Will AI Replace SaaS? The Future of Software

0:00:04 [MUSIC]
0:00:06 Hey, welcome back to the Next Wave Podcast.
0:00:06 I’m Matt Wolf.
0:00:08 I’m here with Nathan Lanz.
0:00:13 Today, we’re going to talk about the crossover of software and AI.
0:00:15 We’re bringing on a guest expert,
0:00:17 Dan Shipper to talk all about it.
0:00:19 Dan is the CEO of every.
0:00:22 He has all sorts of companies underneath him that he’s incubated.
0:00:25 He’s an investor. He works with Sequoia.
0:00:28 He has all sorts of knowledge in the software space,
0:00:31 and he’s going to break down his exact process
0:00:33 for deciding what products to build,
0:00:35 and what tools he used to build them,
0:00:37 and exactly how he brings them to market.
0:00:38 It’s a great discussion,
0:00:41 so let’s just go ahead and dive right in with Dan Shipper.
0:00:44 Thanks so much for joining us today, Dan. How are you doing?
0:00:46 I’m doing great. Thanks so much for having me.
0:00:49 Yeah. I’m excited to really dig in with you and what you’re doing over at
0:00:52 your various companies that you’re working on.
0:00:54 Let’s go ahead and lay the groundwork.
0:00:57 Tell us a little bit about your company and what you’re building,
0:00:59 and what is every?
0:01:00 Yeah. That’s a good question.
0:01:01 We’ve been around for five years,
0:01:02 so it’s evolved significantly over time.
0:01:05 The way that I talk about what we do right now is,
0:01:07 I call us a multimodal media company.
0:01:10 We publish writing, we publish podcasts,
0:01:12 we publish a video, and we publish software.
0:01:13 We do all that using AI,
0:01:17 and we’ve gone in that direction because I think that there’s
0:01:20 this really interesting thing happening where the line between
0:01:24 being a writer and being a builder is starting to blur,
0:01:27 and they’re moving into this overlapping Venn diagram,
0:01:30 because now that you can write in English and turn it into code,
0:01:32 writing is building.
0:01:35 Also, because software is so cheap to make,
0:01:37 I think that software is becoming content.
0:01:41 As a media company, what we focus on at every is,
0:01:42 we have a daily user,
0:01:45 every day we write a long-form essay about what comes next in tech.
0:01:49 We’ve got about 10 regular writers who do that.
0:01:51 I write every Friday a column called
0:01:53 Chain of Thought on the intersection between AI,
0:01:56 creativity, psychology, philosophy, all that stuff.
0:01:58 Our job is to explore the future,
0:02:02 and the best way to do that in my opinion is always to be using
0:02:05 new tools and experimenting with things and building things and all that stuff.
0:02:08 What we found is that when we experiment with something,
0:02:10 if we release it to the audience,
0:02:13 people love it, it makes the writing better.
0:02:18 Sometimes those experiments become real products and should be real products.
0:02:21 What we’ve done is then made them into real,
0:02:24 actual products that we often start by using them internally,
0:02:25 and then we’ll post them to the audience,
0:02:28 and then we bundle them into the subscription so you pay one price,
0:02:31 and you get access to all of our content and all of the software that we make.
0:02:33 We’ve done four incubations so far.
0:02:37 The most recent one, which we just launched about three or four weeks ago,
0:02:39 right before Christmas is called Cora,
0:02:41 and it manages your inbox with AI.
0:02:43 Basically, what happens is as emails come in,
0:02:45 it decides if you need to respond to them.
0:02:47 If you do need to respond to them,
0:02:48 if they’re from a human,
0:02:50 it makes it to your inbox and you see it immediately.
0:02:53 If not, it automatically archives it and then twice a day,
0:02:56 you get a beautiful brief that
0:02:59 summarizes all the things you need to know about what’s going on in your inbox,
0:03:00 but you don’t need to actually do anything with,
0:03:04 and it just saves a ton of time because 80-90 percent of your emails are like that.
0:03:09 We have a bunch of other products that are in that vein for different parts of your work life.
0:03:11 That’s the basics of every.
0:03:13 >> That was Cora, like C-O-R-A?
0:03:15 >> C-O-R-A, yeah.
0:03:16 >> Okay, cool.
0:03:17 >> Yeah. It’s been going really well.
0:03:18 We’ve got like 10,000 people on the wait list,
0:03:21 we’re taking off like 20 people a day and just starting to ramp it up.
0:03:24 >> I’m on the wait list, so I can’t really talk about it, I haven’t tried it.
0:03:27 >> I’ll get you off the wait list, you should have told me, I know a guy.
0:03:31 >> Cool. That’s fascinating thing about writing is becoming software,
0:03:31 is that what you said?
0:03:33 >> Writing is building and software is content.
0:03:35 >> Yeah, okay. I’ve been noticing that too,
0:03:36 because it’s part of this doing this podcast,
0:03:38 I’ve been trying to get more hands-on with AI,
0:03:39 like I actually started building some stuff.
0:03:45 Recently, I started using all the different AI tools to develop a game prototype just for fun.
0:03:46 Maybe it becomes a real thing, I don’t know,
0:03:50 but it is fascinating that I am now talking with AI,
0:03:53 and kind of writing my game design document with AI,
0:03:56 using my voice, using something like whisper flow,
0:03:58 chatting with it, having it update the document,
0:04:00 and then I feed that document back into
0:04:01 01 Pro when I’m coding on it,
0:04:05 and it’s just amazing that that conversation I’m having with AI,
0:04:08 then forms the actual code and software that is created.
0:04:09 That’s never existed before.
0:04:10 >> Isn’t that so cool and like,
0:04:13 so you can code while you’re walking around and just like,
0:04:17 you know, recording to your voice and Kiran who is our GM of Cora and he built Cora,
0:04:20 like that’s how he started the first Cora MVP.
0:04:21 He built that in a single night,
0:04:24 and he did it by going and take a walk,
0:04:26 and he just like recorded himself being like,
0:04:27 this is how I want the app to work,
0:04:30 and he threw it into 01 and just like, it’s awesome.
0:04:31 I think like- >> It’s so cool.
0:04:35 >> There is a big difference between you can build a prototype,
0:04:37 and then actual like production-grade software.
0:04:38 >> Yeah.
0:04:39 >> But even the production-grade software,
0:04:42 it’s just changed what you can do and how fast you can do it,
0:04:43 and it’s really fun.
0:04:44 >> Yeah.
0:04:45 >> I really like what you said there.
0:04:47 So writing is building, that makes sense to me, right?
0:04:50 Like everything is kind of becoming prompting to get what you want, right?
0:04:53 If you want to write software, you prompt it,
0:04:54 the software can come into existence.
0:04:56 I mean, even now, like we’re talking about,
0:04:59 you can even speak it into existence and then it actually becomes software.
0:05:02 Can you speak more to the software is content?
0:05:03 What do you mean by that?
0:05:07 >> Yeah. So software is much cheaper to make now,
0:05:10 and one of the things we found is that if we release
0:05:12 a little experiment as a piece of software,
0:05:16 like all of the experiments we run are much better at
0:05:21 attracting audience and emails than any given essay or YouTube video or whatever,
0:05:25 because it’s this totally new format of thing, right?
0:05:29 So in the same way that on Instagram,
0:05:30 you can take pictures and TikTok,
0:05:33 you can take videos on YouTube, you can take videos,
0:05:35 and those are different from like Hollywood films,
0:05:36 but they’re still videos.
0:05:39 I think that we’ve been living in the world of like software is
0:05:42 like a Hollywood movie like you need a lot of money and time to make it.
0:05:44 Now, with all these tools,
0:05:49 it’s expanding beyond people who are professional developers and anyone can make a little prototype,
0:05:53 and that switch is like anyone can write a blog post,
0:05:55 anyone can do a tweet, it’s going to be the same thing.
0:05:57 There aren’t really platforms yet for this,
0:06:00 but I think there’s going to be like a YouTube of software development,
0:06:02 maybe like Replet is that to some degree,
0:06:04 and it’s not for professional coders,
0:06:06 it’s for people who just grew up prompting,
0:06:08 and that’s happening right now.
0:06:10 That definitely makes a lot of sense.
0:06:14 I also feel like this is something we’ve actually talked about on the show in the past too,
0:06:18 is like I almost feel like software could be the next SEO,
0:06:24 because I feel like just writing blog posts and writing content is so easy now,
0:06:27 like anybody can do it because of tools like Claude and chat,
0:06:29 GPT and Gemini and everything that’s available out there.
0:06:34 I think the value of written content is starting to go down,
0:06:35 and when it comes to SEO,
0:06:38 one of the goals of SEO is to bring somebody to your site
0:06:40 and keep them on your site as long as possible.
0:06:44 It almost feels to me like really good software that people find value in,
0:06:48 will be the new thing that keeps them around longer on your platform
0:06:53 and help your site rank better and help you actually grow your business a little more.
0:06:57 I’m curious if you have the same thoughts or if you would disagree with that.
0:07:00 That’s really interesting for one,
0:07:04 like I love words and I think the written word is always going to be super, super valuable.
0:07:06 I do think there’s something to what you’re saying,
0:07:08 which is that to some degree,
0:07:10 a lot of the content that gets made right now,
0:07:15 like I just saw this thing about HubSpot’s traffic and HubSpot’s traffic is just going down,
0:07:19 and so a lot of the SEO type content that’s made right now,
0:07:22 is probably better served by a chat GPT.
0:07:25 It’s like, okay, how do I ask for a raise?
0:07:30 There’s zillions of those SEO articles and that’s much better from chat GPT,
0:07:32 especially the more generic stuff.
0:07:36 I still think that for every, for example,
0:07:39 the audience that we have wants to hear from me,
0:07:42 and wants to hear from other writers that they know,
0:07:47 and are not looking for a generic fact or a generic process,
0:07:49 and that’s a different thing.
0:07:50 That’s a definitely smaller audience,
0:07:54 but it’s still incredibly important and valuable.
0:07:56 I think on the tools front,
0:08:00 you may actually see some of the same commoditization because you don’t need to go use
0:08:04 this ass tool when artifacts just spins up a little UI for you,
0:08:06 and you can just do whatever.
0:08:10 That may also happen with software to some degree,
0:08:12 and then I think you also have to wonder,
0:08:14 “Okay, if software tools are the new SEO,
0:08:18 what is the thing that is pushing people to those tools?
0:08:20 Is it Google still?
0:08:21 Is it chat GPT?
0:08:25 If it’s chat GPT, how and why is chat GPT letting those things surface and rank?”
0:08:33 Right. But I do think that providing people with rich multi-modal experiences,
0:08:34 that’s not just text, it’s not just video,
0:08:35 it’s maybe it’s tools or whatever,
0:08:39 that is I think going to be a really legitimate way to build an audience and build a following.
0:08:42 Yeah. I totally agree too that when it comes to the world of content,
0:08:46 I think as AI becomes more and more prolific,
0:08:50 and everybody’s using AI to try to gain the system through SEO and things like that,
0:08:53 I think it becomes more and more important to have your own voice,
0:08:56 and to actually be a voice that people can trust,
0:08:58 and actually put your face out there.
0:09:02 There’s a lot of stuff you’re seeing on YouTube now of like faceless video channels,
0:09:05 and people are claiming it’s all the rage right now to make faceless video channels.
0:09:07 But in my mind, if that’s the direction everybody’s going,
0:09:12 the people that actually put their face on YouTube are the ones that are going to rise and stand out.
0:09:15 The sacrifices we make for fame.
0:09:18 You’re in San Francisco, right Dan?
0:09:21 No, I’m in New York. I go there often, but I live in New York.
0:09:22 I lived in San Francisco for about 10 years.
0:09:24 I’m out in Japan now. That’s one thing.
0:09:27 But nice being here is, you know, even if the podcast blows up in the future,
0:09:31 I don’t have to worry about fame. Like, nobody will notice who I am.
0:09:34 That’s why I wear this like media mogul hat that HubSpot gave me.
0:09:36 I think it’s hilarious because obviously I’m not a media mogul,
0:09:38 but it’s kind of funny where you’re in Japan.
0:09:41 You know, I don’t know if you know this is a HubSpot-owned podcast.
0:09:43 I’m not sure if you’re aware of that. You were talking about HubSpot, this traffic.
0:09:46 I am aware because the emails are from HubSpot.
0:09:50 Oh, shoot. Yeah, yeah, I did not put that together.
0:09:53 Sorry, I didn’t. I mean, that is one reason to do this podcast, right?
0:09:55 Now, this is even I think kind of like what’s part of our page too is like, you know,
0:09:59 having faces is going to be very important in the future versus just generic content on,
0:10:02 you know, text content that anyone can throw out and AI is going to get better and better at that.
0:10:04 So SEO is going to be harder in the future.
0:10:08 But I do wonder why would chat to BT send you to other tools in the future?
0:10:11 If it gets so easy that they could just like create it for you on the fly?
0:10:14 With like what we’re seeing right now, like I’ve been using O1 Pro a lot and like,
0:10:16 yeah, seeing how good it is at software.
0:10:20 I can’t imagine in another two or three years that any idea you have
0:10:26 AI is now just like, cool, here it is. Here it is right now in the window and just use it.
0:10:29 Totally. It’s interesting because when it comes to the whole like HubSpot conversation,
0:10:32 I do think, you know, maybe HubSpot’s traffic is going down.
0:10:36 But, you know, podcasts like this and what they’re doing in like other media spaces,
0:10:39 I think is like, they’re sort of answer to that, right?
0:10:42 Like you’ve got podcasts like the next wave and my first million and marketing,
0:10:46 it’s the grain and the hustle and they’re starting to do all their newsletters now
0:10:48 with the hustle daily and, and all that kind of stuff.
0:10:51 So it’s like maybe less people are going to the HubSpot website,
0:10:54 but HubSpot’s becoming like this larger media brand.
0:10:54 Totally.
0:10:57 So I don’t think there’s anything wrong with saying that, you know,
0:11:01 HubSpot’s traffic is dropping because they obviously have like, you know,
0:11:03 backup plans that they’re building as well.
0:11:05 But just wanted to throw that out there.
0:11:09 I feel like I just like went to someone’s dinner party and like spit in soup or something like that.
0:11:11 It’s okay.
0:11:14 I knew in one part of my brain that this is a HubSpot podcast.
0:11:19 And then, but anyway, um, yeah, I’m not trying to imply that HubSpot is going to die or anything
0:11:20 like that.
0:11:23 It’s just the whole SEO game is like changing rapidly.
0:11:23 Right.
0:11:29 And yeah, it seems like shows like this are a really good bulwark against those kinds of changes,
0:11:31 which have been happening for a long time.
0:11:32 It’s not just AI.
0:11:37 And I think there is that interesting dynamic that, you know, you can see open an AI trying
0:11:42 to react to or trying to head off, which is like, you know, they do deals with publishers
0:11:45 and they cite their sources and all that kind of stuff.
0:11:49 And I do think that they would like to keep a vibrant ecosystem and app partners and all
0:11:50 that kind of stuff.
0:11:57 And I also think you can see with Google’s example that like, over time, the pressure
0:12:03 is to keep people on the platform longer and add more ads or like do the like instant answers
0:12:04 or whatever.
0:12:10 And I think AI broad use case general purpose AI consumer apps are going to have that same
0:12:10 pressure.
0:12:15 Maybe it’s not now, but in like 20 years, like when Sam Altman is like, you know, on
0:12:20 his island somewhere and like there’s another CEO, that’s what they’re going to have to do.
0:12:24 I mean, maybe we’ll just be living in a post capitalist utopia because we’ll have a GI
0:12:24 or whatever.
0:12:28 But like assuming that that’s not the case, that is a thing and that is a pressure.
0:12:30 And I think that’s a really interesting thing.
0:12:34 But also like all of these new tools open up new opportunities.
0:12:40 So like it seems likely to me that maybe it spins up a whole UI for you for like a specific
0:12:45 thing, but like the kind of UI that it makes and the way that it does the UI, like we’ve
0:12:48 been talking about is a content format is a perspective.
0:12:53 And it would be surprising to me if they didn’t allow brands or businesses or whatever to
0:12:58 like make available those tools or those powers within their app in some way, sort of like
0:12:59 an app store type thing.
0:13:00 And they’ve done that like repeatedly.
0:13:03 They’ve tried to do app store type things for a long time.
0:13:07 It hasn’t quite worked yet, but it’ll probably work eventually.
0:13:11 So it’s not like the death knell of like all independent tools or media or whatever.
0:13:15 It’s just like it’s changing and there will be new opportunities in the old ones.
0:13:17 You have to like move on to the new ones.
0:13:17 Yeah, totally.
0:13:22 Hey, we’ll be right back to the show.
0:13:24 But first I want to have another podcast I know you’re going to love.
0:13:29 It’s called Entrepreneurs on Fire and it’s hosted by John Lee Dumas available now on the HubSpot
0:13:30 podcast network.
0:13:35 Entrepreneurs on Fire stokes inspiration and shares strategies to fire up your entrepreneurial
0:13:38 journey and create the life you’ve always dreamed of.
0:13:41 The show is jam packed with unlimited energy, value and consistency.
0:13:46 And really, you know, if you like fast paced and packed with value stories and you love
0:13:48 entrepreneurship, this is the show for you.
0:13:54 And recently they had a great episode about how women are taking over remote sales with
0:13:54 Brooke Triplett.
0:13:56 It was a fantastic episode.
0:13:57 I learned a ton.
0:13:59 I highly suggest you check out the show.
0:14:02 So listen to Entrepreneurs on Fire wherever you get your podcasts.
0:14:10 Would you be open to like sharing a little bit of like your workflow for actually building
0:14:11 new software?
0:14:13 Like how do you validate an idea?
0:14:16 And then what sort of tools do you use to actually build the idea?
0:14:19 And, you know, can you walk us through some of that?
0:14:20 Totally.
0:14:27 I think the really cool thing about the current AI landscape is it has like completely reset
0:14:30 the table for like what tools are possible.
0:14:35 And so that means that there’s a lot, a lot, a lot of low hanging fruit because we’re all
0:14:37 just like figuring out our workflows, right?
0:14:38 It’s all new.
0:14:43 And that wasn’t the case two years ago because it was like the apex of the B2B sas boom and
0:14:45 like every low hanging fruit had been picked, right?
0:14:45 Yeah.
0:14:47 There’s a clear way you do things.
0:14:49 It was all like it’s all been figured out.
0:14:49 Yeah.
0:14:50 Now it’s totally different.
0:14:55 So what I do and like sort of the philosophy is first I use these tools every day.
0:15:00 And by these tools, I mean like the more general purpose tools like Claude and ChatGbt and Cursor
0:15:02 and Windsurf and like all that kind of stuff.
0:15:08 And what ends up happening is you end up finding workflows that start to work pretty well for you.
0:15:12 But once you find a workflow and a ChatGbt type tool,
0:15:15 it’s kind of a pain to just do it over and over and over again.
0:15:16 It’s not built for that.
0:15:18 It’s built for this like general purpose thing.
0:15:19 Right.
0:15:21 And that is always an opportunity to me.
0:15:25 So like a really good example of that is we have this app called Spiral.
0:15:28 And Spiral helps you automate a lot of repetitive creative work.
0:15:33 You know, for me, it’s like doing my podcast descriptions or my podcast tweets or my YouTube
0:15:36 titles or like that kind of stuff where it’s like I have a format.
0:15:38 I know basically what it should be.
0:15:40 And it’s like really important that I get it right.
0:15:42 But it’s also like fairly repetitive.
0:15:47 And what I realized at some point, I guess in like May that Claude was like really good at that.
0:15:51 Like if I gave it a few shot prompt with some examples and I was like, okay,
0:15:53 I want you to take a podcast transcript and turn it into a tweet.
0:15:56 And like here’s examples of me doing that in the past.
0:15:57 Here’s a new transcript.
0:15:58 Can you like do a tweet?
0:16:00 It would like get me 80% there.
0:16:03 And then I would just have to like do some modifications.
0:16:06 But like that prompt was like really hard to do all the time.
0:16:08 Like I didn’t want to have to redo that all the time.
0:16:13 And if I didn’t want to have to do it, like I just knew that my team wasn’t going to do it.
0:16:18 And so I just spent like two days basically making an app called Spiral where you can like,
0:16:19 you make a spiral.
0:16:22 You say like, I want to turn podcast transcripts into tweets.
0:16:26 You feed it some examples and then you have like a shareable widget that you can anytime
0:16:32 thereafter like generate more and more and more tweets without having to like reprompt anything.
0:16:33 And that’s going really well.
0:16:36 We have a full-time GM for that on that product.
0:16:36 His name is Danny.
0:16:37 He’s really talented.
0:16:41 We have almost 10,000 users for it and it’s growing really well.
0:16:45 And that’s an example of like you find this like use case in the general purpose tool
0:16:48 and then you can like unbundle it into like its own app.
0:16:53 And the way that I do that is it’s sort of the way Nathan, you mentioned earlier is like
0:16:56 they use cursor or Windsurf.
0:16:58 I kind of go back and forth between the two.
0:17:03 They have these like really, really good agentic building environments now where you just
0:17:06 type in a chat and it’s like, it just goes off and does stuff.
0:17:08 And then it’s like, it’s made like five files and it’s like,
0:17:10 I have no idea how it works, but it’s fine.
0:17:12 Sometimes it’s fine.
0:17:14 Quick question.
0:17:17 Do you actually know how to code yourself or are you letting AI write all the code?
0:17:18 Okay. You do know how to code.
0:17:19 Okay.
0:17:22 I do know how to code, but I am letting AI write all the code because I’m very lazy.
0:17:25 Yeah, but at least you’re able to do a little bit of extra troubleshooting
0:17:28 if the AI doesn’t figure it all out for you.
0:17:28 Yeah.
0:17:29 Okay.
0:17:32 And like, you know, what’s really nice is like 01 and 01 Pro.
0:17:37 Like sometimes these tools don’t have tool use and all the agent stuff uses tools.
0:17:41 Honestly, when 01 or maybe 03 has tool use, which I think is coming very, very soon,
0:17:43 it’s going to completely change everything again.
0:17:47 But I’ll often like, I’ll start in 01 or 01 Pro.
0:17:48 I’ll say make the plan.
0:17:49 I’d paste the plan into cursor.
0:17:51 Cursor will do stuff.
0:17:52 Then it will get stuck and have a bug.
0:17:55 And then I’ll just paste it back into 01 and then paste it back.
0:17:58 And then every once in a while, I’m like, I’m bored of copy pasting.
0:18:00 Like a lot of when I figure out how this actually works.
0:18:06 But also for me, like to be really clear, like my job right now is I’m mostly
0:18:08 prototyping new things and writing about them.
0:18:10 And then sometimes they become products, but once they’re actual products,
0:18:14 we have actual engineers who like actually are like in the code a lot.
0:18:17 And so I could be, you know, reading the code or whatever,
0:18:19 but I’m not doing that right now because it’s not really my job.
0:18:21 Yeah.
0:18:25 So I want to ask this to you because there’s been a lot of discussion around
0:18:27 like SaaS companies having no moat, right?
0:18:30 I’m sure you’ve heard that a million times over the last couple years.
0:18:32 What are your thoughts on that?
0:18:36 So let me preface this with saying like, I personally, like if I have a problem
0:18:39 I need to solve, it’s like a fairly simple problem.
0:18:43 I’ve stopped going out and looking to find if there’s a software product for it.
0:18:47 I will literally open up cursor and tell cursor what I want it to make.
0:18:49 And it’ll write a little Python script for me.
0:18:51 And it solves that recurring problem for me.
0:18:55 I know right now I’m probably like abnormal and doing that.
0:18:58 I don’t think most people sort of have that kind of workflow.
0:19:02 But I’m wondering if it’s going to get to a point where when somebody has a problem
0:19:05 they need to solve instead of turning to SaaS products and paying,
0:19:07 you know, some sort of recurring subscription,
0:19:11 they’re just going to go to one of the AI chat bots that are out there.
0:19:14 Maybe it’s ChatGPT, your Claude, or one of these tools and just say,
0:19:16 this is a problem I’m trying to solve.
0:19:19 And it says, okay, here’s a little script I wrote that solves the problem.
0:19:22 So I wonder what the future of SaaS looks like.
0:19:27 I mean, I think you’re definitely right in the sense that there are certain little things.
0:19:29 There are maybe like a thousand little things that come up every day
0:19:33 that like maybe I would have like looked for a tool for before.
0:19:38 Probably I would have just like suffered through like doing them manually or whatever
0:19:41 that now ChatGPT just does it for me and it’s amazing.
0:19:46 But I think there’s also a big difference between that and like a fully featured like SaaS app,
0:19:51 like for a power workflow, which I just think that things that are more specialized
0:19:55 for those kinds of users are going to win even when you have AI,
0:19:59 even if you’ve theoretically have AGI and that there are room for those kinds of tools,
0:20:01 whether they look like traditional B2B SaaS,
0:20:04 or whether they look a little bit more like an AI native version of that,
0:20:07 whatever that looks like, I think it’s going to be more like that.
0:20:10 And I think there’s also a really interesting question about like
0:20:13 how much SaaS is actually the right business model.
0:20:17 What I’ve been seeing a lot more of and I think is probably a little bit more of a
0:20:23 AI native business model is paying per completed task or paying for the value that you get,
0:20:29 basically, because when you have AI, you can pay for the job to be done versus just like the time
0:20:30 or by the month.
0:20:36 And I think that’s really interesting because SaaS is such a much better business model
0:20:41 that if you are currently a SaaS company, you’d probably rather stay a SaaS company.
0:20:44 And that means that there’s a lot of opportunities for startups
0:20:47 that don’t necessarily need to keep that model.
0:20:49 Yeah, performance-based SaaS would be incredible.
0:20:50 Like, yeah, that’s an amazing idea.
0:20:51 Yeah, I think that’s going to happen.
0:20:53 I mean, you see it already in certain places,
0:20:56 like the LLM APIs or all paper use or whatever,
0:20:58 but I think that’ll filter up through the stack.
0:21:01 I feel like I’m your worst guest ever.
0:21:05 I’m like SEO is dying and SaaS is dead.
0:21:10 I’m so sorry.
0:21:14 I mean, we’ve got other tools that I think are cool.
0:21:17 We have a call called Sparkle, which is a file organizer.
0:21:21 So basically, it just sits on your desktop and just automatically organizes your desktop,
0:21:24 your downloads and your documents with AI, which is like really cool and very useful.
0:21:27 Everything is f***ing messed for me.
0:21:30 So like, but now it’s not and I didn’t have to do anything.
0:21:30 That’s amazing.
0:21:32 I’m always like trying to think about like how to organize my files.
0:21:34 I’m like, oh, one day I’m going to organize them all.
0:21:36 They’re going to be, and I was like, wait a minute,
0:21:37 AI is going to eventually do that for me.
0:21:39 So I was like, it’s awesome that you’re doing something like that.
0:21:40 Yeah, it’s just a matter of time.
0:21:43 Another thing that we’ve been working on,
0:21:44 it’s actually one of our writers, Michael Taylor,
0:21:47 has been working on and we’re kind of doing it with him,
0:21:52 is AI is quite good at acting like a particular kind of person,
0:21:54 like simulating a particular kind of person.
0:21:59 And Michael built this tool called Rally that we’ve been using internally.
0:22:02 I think we’re going to make like every column out of it
0:22:06 and then maybe launch it as a product that’s still TBD.
0:22:08 And it really depends on if Michael wants to do it with us.
0:22:09 But I think it’ll be really cool.
0:22:12 And basically what it does is like, for example,
0:22:15 if we’re coming up with headlines for a podcast,
0:22:19 what we can do is we spin up an audience of like a thousand every people
0:22:21 or a thousand hacker news people.
0:22:24 And then we can be like, okay, here’s my three titles.
0:22:25 Which ones do you like?
0:22:27 And it will just like survey the crowd
0:22:30 and then tell us what the crowd of LLMs thinks.
0:22:32 And it’s really cool. It works.
0:22:34 I thought you were going the opposite side.
0:22:36 So I actually thought it was going to be like the person
0:22:38 who’s helping you create the taglines or whatever.
0:22:42 You fed it a bunch of books from some famous person who’s an expert at that.
0:22:44 But you’re doing the opposite, like the audience side.
0:22:45 Yeah, that’s incredible.
0:22:45 Exactly.
0:22:47 So it’s sort of like wisdom of the crowds,
0:22:50 like ask the audience type stuff, which like now you just have to try stuff
0:22:52 where you have to do A/B testing and it takes a long time.
0:22:54 You need a big audience or whatever.
0:22:56 And if you use this, you don’t have to.
0:22:58 And it’s still very early and it remains to be seen.
0:23:03 But like I feel quite confident that the results will align to some degree
0:23:05 with like what you would actually find out in the world.
0:23:06 And that’s really cool.
0:23:09 Wow.
0:23:11 So I actually do have one other sort of little rabbit hole.
0:23:12 I do want to go down with you.
0:23:16 So I believe you do some investing outside of every as well, right?
0:23:17 So you have some investments.
0:23:19 I believe you work with Sequoia Capital as well.
0:23:20 Is that correct?
0:23:22 What are you looking for in investments?
0:23:24 I’m assuming you’re probably focused more on AI.
0:23:25 I could be totally wrong.
0:23:26 I’m just sort of guessing.
0:23:28 But what are you looking for in investments?
0:23:30 Like how do you find something that stands out to you?
0:23:37 The investments that I’ve done usually are places where I’ve had a particular thesis
0:23:38 I’ve been writing about and thinking about.
0:23:42 Or I just know the founder and I know they’re really awesome.
0:23:45 And I just like want to get into whatever they do.
0:23:47 Yeah, I do invest in AI.
0:23:52 I have found honestly that a lot of AI companies are just raising at such gigantic
0:23:57 valuations that I haven’t actually pulled the trigger on that many deals,
0:24:00 even if I really like the person or really like the thing they’re building.
0:24:04 Because it’s just like a $50 million seed round is just like crazy to me.
0:24:09 But like generally, it’s like, is it a thesis in a space that I care about
0:24:10 or like an idea that I care about?
0:24:13 And I have a bunch of articles that sort of lay out all that stuff.
0:24:17 And I can give you a little preview about the things I care about right now.
0:24:19 Like for example, one is the future of science,
0:24:23 like how AI might change how we do science is a big one for me.
0:24:25 Another one is yeah, just really like the founder.
0:24:27 And then the last one is just do I use the product?
0:24:28 Do I like it?
0:24:30 I think the proof’s in the pudding a lot in those situations.
0:24:33 And you can tell immediately when someone’s built something awesome
0:24:35 because you just feel it.
0:24:35 Yeah, yeah.
0:24:37 So when you say like you have a thesis on it,
0:24:40 you’re kind of saying like this is something I wish was in the world,
0:24:42 but then you actually find something that does that.
0:24:44 That’s something that you’d want to invest in.
0:24:45 Yeah, exactly.
0:24:45 Very cool.
0:24:46 All right.
0:24:47 I assume some way the world’s changing and then health,
0:24:50 a product would fit into that changing world.
0:24:50 Yeah.
0:24:51 I love that stuff.
0:24:54 I especially get really excited about a lot of the science stuff.
0:24:56 Like I was really nerding out about like that matter gen
0:24:58 that just came out from Microsoft the other day.
0:25:01 I think that’s something that’s really cool and really exciting.
0:25:03 And I think there’s a lot more stuff that’s going to pop up
0:25:06 sort of in that world, you know, this year.
0:25:08 I think we’re going to see a lot of sort of materials,
0:25:11 science sort of things come out of AI this year.
0:25:13 And so that to me is super, super exciting.
0:25:17 But on that note, I really, really appreciate you hanging out with us today.
0:25:20 Where should people go after listening to this episode?
0:25:23 Is there a specific social media account you want to shout out?
0:25:25 Your website, let us know where to check you out.
0:25:26 Thanks so much for having me.
0:25:32 You can find me on X at Dan Shipper, S-H-I-P-P-E-R or at every also on X.
0:25:34 And then the website is every.to.
0:25:35 You can find our newsletter.
0:25:38 You can find all of our products, the courses we offer,
0:25:39 all that kind of stuff.
0:25:40 And it’s been awesome chatting with you guys.
0:25:41 Yeah, it’s been great.
0:25:42 Awesome.
0:25:43 Yeah, thanks so much, Dan.
0:25:44 Really, really appreciate you.
0:25:46 And thanks everybody to listening to this episode.
0:25:50 If you haven’t already, make sure you subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.
0:25:51 We’re also available on YouTube.
0:25:53 If you want to see our faces, actually talk to each other.
0:25:55 And thanks so much for tuning in.
0:25:56 We’ll see you in the next one.
0:25:59 [MUSIC PLAYING]
0:26:02 [MUSIC PLAYING]
0:26:06 [MUSIC PLAYING]
0:26:08 (upbeat music)