Latest / 1 to 100 / E42: SaaS is changing with Yash Chavan
Transcript
- 0:00So this guy, I meet him in Bombay 3 weeks ago, makes me
- 0:03feel like the hottest girl in the room because you know what
- 0:06he says? He says, you know, I'm like, I
- 0:09watch the SAS operators all the time.
- 0:12And then at the end of our coffee, he's like, that felt
- 0:14like a private SAS Operators recording.
- 0:19And I was just like, take me now, you know, like, warms my
- 0:25heart. Warms my heart.
- 0:26It was awesome. Yeah.
- 0:28It was lovely meeting you, Rishab.
- 0:30Yeah. You guys met up in Bombay, Yes.
- 0:33Yeah, That's cool. And.
- 0:34Then I was going to say I actually quietly, I'm not trying
- 0:37to flatter you, Rishab. Like I actually got like a real
- 0:41SAS operators episode. So like for myself, you know,
- 0:45one-on-one, maybe this could be a thing.
- 0:47Maybe this is like a consulting line you guys could launch.
- 0:50I don't know, but but yeah, it's quite.
- 0:52Fun dude. I have.
- 0:54No, I would don't depress me like that Consult.
- 0:58I'm not a OK, I'm not going to say what I was about to say, but
- 1:02I'm I'm I'm, I'm never going to charge someone to spend time
- 1:07one-on-one with me. I'm that that's I'm like never
- 1:09going to do that. Yeah.
- 1:11You're just going to be pick selective about who you give
- 1:13one-on-one time with because otherwise, you know, that's a
- 1:16lot of one-on-one time. I was going to say I live for
- 1:19those moments where people like warm your heart.
- 1:21We're my first brand. I used to get these essays from
- 1:24people who'd liked our products about how much it changed their
- 1:27life, Like Facebook, a long Facebook message.
- 1:29My first brand was when, you know, people were building
- 1:32brands on Facebook primarily. So we had, like, Facebook groups
- 1:35and stuff. Man, when a customer would send
- 1:37me a long message, I'd be like, OK, This is why I'm doing it.
- 1:40But the negative comments would also cut me when people were
- 1:44like, I don't know, you have such a croaky voice and what?
- 1:46Oh man, this hurts. Really.
- 1:50Yeah, because I like with with my first brand, I had a YouTube
- 1:52channel and we had like a few 100,000 subscribers and you
- 1:57know, I did tutorial videos on how to use our products, but I
- 2:01was nervous. It was like my first time for
- 2:03for a lot of the videos, I wasn't even on camera.
- 2:05It was just a screen recording. And yeah, so I was a little bit
- 2:08croaky. And some people comment and be
- 2:10like, oh, you're so croaky. I put fuck I know I need to fix
- 2:13this. Dude, I never read the negative.
- 2:17I mean like oh sorry, I do read them but I'm like I'm surprised
- 2:21that they bother you. I'm genuinely surprised.
- 2:24Or maybe I see why it would bother you at the time, but and
- 2:27probably doesn't now. Right?
- 2:28Like is, is that a fair representation?
- 2:30Yeah, yeah, I was. I was 20 at the time.
- 2:33Yeah. OK.
- 2:33OK. That makes sense.
- 2:34Yeah. Yeah, I feel like, I feel like
- 2:39you either have to start out with really thick skin or you
- 2:42have to have a lot of people say negative things about you to
- 2:45kind of get over it. So actually, I wouldn't say I'm
- 2:49over it. Just to be clear.
- 2:50I, it still bothers me sometimes when people say things to me,
- 2:52but I'll kind of sit on sit on it for a few minutes or say
- 2:55things about really. Yeah, not.
- 2:57I mean, it doesn't bother me as much now as it used to, but like
- 3:02not nearly as much. But usually what I will do is I
- 3:06sit there, I kind of think about it for a little bit.
- 3:08I put myself in their shoes. I'm like, OK, I could see why
- 3:12they, well, some things just flat out ignore, but some things
- 3:14are actually like the most hurtful ones are the ones that
- 3:18are the most descriptive by the people who are closest to you,
- 3:20right? Like the closer that person is,
- 3:22the more it hurts. And so in that context, I'll try
- 3:24to put myself in their shoes and be like, OK, well, I see where
- 3:27they're coming from. I also like usually it's not
- 3:31something I had control over. It's not something I could have
- 3:33done differently or I can look at that and be like, OK, well, I
- 3:36maybe I could have done something differently, but I did
- 3:38the best that I could in the moment, knowing what I knew.
- 3:41So I just kind of like processes a little bit, move on.
- 3:43So I've had a lot more of those things in the last year that I
- 3:47was used to in the past. That's OK.
- 3:50Right. When I watched the old videos
- 3:52that I used to make on YouTube, I see the way that I behaved and
- 3:55it was very much like when you're young, you're trying to
- 3:57find your feet in the world, right?
- 3:59You're trying to like act appropriately.
- 4:01You don't really know what appropriately is like my
- 4:04business got grew very fast and you know, I went from being a
- 4:08broke university student to suddenly having a business and
- 4:11hiring all my friends very quickly.
- 4:13So I I really didn't know what I was doing at all.
- 4:16I was just like making up as I was going along.
- 4:18But I think, yeah, nowadays you just like, I don't know, you
- 4:21contextualize it, right? If it comes from someone close
- 4:23to you, you think, OK, this is really good information for me
- 4:27to course correct. Maybe, right, if it is actually
- 4:30a representation of reality, and if it's not, then it's just
- 4:32like, whatever, right? Yeah.
- 4:34And I think people also interpret.
- 4:36People also, like, interpret things just like they're in
- 4:39their own head because I got cancelled on LinkedIn a few
- 4:42weeks ago for saying, like, what do you do the book on the
- 4:45weekend? Yeah.
- 4:46Yeah. Like I said, like I said, like
- 4:47the most basic thing that you could say, like, hey, I said
- 4:50something about team culture, like, hey, etc.
- 4:52Like everyone's kind of spending a few hours on the weekend
- 4:55reading a book or doing a course or, you know, pursuing a fitness
- 4:59milestone or something like that.
- 5:00And people got mad at me. They're like, how can you
- 5:03control what your employees do on the weekend?
- 5:05I'm like, that's not what I said, but then people just got
- 5:08so mad at me in the comments and then I just leaned into it then.
- 5:11So I like to, I don't know, maybe I'm the opposite of like
- 5:14you, Jack, but I just like, feed them.
- 5:16Like, yeah. That's just how it is.
- 5:18And then it's just like it got like I think or like 100,000
- 5:21Russians or something that that post in 24 hours.
- 5:24It was quite crazy. So incredible.
- 5:26Oh, my God, this is what my shop is going into accidentally,
- 5:29right? Oh my God.
- 5:30Oh, my God. Yeah.
- 5:32I mean, I, I, I, I'm going to say something that is going to
- 5:34be like close to reality. But I do think because I just
- 5:39came off of like a coaching, I have like an exec coach and I
- 5:42just came off of a coaching session with him.
- 5:44And so I'm curious what you guys think of this.
- 5:47There's this thing that is changing, like the market is
- 5:50changing ridiculously fast right now.
- 5:53I mean like, I mean ridiculously fast.
- 5:56OK. So I was I think about just our
- 5:59company and five months ago we were a single product company,
- 6:04OK. We used to sell like funnels
- 6:07that you would use that were generated against your paid ads,
- 6:10OK, fast for only five months later and and we were primarily
- 6:14selling to the mid market. Fine, you fast four or five
- 6:18months. We are selling to large
- 6:20enterprises. We are selling a platform that
- 6:22is based off of like consumer behavior and there are like 5
- 6:26different product surfaces that are live with customers.
- 6:29OK. In five months, the go to market
- 6:33shifted, the number of products shifted, the platform shift.
- 6:36I mean it's just like the the speed with which you can do
- 6:38things has changed fundamentally.
- 6:41So my own experience is saying that this is true.
- 6:44But then you like look at Twitter and it's like cloud
- 6:47code. Something happened over the
- 6:49holidays where people like all of a sudden turned on to it in a
- 6:52new way. I guess it's called Open Claw
- 6:56now, but the artist formerly known as Claudebot happened in
- 7:00the last like 2 weeks and I think I was like, I was, I was,
- 7:04I was sharing this and and this gets to now the team question.
- 7:10My realization as I was sharing this was your team used to be
- 7:14able to operate on a time scale that's found quarters.
- 7:18OK. So you would do annual planning,
- 7:20you would have goals that were set up quarterly.
- 7:23You would like as a salesperson, for example, or as a marketer,
- 7:27you would be like, OK, when is the product coming in?
- 7:29OK, then I'm going to do this and then I'm going to go sell.
- 7:32By the time you do those operations, if you operate on
- 7:35that time scale, the world has changed.
- 7:39So like you used to be able to like think about a product,
- 7:42deploy it and then sell it for three years.
- 7:45And now it's like, I mean, I just shared my own story, which
- 7:48is like, you know, five months later we have 4 new services
- 7:51being used by large enterprises, whatever.
- 7:54So clearly a year is too long. OK, a week is like ridiculous.
- 7:59I think like expecting people to be able to like operate on a
- 8:02week is way too short. But it is something in the
- 8:04middle and it looks very different than it used to.
- 8:08And, and I wonder do you guys, how do you guys think about this
- 8:12And, and do you think it's possible to get your companies
- 8:16and everybody in the company to operate at this new pace that is
- 8:21clearly getting pulled by the market, right.
- 8:24Like I, I don't even think you have a choice anymore.
- 8:26Like either you operate at this new pace or you you like fade
- 8:31into irrelevancy. Yeah.
- 8:33I mean, one thing to support your point there is I don't know
- 8:36how we're going to adapt, but we were.
- 8:39And I think you and I touched on this Rishabh a little bit.
- 8:41I'm like super EOS heavy in how we operate the company.
- 8:45So we have like OK, ours, we have the L10 meetings, we do all
- 8:49of that. We have biweekly check
- 8:50insurance, we have a standards report like it's all, it's all
- 8:52pretty streamlined. And then for the last like year,
- 8:56it's just like that whole way of operating, like we set a goal of
- 9:00some sort. And then like you said, the
- 9:03market change like OK, you're building the product hoping for
- 9:06PMF, but then the market changes or somebody launches something
- 9:10that's faster. So that quarterly pace of
- 9:13working and that OK, Rs which are typically by quarter are
- 9:17just breaking for us. So I, I don't know what the new
- 9:20sort of maybe just have like a few org level goals and
- 9:22everybody runs towards those and we hit them and we hit them.
- 9:26I don't know what the new sort of AI world EOS looks like, but
- 9:31I'm also curious how y'all are operating and changing the way
- 9:34you operate to adjust for this. One of the challenges with
- 9:38trying to move faster on things is some things just take some
- 9:42time to develop too. So like for example, in a new
- 9:44product launch, like we. One thing I've always seen with
- 9:47new product launches is that it takes some time to educate your
- 9:51customers and the market about what you're doing.
- 9:53And if you move too fast, you might bail on something before
- 9:59you've actually validated it properly.
- 10:01But you also don't want to move too slow on these things, right?
- 10:03So it's AI find it very challenging.
- 10:05Like in the past, I've always thought of, OK, if we're going
- 10:07to launch something new, we kind of have to give us six months to
- 10:09see, is the market actually going to adopt this thing?
- 10:15So I think I, I, I agree that an annual plan is like we've been
- 10:20working on annual plans, but I look at them like, OK, this is
- 10:23like the revenue objective and like the, the path we think we
- 10:27can take to get there, but like the actual activities to make
- 10:30that happen that's getting reset literally every quarter, right?
- 10:33There's no, and we're, so we're kind of operating quarterly at
- 10:36the moment with the idea of like, here's what we're trying
- 10:37to do this quarter and then moving on from there.
- 10:41So I don't, I don't know what the balance is to me right now
- 10:43quarterly planning feels like the right approach in terms of
- 10:46like product oriented things, but it might not be fast enough,
- 10:50I'm not sure. Yeah, I don't, I don't have any
- 10:52experience hiring in the software space, but I feel like
- 10:56looking at service based businesses agencies, most full
- 11:00time hires are made really inefficiently, right.
- 11:05It's sort of like I have a suite of tasks and projects that I
- 11:10need regularly repeated and I need a warm body to to do that.
- 11:15And if the goal posts move, you know, it's not really the
- 11:21employees responsibility to build the plane as they fly it,
- 11:26right? It's the the service businesses.
- 11:27I don't know what that's like in a software business, but I
- 11:31imagine it's pretty similar. But yeah, I don't know.
- 11:35When you buy something, you're indirectly employing a bunch of
- 11:39people and a bunch of systems to do something for you.
- 11:42And when you order an Uber or you hire through Upwork, you're
- 11:45directly hiring someone for something to get done with like
- 11:48varying levels of complexity. And I feel like those
- 11:51employments are extremely efficient, right?
- 11:53When you employ through up work or on a project basis or an
- 11:57Uber, it's, it can get more efficient, right?
- 12:01And I, I don't know, I think that that allows you to be
- 12:05agile, but you, you are still the person who's in charge of
- 12:10direction at every point, right? Or whoever is that's employed to
- 12:15employ people on a project basis is in charge of direction as
- 12:19opposed to that employee, right? But yeah, there's some level of
- 12:22abstraction. I think it's really interesting
- 12:24with full time hires. And it's like, I don't know,
- 12:27take the the role of, I don't know, head of go to market or
- 12:29head of sales or whatever happens to be, you know, you're
- 12:33saying, OK, I need you to do this thing and maybe whatever
- 12:36the future of this thing looks like and stay up to date with
- 12:38that. But it's not a one and done
- 12:41task, right? You're committing to that
- 12:43transaction on a regular basis. This is the thing that I don't
- 12:46know how it's going to evolve, but I think the way we operate.
- 12:51Yeah, Jack, I think that's a really interesting analogy
- 12:54around like what is your agreement with the person on the
- 12:58team? Like I'll give a good example.
- 13:01So inside of inside of my company that what I am asking
- 13:05people to like, it used to be like, hey, I need you to do this
- 13:08task for this quarter with this goal.
- 13:10Like now kind of what I'm asking people to do is like, I need you
- 13:13to keep up with the market at this pace.
- 13:16So that way when someone interacts with you with this
- 13:18type of question, you are informed enough to respond in
- 13:20this way, which is a, which is like a totally different thing.
- 13:24It has more to do with like what I would describe as like an
- 13:27athletic stance. Like you're kind of ready to
- 13:29move with the market. And I think that every vendor is
- 13:32being asked to do this. So I'll we just turned a bunch
- 13:37of SAS tools, OK, Which as a SAS company, I'm like, my God, like
- 13:44I like I can actually, sorry, I don't even describe us as a SAS
- 13:47company anymore. I describe this as an AI
- 13:49platform and I'll I'll get to that in a second, but nice.
- 13:53I'm like, we cannot be a SAS company because look at what we
- 13:57just did. We turned off of gong.
- 13:59We turned off of five Tran. We turned off of zoom info which
- 14:04like we're we're turning like at a ridiculous rate.
- 14:09You're breaking my heart. Don't check in Stripe.
- 14:12And the vendors that we grow with, I expect them to be AI
- 14:17plot. Like I'm remembering a
- 14:19conversation I had now with my head of finance.
- 14:21She also like runs our HR and people OPS and, but like, I
- 14:25mean, she just like runs most of our OPS basically.
- 14:28And she was asking me about buying green.
- 14:31You guys know what greenhouse is?
- 14:32It's like a applicant tracking system.
- 14:35It's like it's like Ashby or. It's an applicant tracking,
- 14:39yeah. Yeah, exactly.
- 14:42And I remember her asking me like, hey, which tool do you
- 14:46think we should buy? And I was like, buy the one
- 14:49that's an agentic platform is like literally how I responded.
- 14:53And I finally reflected on my own buying behavior enough to
- 14:59realize if I'm telling my team not to buy SAS, so is everyone
- 15:05else. Like you like buyers want to buy
- 15:09agentic platforms now. And like I was like, I literally
- 15:13said, is there an agent? Is it getting better and are
- 15:17they investing in it? Like like that was my buying
- 15:20criteria. And, and I, I wonder how much of
- 15:25that is going to like especially over 2026.
- 15:29Like is this the year that really comes to fruition?
- 15:32Because I'm like observing my own buying behavior to, to
- 15:36become like that. And so like, I feel like, I
- 15:40mean, this is like the SAS Operators podcast.
- 15:42At some point, we're going to have to rename it because
- 15:45there's not going to be any SAS. Yeah.
- 15:47And I think how we operate our teams is going to change.
- 15:49And I think how we think about our product is going to change.
- 15:52You know, I think there's an interesting overlap there with
- 15:56the sort of project based gig economy style of Upwork and Uber
- 16:02and your full time hires. Because with, you know, agents,
- 16:05it's sort of point and shoot. And to some extent maybe it's a
- 16:08little bit more complicated than point and shoot if it's planning
- 16:12and there's, you know, lots of different steps to achieve the
- 16:15goal of whatever it is that the agent is trying to achieve.
- 16:18But yeah, most, you know, AI agentic tools right now are text
- 16:23or voice based on inputs from the person who is setting
- 16:28direction, you know, around whatever idea that they have and
- 16:30whatever thing that they want to achieve.
- 16:32And it, yeah, it's sort of, it's sort of point and shoot, it's
- 16:36sort of like project based, get this thing done right, but
- 16:40obviously infinitely more scalable than humans because AI
- 16:43doesn't need to sleep and it's a lot smaller.
- 16:45Rishab, do you think that buying behaviour translates beyond
- 16:49deck? Like do you think you're you're
- 16:50looking to? I'm just trying to push back a
- 16:52little bit. So if you think you want to buy
- 16:54agentic software because you're building agentic software
- 16:57yourself versus do you think like like the if you care about
- 17:00agentic software, it's like a level 9 out of 10.
- 17:03You think like AE COM brand owner like cares the same way
- 17:07when they're buying like support software for instance.
- 17:09Not yet, but let me ask you back a different question.
- 17:14Do you think the answer to that question in 20-30 is yes?
- 17:17Yeah, probably. OK.
- 17:18So at some point between today and five years from now, the
- 17:22answer becomes yes. And so now all we're debating is
- 17:26the time scale, right? OK.
- 17:29If all we're debating is timescale, I would rather be
- 17:32early than late, yeah. Makes sense, yeah.
- 17:36I think it's interesting to think about what AI represents
- 17:39to the customer or the prosumer today.
- 17:41And I, I think that's profit. I think that the, the consumer
- 17:46right now used to see software as well, minimized inputs can
- 17:50save me time. It's going to do with a certain
- 17:51thing, it's going to unlock a certain capacity, it's going to
- 17:54be able to do it better or more. And I think that that's the same
- 17:57idea that they have with AI now. It's going to minimize inputs
- 18:00going to maximize outputs. I'm going to be able to do more
- 18:04with less. And that delta represents
- 18:08profitability to me or profit. And also in a way that software
- 18:13doesn't, but AI does. It represents the cutting edge,
- 18:17right? This is the bleeding edge.
- 18:18This is early adopting. If I get AI, like what that sort
- 18:23of represents is something that's newer and more capable of
- 18:27that sort of scale of minimizing inputs and maximizing outputs
- 18:31rather than just software, right?
- 18:33Because basically these are the same thing, right?
- 18:34AI is software, right? But it's a different kind of
- 18:37software. And I think to the consumer, it
- 18:39represents software at its peak, right?
- 18:42Would you guys agree? Well, yeah, I think there's
- 18:46what's interesting too. I think that the agentic stuff
- 18:49has changed the way in which I think about building things in
- 18:54terms of like like I've been playing a lot with replit lately
- 18:58just for fun, because I the reality isn't my day job.
- 19:02I don't do a ton of it because like it's hard to actually take
- 19:05something that I built and translate it to something that's
- 19:07functional for my team. So it's been probably a year
- 19:10since I maybe not a year, nine months since I use replit.
- 19:13It's way better now, which a that's also really interesting.
- 19:17It's taken out a lot of the planning and I think what like
- 19:20part of what's happening now in if you are the creator of
- 19:24software, I think a lot of what's important here is
- 19:27actually just like incremental improvements, not so much big
- 19:30feature launches, big things that you're you're doing.
- 19:33And, and I look at agents in sort of a similar way.
- 19:37You basically ask an agent a question and the agent goes off
- 19:40and does something and it comes back to you.
- 19:41And then that creates a new set of questions and you ask those
- 19:44questions. And so there's, there's this
- 19:46change, I think that's happening where like there's actually less
- 19:48planning. I don't know if that's a good or
- 19:49a bad thing, to be honest. It's probably a bad thing in
- 19:53some ways, but it's also really good because at the end of the
- 19:56day, like part of the, the problem that you end up having
- 19:59with planning is that you, you have a lack of information.
- 20:02And so I, I kind of been thinking about in the way that
- 20:05we build software like we, it's very easy to look at the
- 20:08software we have and say there's a very obvious problem in front
- 20:10of us that we need to fix. As soon as possible, let's fix
- 20:14that thing and then get to the next thing and then fix that
- 20:17thing or, or make it better, whatever that is, right?
- 20:20So there's kind of this big picture, here's where we want to
- 20:22go, but there's also just like that, all the things between now
- 20:26and then don't really matter. It's really about how do we get
- 20:29to the next step as quickly as possible.
- 20:31And that's kind of the way I've been thinking about it.
- 20:34And I feel like that kind of mirrors the actual interactions
- 20:38that we have with agents too. So maybe it's changing the way
- 20:40that I think about planning. And so Rashad, I don't know that
- 20:42that fully the guy, I still kind of look at it like I think of
- 20:46things on a quarterly basis, like here's what we're trying to
- 20:47accomplish this quarter, but the exact steps to get there don't
- 20:50really matter. We just take it one step at a
- 20:54time and get there as quickly as we can.
- 20:56Yeah, I, I, I think that, by the way, the path dependence is
- 21:01everything, right? Like it turns out that once you
- 21:05do a thing, it will inform the next thing.
- 21:08And so I mean, I think we're agreeing because, and I think
- 21:12probably I just view the path dependence as significantly more
- 21:16important than the statement of the objectives because I'm like,
- 21:21so it's probably just a bias of my concord upbringing.
- 21:24Like as a scientist, you're like, I don't know what's going
- 21:28to happen, So I'm just going to like do these experiments and
- 21:31then I'm going to like do the next thing, do the next thing.
- 21:32And like, all of a sudden I discover something, right?
- 21:34Like that's that's like what the scientific process looks like.
- 21:38And so maybe it's just a framing thing because of like how I was
- 21:41brought up. But yeah, I totally agree with
- 21:44you. Yes.
- 21:44I want to make sure you describe you.
- 21:47When we caught up in person, you were sharing like what your
- 21:52product does and how people use it and where you see gaps and
- 21:59it. I want to challenge some of what
- 22:01we talked about then in this context.
- 22:05Yeah. Let's do it.
- 22:07So you want me to tell a little bit about Sarah and what we do?
- 22:11Yeah, yeah. Perfect.
- 22:12Yeah. So, Sarah, we're a influencer
- 22:15operating system, as I like to call it.
- 22:17We have brands find influencers, contact them, manage
- 22:21relationships, track Bay. Everything you would want to do
- 22:24with the creator program, you can do on our platform.
- 22:28And then we've sort of differentiated right now in a
- 22:30way where we enable them to build programs in a certain way
- 22:34that reduce their risk of failure by walking them.
- 22:39We've built software in a way that biases for less and less
- 22:43risk over time the more they use it and that's what we do.
- 22:46So Long story short, that's that On the personal side, it's been
- 22:50three years that I've been running.
- 22:53I know Jeremiah and I spoke way back one-on-one when I was like
- 22:57just launching. So yeah, three years
- 23:01bootstrapped, cash flow positive mostly signing to E com.
- 23:06So yeah, that's that. But I've been, I've been getting
- 23:09the updates for three years. So it's been really cool to see
- 23:11you in the progress. I actually love your.
- 23:13It's a side note for anybody listening.
- 23:16I love the updates because it's, it's cool to see because of the
- 23:20way a business like this works. You, you have a, if you're on a
- 23:25rocket ship, it's like it has to refuel sometimes too.
- 23:28I don't know if that's the best analogy, but it's like you go
- 23:31up, go up and then you hit some sort of like little plateau,
- 23:33like things don't go, the thing that was working over the last
- 23:36six months stops working. And so you got to like find the
- 23:38next thing and then go on from there.
- 23:40So it's been cool to kind of see that in your updates too.
- 23:45Yeah, we and you know this Jeremiah, Yeah, sorry to cut you
- 23:48off. And like that just the refuel
- 23:50thing is really good because we literally had to refuel
- 23:53customers like we we went from zero to 1,000,000 in 14 months.
- 23:57And then it was all really small, like really, really small
- 24:02SMB brands, like less than a million GMB sort of brands.
- 24:07And then we had a self-serve motion.
- 24:10We completely changed the business model.
- 24:12So we went from self-serve to sales LED.
- 24:15So previously you could just start a trial and anybody could
- 24:17start using it. Now you have to book a call.
- 24:20We tripled our prices, went upmarket.
- 24:23We almost had to like over the last 12 months replace the 1st
- 24:27$1,000,000 of high churn SMB revenue with low churn mid
- 24:34market, more high highly committed customers revenue and
- 24:37like entirely changed the business model.
- 24:39So like last year was like a refueling year because we
- 24:42literally like depleted all the old customers and rebuilt,
- 24:46refueled with better customers. So yeah, completely on point.
- 24:50Something you mentioned, and I'm curious if this is still true Is
- 24:53like the value of the platform is correlated to how effectively
- 25:01it's used, which is like very typical of SAS, right?
- 25:04It's like we're giving you the tool, but you're the Workman.
- 25:07And so here's the tool, Madam or Mr. Workman, please use the
- 25:11tool. And and we were sort of debating
- 25:14some of like how to think about that.
- 25:16And you know, like Taylor has this view of you've got to be
- 25:21like a software enabled agencies.
- 25:22You have to have like a yeah, it's like they're different
- 25:25versions of how to interact with this question.
- 25:28I'm curious what Jack thinks too, because I my impression is
- 25:31like Jack and Zach are like, you got to build the best UI and UX
- 25:35and like people will know how to use like it is a tool that they
- 25:38will want to use. That's the impression that I
- 25:40got. But I'm curious, Jack, what you
- 25:42think? But Yash, when you when you
- 25:46think about that problem statement and now that agents
- 25:49can do crazy things, does part of you feel like, why don't I
- 25:55just give them an agent to operate the platform for them?
- 25:58Yeah. We, we're experiment early,
- 26:01expect early experiments are ongoing on that.
- 26:04We've seen we've used other people's agents, they're not as
- 26:07good. We're trying to see if we can do
- 26:09something different in that regard.
- 26:11But yeah, totally like, so I'll tell you like the pre AI stuff
- 26:15that we saw, right? It was like, 'cause we are, I
- 26:17think it's, it's also kind of like a spectrum with software.
- 26:20We're probably on the worst end of that spectrum or towards the
- 26:23worst end because there's so much you could do with an
- 26:27influencer platform and there's so many things that could go
- 26:30wrong. It's kind of like the best
- 26:32analogy really is HubSpot, for instance.
- 26:34Like if you buy hubs, HubSpot, that doesn't mean you buy a
- 26:39sales team or a sales process or product market fit like there
- 26:42could be. There's so many other things
- 26:44that have to go right in a business for HubSpot or
- 26:47Salesforce to be useful versus if you think about like
- 26:50intercom, like customer support software, like it's so to the
- 26:54point that there isn't much that you can like do wrong with the
- 26:59software. So at that point, I think the UI
- 27:02really matters. But for us, it does matter and
- 27:05we take our design really seriously.
- 27:08But it's like there's so many things you could do wrong that
- 27:12you could literally like waste three months doing the wrong
- 27:15thing, which is why we have a really serious customer success
- 27:18and onboarding process versus somebody like, let's just say an
- 27:21intercom board, because it's, it's really like a point
- 27:23solution. So yeah.
- 27:25And then like totally the working on replacing a lot of
- 27:29the CS work with agents right now.
- 27:31It does kind of bring up an interesting point though, where
- 27:34there's certain types of products, software solutions
- 27:39where it's really easy to implement AI and others where
- 27:44it's actually really hard. And I think that's, that's been
- 27:48one of the things I've been thinking about a lot is how we
- 27:50actually, I guess CS function in a software like yours that's
- 27:54actually much harder than us than an agent that's answering
- 27:58customer support tickets because the, the inputs are so well
- 28:02defined, the outcomes are so well defined.
- 28:05And then in your context, that's not the case.
- 28:08So I think that's a kind of an underrated aspect.
- 28:10And actually, Rashad, I'm curious how you think about that
- 28:12because I think you like you all are dealing with that too, I'm
- 28:16sure. And I'm I'm sure you have a mix
- 28:18of like people and agents. I think we're we're like back to
- 28:22a time scale question, just like you described your interaction
- 28:26with Replit and nine months ago like it was mad like kind of
- 28:33built like you could build like a dashboard app and now you can
- 28:36build like a real app. And I don't know, man, like I
- 28:44think this and and this goes back to how I buy software now,
- 28:49which I think Yasha is your point.
- 28:51Like I don't know how many people are buying like me yet,
- 28:53but at some point everyone will buy like I do.
- 28:58I expect every tool that I buy to have an agent that can
- 29:00operate it like you said, like HubSpot.
- 29:04No, like unacceptable. It is unacceptable that HubSpot
- 29:08does not have an agent that can operate HubSpot Salesforce.
- 29:12What why is like Benioff hammering agent force and
- 29:15hammering his team? He, he knows that there are
- 29:18people who expect agents to do the sales and to operate that
- 29:23CRM and they're not there yet. But we're going to wake up in
- 29:30like 3 years and it's going to be the expectation.
- 29:33And because there are teams that are already operating as if it's
- 29:37the expected, like my marketing team, if I find out that they
- 29:41did anything manually, it's like no bueno conversation.
- 29:48I'm like, can you describe the like, I don't want to know about
- 29:51the asset or I don't want to know about the outcome.
- 29:53I want to hear about the agentic workflow that you implemented to
- 29:57create the thing. And I don't care what The thing
- 29:59is. And so because what that does is
- 30:03now we're on a learning flywheel that is like fundamentally
- 30:07different and like our production rate changes and our
- 30:10output rate like everything changes.
- 30:12And so like, yeah, like, like if you do something manually, at
- 30:18least at my company, it's like a yeah, it's like nothing good
- 30:23happens basically. Oh, I have so many things that
- 30:26have come to mind. The first one, this is a burning
- 30:30question. I think all of you could
- 30:32probably help me figure this one out.
- 30:34Do you guys think there's going to be a collapse in the
- 30:36competitive advantage of OpEx? And what I mean by that is like
- 30:40before when software was a lot more expensive to build, teams
- 30:43almost had a Moat, which is just the ability to build, you know,
- 30:46it was a capital requirement. So there was and there still is
- 30:49an intuitive software that is massively time costly to use
- 30:52where you can arrive at the solution that you're looking for
- 30:56when you bought the software. And it's on the other side of
- 30:58hundreds of hours spent becoming an expert of the software.
- 31:01And maybe this is part of the difference between software and
- 31:04AI and the consumer's mind that software can make things
- 31:08possible. And it's at its best, maybe it
- 31:10automates the solution where AI is autonomous.
- 31:14And at its simplest, it solves, you know, it's point and shoot,
- 31:17it's our ChatGPT. What should I have for dinner
- 31:18tonight? But at its best, it races ahead
- 31:21of you. And maybe instead of just
- 31:23building a cool thing that solves for a business like like
- 31:27a business goal, like it has a business case, it might be
- 31:30building something that races ahead and everything else also
- 31:34that's required for a successful business like distribution and
- 31:36marketing. But yeah, what do you guys
- 31:38think? Do you think there's going to be
- 31:39a collapse in that piece and maybe other things like
- 31:42distribution and marketing and actually building something that
- 31:44races ahead become more important?
- 31:46Jeremiah, I'm curious what you think because.
- 31:50Yeah, I'm not sure exactly. I think, I think I don't know if
- 31:54collapse is the right word. I mean, like I was talking about
- 31:58using Revlit. I dropped $400.00 in Revlit
- 32:01credits in the last week. Like it's not like it's like to
- 32:05actually like good agents and it's not good enough actually.
- 32:08Like the only reason I can make the things work that I'm trying
- 32:11to do is because I'm technical enough and I know enough about
- 32:14software to actually get it to where I needed to go.
- 32:17And there is no way I would trust this little project.
- 32:19So that I have been playing with in the hands of a bunch of
- 32:22users. So there's like there's, we're
- 32:24still like a couple of steps away from even that.
- 32:27But I look at that process and Rep what has, you know, it's
- 32:30effectively, I think it's like 3 different agents that are doing
- 32:33this thing for you, right? You've got the coder, you've got
- 32:34the architect, you've got like the QAI think that that stuff
- 32:38and that all of this is subsidized currently by VC
- 32:42dollars, right? So when you talk about like the,
- 32:44the cost of building these things, I actually don't think
- 32:47that stuff's going to be super cheap in the future.
- 32:49I think it will be cheaper than humans.
- 32:52I think you move faster. I just don't know that like it's
- 32:54not going to 0. So if the, if the question is
- 32:58like are we, is the cost going to become so low that like it,
- 33:01it's basically like infinite production of the stuff.
- 33:04I don't know if that's the case. I also think you're dealing with
- 33:08the challenge of once somebody learns how to do something by a
- 33:12certain way, it's hard to change that way of doing things.
- 33:15So like there's a, there's a great, at least currently market
- 33:19cap wise, great software business called Constellation
- 33:21out of Canada. They literally just buy like
- 33:25small Tam software products that have high levels of stickiness.
- 33:31They raise the prices, they scale back the teams, they make
- 33:35it as profitable as possible to run it.
- 33:37And they, they don't and they, they do it in a a way that that
- 33:42still keeps the customers happy with the products, right.
- 33:43So they're not like trying to run into the ground, but those
- 33:46guys, that's their entire business model.
- 33:49And, and so there is a legitimate question like, OK, if
- 33:51you are a, I don't know, like I'm trying to think of something
- 33:55small. You have some sort of software
- 33:58for operating a fire station or something.
- 33:59And there's only, you know, X number of fire stations in the
- 34:02country. The, those people will pay $100
- 34:05a month for the software. The Tam is $10 million.
- 34:09And this company owns the entire Tam.
- 34:11Like is it actually worth trying to go rebuild something and
- 34:14compete against that? Maybe, maybe not, depends on how
- 34:17complex it is, but probably not. And so I think that's my longer
- 34:22answer. Like I don't, I don't think it's
- 34:23going to 0, but I think the rate of change will be massive.
- 34:31And I think in certain markets, it will feel like it's going to
- 34:340, if that makes sense. Like there's some markets where
- 34:36the market, because the Tam is big enough, I think it can, it
- 34:40can effectively feel like somebody can come in and just
- 34:44like spend enough to to get to the point where they can just
- 34:47blow everybody else out of the water.
- 34:50I'll give you 2 reactions such. I mean, it's a great question.
- 34:54I think it will be less people, but I'm not sure less expensive
- 34:59because of this compute issue. And so and I think our hunger
- 35:05for compute is going to go up, not down because we're going to
- 35:08be able to do even crazier things and, and we're just going
- 35:11to want to do that now. I think the place where it's
- 35:16not, it's not a difference of opinion to Jeremiah, but it is a
- 35:21different opinion. So like I agree on like the fire
- 35:25station example, right, But the different opinion, which is also
- 35:31true as a consequence of the lower human need, higher agent
- 35:35power, things like that. And again, we're experiencing
- 35:39this. There are way better known
- 35:41companies than us who are experiencing this like Decagon,
- 35:43Sierra, Lagora, Harvey. What's happening is the customer
- 35:50realizes that the rate at which you can produce product has gone
- 35:54way up because all of a sudden they start to get product really
- 35:59fast, right? And so businesses like ours, but
- 36:04let's use like the ones that are like, it's very clear that this
- 36:08is winning like like the Harvey Lagora, whatever, like those
- 36:11kinds of companies, a Sierra Decon.
- 36:13What's happening is you get pulled in to do a single thing
- 36:17like solve customer support tickets.
- 36:20But then they're like, actually, can you do this?
- 36:21And can you do this? And can you do this?
- 36:23Can you do this? Can you do?
- 36:25And you just say yes, because it takes you 2 weeks to do.
- 36:28Like as an exaggeration, maybe it's more like 6 weeks or 8
- 36:31weeks, but it's not a year, OK to, to produce the next product
- 36:35because it's on the same foundation and you're just
- 36:39doing, it's basically like a implementation work.
- 36:42I mean, this real engineering, but it is engineering
- 36:45implementation work. And the consequence of that is
- 36:51like the fire station example is true.
- 36:53And there are like Acvs are going way up.
- 36:58Like, I mean, because you're just getting asked to do so many
- 37:01things and add so much value on the other side of the spectrum.
- 37:06And, and I'm, I can tell you this because we're experiencing
- 37:09it. And again, I think it's
- 37:12underappreciated. What like exactly what is
- 37:15happening. I think like parts of the market
- 37:18are obviously getting it right. That's why Decagon raised at 3X
- 37:21the value that it raised at six months ago.
- 37:24Because people are just like, Oh my God, like every one of these
- 37:28100 enterprises. I don't know.
- 37:29Did you guys read the fundraising announcement for
- 37:31Decagon by any chance? OK.
- 37:35The single most interesting thing about the fundraising
- 37:37announcement by Decrecon is they signed up 100 enterprises last
- 37:42year and that is the only data point that they gave.
- 37:45They did not say how much their revenue grew.
- 37:47They did not say how much. Why does that matter?
- 37:51It matters because all of a sudden people have turned on to
- 37:56the fact that if you land the logo and you believe that the
- 38:00product velocity is ridiculously high, every one of those 100
- 38:04customers in three years or in four year, again, period of time
- 38:09doesn't matter. We can debate period of time.
- 38:11In X time, we'll be a multimillion dollar customer
- 38:15because now that you're in there building agents for the company,
- 38:19you will add that much value. And that's just like a total
- 38:24reframe, total reframe of of how to think about like markets,
- 38:29market opportunity, things like that.
- 38:30Do you, Rishabh, do you think this is just like a faster
- 38:33version of going multi product in like traditional SaaS?
- 38:37Cause traditional SaaS you would hit like 10/15/20 million err,
- 38:41you tend to launch another product.
- 38:43Do you think this is like a much much faster accelerated way of
- 38:47doing the same thing? Increase ACV.
- 38:49No, because in traditional SAS you would sell the next product.
- 38:53What's happening is that the customer is asking and it's and
- 38:57that that is different. It is a different dynamic.
- 39:01Like in traditional SAS, the customer expected new products
- 39:06and new features to take time. And so they like didn't ask in
- 39:10the same way, right. Like, like I, I like, it would
- 39:14be crazy for me to go to Rippling and be like, hey, guys,
- 39:17could you build this thing? But now I regularly go to like
- 39:22startups who I work with and say build this, build this, build it
- 39:24because I expect it's easy. And so like, yes, it is a
- 39:28version of it, but it is demand driven instead of like, yeah.
- 39:33And so it I understand it's a different dynamic.
- 39:36Yeah. It's a different dynamic.
- 39:38Yeah. You are in the fun category of a
- 39:41brand with a brand name that doesn't tell anybody about the
- 39:45product at all or similar to format.
- 39:49Why Sorrell? Why did you pick Sorrell?
- 39:51Because so Sorrell in Sanskrit means simple.
- 39:55And when we started, a lot of the space was crowded with a
- 39:59very enterprise, boring, hard to use, complicated tools.
- 40:04So you were like him? We should call it something
- 40:07that's that simple. Often people use.
- 40:09Greek names or you know, some, some fancy Latin phrases and so
- 40:12on. So I was like, hey, we are
- 40:13building from India, so might as well give it like a nice Indian
- 40:16Sanskrit name. So that is why Saral and also
- 40:19intentionally so because I didn't know if it was going to
- 40:21work. So I wanted like a name that
- 40:23could be anything. Saral could be ADDC brand,
- 40:26right? So that's why that's that's what
- 40:29it means. Nice.
- 40:31Yeah, Awesome. I like it.
- 40:33I think it's nice. It's simple.
- 40:36Exactly. Yeah, Very, very meta.
- 40:39Guys, I got I got to show you something.
- 40:40Did anyone see I know this is very much in the world of ECOM
- 40:44SAS, but did anyone see the Parker launch from Alex Cooper?
- 40:50Yeah, I'd be really. Yeah.
- 40:51I'd be really surprised if you didn't see it where I got to
- 40:53show you this. I think he's put because.
- 40:55People people were dunking on him because they thought it was
- 40:58an icon copycat. Yeah, they were right.
- 41:00Isn't that the? Isn't that the primary like like
- 41:04debate? I was just like, I don't get it,
- 41:06guys. Like I'm I don't even know what
- 41:08to say anymore. But we're customers.
- 41:10I signed up right away. It's kind of cool.
- 41:12I mean, it's really interesting. They personified their AI agent
- 41:17so that, you know, it's obviously, you know, inescapably
- 41:20a labor replacement. It's supposed to be the, you
- 41:23know, an AI creative director that lives in the place that you
- 41:25work in Slack. So my understanding, I mean,
- 41:28there's a dashboard. I haven't played around with it
- 41:30too much. It required a few more inputs
- 41:33than I was expecting. I had to upload ACSV of reviews
- 41:36and the CSV had to be formatted a particular way.
- 41:38And I was like, oh man, we're not there yet.
- 41:40But yeah, my understanding is that most of it's in Slack and
- 41:44you just kind of chat with it like like it was an employee of
- 41:48yours. Very interesting though.
- 41:50I think he did a great job with this launch video.
- 41:52I mean, 27th of January, it's 3 three days and it's 1.4 million
- 41:56views. I'm not sure if you guys saw
- 41:58much of what happened with the launch, but like pretty much
- 42:00every big AI page on X was posting it.
- 42:04I saw one that said imagine going to marketing, going to
- 42:08university for marketing for four years just to get replaced
- 42:10by a bot. I was like, ah, look, it's it's
- 42:12out. So yeah, interesting stuff.
- 42:16You know, Alex has been on top of it from the very beginning.
- 42:21And I think that's like super underappreciated.
- 42:24And it, I mean, I any, he deserves all the success in the
- 42:29world. He leaned in in ways in which
- 42:32other people were unwilling to like back when the only thing
- 42:36ChatGPT could do is give you text, he was using it to like
- 42:41come up with scripts and things like that for the creators to
- 42:44you. I mean, like he has been pushing
- 42:47himself and his organization to use it in its maximal way at
- 42:52every stage of like maturity over the three years since
- 42:58ChatGPT, the since the ChatGPT moment.
- 43:01And, and so it like my big feeling from it is like, I hope,
- 43:09first of all, I hope it's successful.
- 43:10But even more importantly, he deserves every success in the
- 43:13world because he has like tried to push it as much as he could
- 43:18at every step of the way. And I think that that's awesome.
- 43:22And like, more people should be doing that.
- 43:25Yeah, I think you brought up something really important
- 43:26though. The fact that people are
- 43:28criticizing this for looking just like icon means that he
- 43:30didn't get across the fact that it's entirely text based in this
- 43:36video. So, you know, it's got 1.4
- 43:37million views. People saw this, They got some
- 43:39impression, like a first impression that, you know,
- 43:43fueled their response. They educated what they were
- 43:45going to say in reply to this. And it was oh, looks like
- 43:48another icon, looks like another scam.
- 43:51But it's just text based, right? It doesn't promise to do
- 43:54everything under the sun for you.
- 43:56So maybe in this launch that wasn't communicated as well as
- 44:01it could have been, right? You know, I think the AI
- 44:04creative director hook also is is very similar to the icon.
- 44:08I think creative strategist is what he AICM more creative
- 44:11strategist is what he called it. So probably also that
- 44:15positioning, yeah. Right.
- 44:17It's, it's not from the the discerning critiques, It's from
- 44:19the people who we're going to get it wrong no matter what you
- 44:22do, right? Yeah.
- 44:23Yeah, so literally, literally, it just gives you advice.
- 44:28Is that the the idea and helps you with like planning and all
- 44:31that kind of stuff? It doesn't.
- 44:32Produce. It's interesting.
- 44:33So I I played around with it a little bit in in Slack because
- 44:37my understanding is it lives pretty much entirely in Slack.
- 44:40It writes messages I don't want to read right now because
- 44:43they're too long, but it seems to connect.
- 44:47It's so it's connected to our ad account.
- 44:48It knows how much we're spending.
- 44:51It's giving fairly specific recommendations based on our ad
- 44:54spend, which is interesting. And, and also the reviews.
- 44:58The reviews, man, that wasn't so fun to set up.
- 45:00Yeah. So it's, yeah, it's, it's
- 45:02basically very long, verbose messages about what you could do
- 45:08with your creative strategy. Some of the recommendations I
- 45:11think are incredible, but they're just like you actually
- 45:14have to, you don't you have to read if you, you have to value
- 45:19the messages to get to some of those insights.
- 45:22OK, Actually real quick, this is a very interesting topic with
- 45:26agents, I think because that we've been doing a lot with
- 45:30trying to unlock reviews better and a couple of things.
- 45:35One, like the default is that it's too verbose, so that's
- 45:39challenging. And two, I don't know about you
- 45:42all, but I don't read it most of the time.
- 45:44Like whatever, like doesn't matter if it's the things we're
- 45:47working on, doesn't matter if it's ChatGPT, whatever it is
- 45:49like I skim and I kind of, and then I asked the next question.
- 45:54I'm not actually like paying enough attention to the detail.
- 45:57I have a really hard time actually sitting down and
- 45:59reading all of the things that an LLM gives me.
- 46:03And I, I'm curious if that's like something you all
- 46:06experience too. And I wonder if one downside of
- 46:10having LLMS and agents doing everything is that there's so
- 46:14much information that we kind of just stop actually consuming it.
- 46:18Maybe that's ultimately not a downside because the LLMS are
- 46:21are the the agents rather are talking to each other and doing
- 46:24all the things for us. But that's fine.
- 46:26But but the actual like consumption of the output of
- 46:30agents and LMS, I find it really challenging to to basically keep
- 46:33up with. Like it's like I I'm trying to
- 46:36move faster than what I can actually absorb in those
- 46:39contexts. Yeah.
- 46:40I think that's you defending your time.
- 46:41You know that there's there isn't value in the, you know,
- 46:45extra words that you're getting back from it.
- 46:47But then maybe there's a flip side here.
- 46:49And this is the second thing that I was thinking of when you
- 46:51were speaking earlier. Every job are we making our
- 46:54teams, especially the marketing teams, retarded.
- 46:57My thought here is like, people are using AI to take shortcuts
- 47:03and it's like the lowest quality everything.
- 47:06It's the lowest quality everything.
- 47:08Lowest quality X replies, It's the lowest quality writing.
- 47:10It's the lowest quality ads where you just see this
- 47:13preference for expedience and automation over doing something
- 47:18that's actually good, that's actually worthwhile, right?
- 47:21You guys seen Wally where you've got the like?
- 47:23I, I, I, I don't know, I'm maybe I'm just more optimistic, but I,
- 47:32I think the response of the agent is what you would expect,
- 47:35which is, it looks like a normal curve.
- 47:37There's this much that's good, There's this much that's mad and
- 47:41there's this much that's bad. I think I only worry about the
- 47:45leading edge and I just like, don't worry about the rest of it
- 47:50because it's, it's, it's supposed to give me a
- 47:52statistical output. And so like, if you view its
- 47:55response as a normal distribution response, it's
- 47:58like, OK, what's on the leading edge?
- 47:59What's in the middle? What's the bottom?
- 48:01And then it's like, fine, you know, and, and I think that
- 48:05that's actually a fine way to interact with, with LLM
- 48:08responses. And you can tell it to give you
- 48:12back the information in whatever way you want to see it.
- 48:15So it's like, I'll give you a good example.
- 48:17I use Chai GBT integrated to Slack in our product releases
- 48:21channel where our engineers and PMS write the products back and
- 48:25what it does and it's super detailed.
- 48:27And I'm like go in the product releases channel over the last
- 48:30week and summarize it like I'm a go to market salesperson and I
- 48:32really only want to know the top three bullet points about what
- 48:35we've released, what it can do and how it impacts customers.
- 48:37And it does it and the quality is great.
- 48:40It actually summarizes correctly, but I did give it a
- 48:45specific prompt with a specific point of view of how I want to
- 48:48receive information. I do think that that that's that
- 48:53is for sure. The hard part about like
- 48:54interacting with agents is like you need to know how to tell it
- 48:58to communicate with you. Now, to be clear, I also have to
- 49:01tell humans in my company how to communicate with me because I
- 49:05equally don't read what they send because it also looks like
- 49:09a normal distribution. So like I tell people in my
- 49:11company, don't slack me. If you want me to take action
- 49:14and send it in my e-mail, this is what it needs to look like.
- 49:16Don't send me more than three, but like, like, just like I tell
- 49:20a human, I have to tell the AI agent.
- 49:21And so I, I, I personally, and again, and maybe I'm like more,
- 49:26I'm just optimistic, but I find it to be like, like, I find it
- 49:31to be fine. Now, I think that there are bad
- 49:33agents, right? Like the reply bots on LinkedIn
- 49:36and Twitter are like, totally trash because they're always in
- 49:42that median of the normal distribution.
- 49:44And so they're like, it's like completely uninsightful, you
- 49:48know what I mean? It's like, it's like, Oh my God,
- 49:52like it. Yeah.
- 49:53It like makes you want to cringe, basically.
- 49:55And so I think you just have to like, not use that.
- 49:58I find I actually find myself replying less to things on
- 50:00social media because I realize I sound my like my like normal.
- 50:07I'm just going to reply to something without thinking about
- 50:08it sounds like AI. So I'm just like, I just don't
- 50:10even reply unless I, like, actually have something
- 50:13thoughtful to say. I'm not going to say it because
- 50:15otherwise it just looks like an AI bot that is like my my
- 50:20distribution curve is the same. Yeah.
- 50:22As long as you don't put M dashes as your replies, I think
- 50:25you're good. Yeah, I was going to say
- 50:28sometimes I just want to write like this is great or something
- 50:30in in the on Twitter or something.
- 50:32I'm like, has there someone's going to say it's AI?
- 50:35Maybe not. Yeah.
- 50:38I yeah, I like what you're saying, Rashad, because it's,
- 50:40you know, this mandate to use AI is less of like a mandate to not
- 50:44strive for excellence. Excellence is obviously what you
- 50:47want to be doing, but you also want scalability.
- 50:50You don't want somebody to be doing something manually that
- 50:52can only be done once, even if it is excellent, because that's
- 50:56not going to scale. We're looking for excellence at
- 50:59scales. I like that.
- 51:01I think that at the same time, some sometimes you just got to
- 51:04do the hard work. You could do the hard thing, not
- 51:07the hard work, but the hard thing.
- 51:08Zach would probably disagree, but he just did the hard thing,
- 51:11right? I'm not sure if you guys saw
- 51:14this video that Zach put together recently, but it's
- 51:17incredible. I'll show you it quickly.
- 51:33You get the draft right? Like.
- 51:35Holy shit. You don't get that out of an AI
- 51:38prompt, do you know what I mean? But at the same time, you know.
- 51:42Yeah, but you cannot compare. OK, see this is the problem.
- 51:45You can't compare the bleeding edge of the normal distribution
- 51:49curve to the curve. Like Zach is like a, what is he
- 51:52like a top .1% designer? Right.
- 51:56Yeah, okay. I mean, I don't know, like,
- 51:59yeah, like we're not going to get that yet.
- 52:01Do you, do you make like so here's a question for you,
- 52:04Rishab. Like if everyone you is is Zach
- 52:07a top 1% designer, would he be the same if he was like reliant
- 52:13heavily on AI tools in like year one of him doing design?
- 52:18Like I think to Jack's point totally, I think there's like do
- 52:22you get to a top 0.1% if you have like AI kind of making you
- 52:27retarded by being like a crutch to your skills?
- 52:31100% you do. 100% you do. Having the best equipment makes
- 52:37you the best athlete. You know, I, I, I hate you there
- 52:40again, I think that I think you've got this right, Rashab.
- 52:44It is about the the top 1%. It is about the top 10%.
- 52:48It isn't about all of the dribble, right?
- 52:51And as soon as you start looking there, it's like it's not.
- 52:53This isn't to say that Zach doesn't use AI.
- 52:55Zach uses AI all the time. He's not shipping new products
- 52:59in foreplay yet, but he is shipping new features, right?
- 53:02Totally. Like I'll give you a simple
- 53:04example like just like how great this video is.
- 53:06Did you guys see that runway video that the guy from runway
- 53:08ML made like with the with the bears look up like fuck, OK, we
- 53:13have to show it. I don't know Jack, if it's easy
- 53:15for you to find. But I'm not as quick as Jamie
- 53:18from JRE, but I can I can try. Hold on, let me see Runway God
- 53:24Runway ML bear video. OK, because I want to show the
- 53:29equivalent of AI, the AI version of what you just showed me for
- 53:33Zach. Anyway, it like there's a bunch
- 53:38of people there's like this thing went viral on Twitter.
- 53:42No, it's like this. It's this beautiful short film
- 53:46made entirely in runway ML about like these like kids and like a
- 53:51bear caught like a bear cup costume.
- 53:54And you like watch this thing and you're like, Oh my God, like
- 53:57this could be like an Oscar nominated short film, OK.
- 54:01Like it's that good. And so and so you have to
- 54:05compare the 1% to the one percent or the .1 to the .1 or
- 54:08the point O1 to the point O1. And and that's more my point.
- 54:11It's like, yeah, there's going to be a bunch of people
- 54:15producing shitty things. And that's true with the tools
- 54:20and without the tools, so. So yes, what's next for Sorrell?
- 54:27Are you getting AI involved? We're actually going multi
- 54:30product this year, so I'm very, very pumped.
- 54:33We're launching a new Rishab. Let's go.
- 54:38Rishab approves. Rishab approves.
- 54:40Yes, I think we finally have the right and obviously like our
- 54:45engineering team is like AI coding all the time.
- 54:48So we are shipping really, really fast, faster than ever
- 54:52before. But I think still not like still
- 54:54not like 5 times faster, but I think we're getting there.
- 54:57Like I think it's going to be a process.
- 54:59So we're we're launching a new product.
- 55:01So that's what's next for me coming up in the next couple of
- 55:04months. So really just heads down
- 55:06focused on on making that real. So yeah, that's that's top of
- 55:09mind. Nice.
- 55:11And what's the go to market plan?
- 55:13What are you? How are you planning to get
- 55:14everyone to use this? So we're actually not on the
- 55:18Shopify App Store. This new product will be on the
- 55:22Shopify App Store. So I was actually quite
- 55:24separate. We do integrate with Shopify
- 55:27separately through other apps, but we're not on the App Store.
- 55:30This one will be on the App Store.
- 55:32So the GTM is actually heavily reliant on on standing out on
- 55:36the App Store and they're doing interesting things with our
- 55:39pricing model and the way it's sort of structured against the
- 55:42first page of the App Store that makes it really compelling to
- 55:46use. So yeah, that's all I can say
- 55:48for now. And then obviously going to look
- 55:50into the, I think I saw the SAS operators with, I forget the
- 55:55name of the two, the two nice guys who came up the launch, the
- 55:59launch people. Matt and Brian, yes.
- 56:03Yes, yeah, yeah. So obviously like going to do
- 56:06some sort of a launch video around it and try to get as much
- 56:10attention as possible on that. So yeah, all of that is
- 56:13currently in the works. Nice, nice.
- 56:16I think they're genius. For what it's worth, I think
- 56:18they're. Totally.
- 56:19I agree. I was so inspired.
- 56:21Yeah. What they nailed was they built
- 56:24great software that that they can commercialize extremely
- 56:27well, right. They've they've figured out what
- 56:30is it that people want to buy. How do we go from idea to
- 56:33product as quickly as possible and then and then deliver it so
- 56:38well, I mean, the only thing I think that is holding them back
- 56:41is just how much of it it's actually a service and not
- 56:44software. But you know, who knows the
- 56:47opinions changing on that one. So maybe they've got it right.
- 56:51Yeah, it's a while. All right.
- 56:53Awesome. I got a drop, but this was fun.
- 56:56Let's go build some agents. This is great.
- 56:58Yes, All right. Thanks guys.
- 57:01Yes, bye.