmatic in the future and there's no interface like yeah I think so in some circumstances and so if you're not thinking like how can I be

the guy on the left here to where other agents like openclaw and whatever is going to come in the future uh Like I that's where I worry about myself and and like you might should too. Um because I think that like the way we

deliver value through software will be through agents or whatever form agents take in the future, but it's probably not an interface where people go to a website and type things into a form.

Um vertical way over horizontal. That's pretty easy. I think the reason here is this is just so much more defensible, right? you have subject matter expertise in a way that makes it harder for other people to replicate the value that you deliver.

Uh, openweight models, open source models. Anyone running openweight models, open source models? Cool. Awesome. Um, this has gotten a lot better like in the last what 3 weeks, right? Quen 3.5 and 3.6, Gemma 4. Uh, they're really good. Like I would say

Gem, like y'all again, roast me afterwards. Gemma 4 is like haiku right now. Really good. If you're just like, "Hey, I'm going on vacation to to Italy this summer. Give me a 5day itinerary." Way plenty good. Uh 90% of the things

90% of people do, you can do with open weight models today. And so as y'all are thinking about like I'm going to AIFI my company but gosh like every time I introduce AI to my product like my costs

and my cogs increase. Well, not necessarily, right? Get you some GPU or run this on a a server somewhere. Zero cost, 100% data privacy, right? If you have Harris talk, you know, people saying like, I don't want my data going

anywhere. Cool. Like local finally is an option here and things like Turbo Quant from Google, which like compresses the memory needed by some of these models by six times. Uh really kind of opens the playing field for this to be uh

possible. I'm getting a robot. I don't know about y'all. Like [laughter] I'm about a year away from doing the dishes and laundry and like mowing the grass. Uh this is what I tell my kids, right? This is what

I tell my kids. Uh they both are very kind of like I know I'm overtime. I'm sorry. I'm almost done. Uh robotics is 100% where the puck is going, right? AI is going to leave the computer and going

into things that we do. And this is where I get super excited uh about like the future. And so if we want to take a step back and like get some perspective here, uh I I think like it's not as

negative as maybe I made it out to be, but I don't hear anyone else like gut-acking us. So I want to really like give us some perspective here. Um I absolutely think the future will be amazing, right? It's going to be like

Wakanda, right? Like everything is going to be free basically. We're going to have food and medicine and resources and infrastructure in ways that like we can't imagine today, right? Cuz imagine like there's been a oneperson billion dollar company probably already like

that was unthinkable 6 months ago. And so with the pace of change that all of this is happening 100% like we are all going to be better off in a few years.

There's no doubt in my mind. And and it's those few years that are the challenge, right? It's these next couple of years where we're going to get through the transition of like the conventional economy to like where things are going and the the panacea I

think that we're all going to be in. And so we have to survive, right? And I got to talk about like project glass wing because like I think this is where this could all fall apart for us, right? is

like we all run software companies and things like the mythos model that you know supposedly are going to like you know find all these exploits in our software could could be like very bad for us as software companies. Uh and so

I think that like we have to stay aware of like the negative potential when it comes to bad actors using AI to do really bad things uh with our companies.

And so like I'll wrap it up here. Uh so Micro Comp founders have kind of three things that we should be doing. One, move really fast, right? Shipping it, testing all the time. Uh two, like stay in your lane and niche down as much as

you can, I think. And then like leverage the humanness and relationships that you have and can have as founders, right?

Getting on calls as the founder with your customers is something that no one else can do.

And so if y'all are like, "This is cool. I want to like keep having this conversation." I'm doing a 3-day, I'll call it a challenge, like where I talk in more depth about what I'm doing at my company to get us ready for the next few

years. This is free. I have absolutely nothing to sell you. Uh but you can sign up. We're going to do it on Zoom over 3 days next week. It'd be cool to have you all there. I can share a little bit more

about what I'm doing. Give us kind of frameworks for how you can set your company and yourselves up to win over the next couple years.

[applause] I've been running Microcom for more than a decade. And the thing I hear from attendees more than anything else is, "I wish I'd come sooner." Not because of any single talk or tactic, but because they finally found their people.

Founders who get it. Founders who are building the same way they are. At our events, it's not just about the talks.

In Portland, we organized waterfall hikes, food tours, happy hours, real time with other founders outside the sessions. And those relationships don't end when the event does. They turn into the people you text when something breaks or when something finally works.

If you've been thinking about coming, I hope you'll join us in Iceland and Austin. Get your tickets at microcom.com/events.

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