SaaS Companies Beware: AI Is The New UI (Anthropic's Claude Code and Cowork)

Summary

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Podcast Summary: More or Less

Episode: SaaS Companies Beware: AI Is The New UI (Anthropic's Claude Code and Cowork)
Hosts: Dave Morin, Jessica Lessin, Brit Morin, Sam Lessin
Date: January 16, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this lively, candid, and deeply insider discussion, the More or Less crew debates the existential threat that rapidly advancing AI interfaces—especially tools like Anthropic’s Claude Code, Claude Cowork, and open-source AI agents—pose to the entire traditional SaaS software industry. Drawing on recent personal experiments and real-world examples, the hosts question whether “software is dead,” explore security risks of local AI agents, and ponder the future of business models, venture capital, and the path forward for both startups and incumbents. The tone is irreverent, witty, and at times combative—a group of old Silicon Valley friends coming to terms with a once-in-a-generation shift.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. AI Is the New UI—for Everything

• Rapid Progress: Dave and Sam describe a step-function leap in AI agent capabilities, likening recent experiences with Claude Code/Cowork and open-source claudebot to "living in the future" ([02:36], [04:53]).
• Custom Local Agents: Dave outlines building personal interfaces for previously closed or clunky hardware (Mural photo frames, Tonal gyms), using AI to reverse-engineer APIs, create simple web UIs, and massively improve productivity ([05:01], [06:14]).
  • Quote: "It’s just mind-blowing to me that you can do a project this simple, this quickly...have a better interface for something you’ve always wanted." – Dave ([07:55])
• Consumerization: Brit compares Claude Cowork to a user-friendly, slightly less powerful version of open-source tools, observing how AI can now connect seamlessly to apps like Notion, Asana, and more ([11:03]).

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2. Open Source vs Proprietary AI: A Security Minefield

• Security Risks: Sam expresses real fear about giving root access to local AI agents, describing the profound security implications if such agents are compromised ([08:57]):
  • Quote: “It's fucking sweet. It’s a security nightmare and terrifying. … You're literally just hacking yourself.” – Sam ([08:57], [11:21])
• Who Wins?: Consensus emerges that Apple, Google, and other trusted incumbents have the best shot—not because of tech, but because of trust and brand strength ([12:13], [13:17]).
  • Quote: “Who do you trust? … The people that win are going to be the people with the trusted brands and security…” – Sam ([12:13])
• Usability Gap: The group notes open-source is more powerful, but too difficult for mass adoption—most people won’t set it up ([13:43]).
• Inevitably, Lockdown: Expect major security blow-ups, followed by retrenchment into trusted, walled-garden ecosystems ([13:49]).

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3. Death of SaaS? The Software Moat Erodes

• Obliterating Moats: Dave cites real-world cases where AI/autogen tools replace expensive SaaS deals in days—"the risk is actually here and it’s real now." ([17:28])
• Zero Value for SaaS: Sam bluntly says, "Software is not a business…it’s just not a thing," arguing that software alone is now infinitely copyable and non-defensible ([18:24], [22:05]).
  • Quote: "We're just at the end of software sales. You focus on community, network effects…there's no such thing as software company anymore." – Sam ([22:05])
• Widespread Panic: Jessica observes legacy SaaS companies are terrified, desperately trying to pivot, but now all tout the same (meaningless) "AI agent" features ([19:01], [21:01]).

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4. What New Business Models Will Survive?

• Two Types of Future Tech Businesses (Sam’s Framework, [23:02]):
  1. Secrets to the Universe: Businesses with a unique, hard-to-replicate secret (“keep it quiet, infinitely copyable, cannot be public”).
  2. Narrative Ownership: Companies that are extremely obvious but decisively own a category narrative (e.g., “the meme warfare company”).
• Hardware/Science/Networks: Brit emphasizes investing in bio, materials, life sciences, robotics, and fields with real moats or undiscovered breakthroughs ([26:51]).
  • Quote: “Anything that’s not software—bio, life sciences, robotics, hardware… categories where you can’t just replicate this stuff overnight.” – Brit ([26:51])
• VC Fallout: The implications are grim for traditional venture models. "If software is dead for entrepreneurs, it's also dead for venture capitalists." – Brit ([28:46])

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5. A New Era: The Fart App Moment of AI

• Proliferation of Toys, Few Keepers: Sam observes that while tinkering is fun (like the “fart app” era of early iPhone), most people won’t actually use what they build ([49:15]).
  • Quote: "I don’t actually think almost any of this stuff is actually that useful…Even for me. I spend tons of hours building. Very few using." – Sam ([49:46])
• AI Makes Big Bigger: The outcome, the hosts suggest, may be a familiar one—industry rationalizes, big company moats strengthen, and under-the-hood AI replaces SaaS (but doesn't dramatically change the consumer app stack) ([51:30], [52:29]).
  • Quote: “What AI will do is make big companies bigger. It totally takes away software as a pricing mechanism.” – Sam ([51:40])

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6. Other Memorable Segments & Quotes

• User Story: Even Kids Can Build Now: Dave recounts how his 11-year-old used Claude Code to build a Game Boy game in a weekend ([30:57], [31:12]).
• Brit’s Venture Experiments: Brit describes “Boardy,” an AI-driven BD/sourcing platform for VCs, and ponders if venture dealflow and founder/VC matchmaking will also get “sloppy” and commoditized ([38:35]).

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Notable Quotes & Moments (With Timestamps)

• [04:53] – Dave: “It’s the first time I’ve used something where it just leaped forward my AI experience in a way that’s been very, very productive.”
• [08:57] – Sam: “It is a security nightmare and terrifying… I want what I want, but I am absolutely terrified of the security implications.”
• [12:13] – Sam: “What’s going to matter is, who do you trust? … The people who win are going to be the people with trusted brands.”
• [18:24] – Sam: “Software is not a business. It’s just not a business. … It’s just not a thing, right?”
• [22:05] – Sam: “You focus on community, you focus on network effects…there’s no such thing as software company anymore.”
• [28:46] – Brit: “If software is dead for entrepreneurs, then it’s also dead for venture capitalists… There’s this halo effect.”
• [31:12] – Dave: "...our 11-year-old...had an idea for a Nintendo game… used Claude code… had it done like in a day.”
• [49:46] – Sam: “I’ve spent tons of hours building fun AI things for myself; I’ve spent extremely few hours using it.”
• [51:40] – Sam: “What the iPhone did is just more Internet...AI will make big companies bigger. It takes away software as a pricing mechanism.”

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Key Timestamps for Core Segments

• AI leaps: Dave’s Mural project & open source ClaudeBot [04:53–08:13]
• Security dangers of local AI agents: Sam & Dave [08:57–13:49]
• Why SaaS Moats Are Collapsing [17:28–22:05]
• Whole new business model logic for tech & VC [23:02–26:51]
• Brit’s focus on non-software thesis [26:51–28:55]
• Example: Kids building Nintendo games, consumerization [30:57–31:36]
• “Fart app era” and the value of tinkering [49:15–51:40]
• Closing thoughts on big-co vs. startups, AI replacing SaaS [51:40–52:56]

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Overall Takeaways

• The demise of SaaS as an investible, defensible model is not theoretical—it’s happening now, fueled by AI agents, open-source tooling, and instant UI creation.
• Security/trust will decide the AI platform wars; mass market adoption will follow Apple/Google and incumbents who can “sandbox” risky powers.
• “Software companies” as such are dead. Durable businesses must be built on secrets (not easily replicable with AI), defensible networks, or scientific/hardware breakthroughs.
• We are entering a world where “AI is the new UI”—but also a world where thousands of projects will be built, and 99% abandoned, as the dust settles.
• The venture model and founder incentives will be forced to adapt in real time, and the ultimate economic beneficiaries may be…more or less…the largest tech companies.

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For those interested in the future of software, investing, and how the AI transformation is landing in real venture rooms, this episode is both a sobering reality check and an energetic inside look.

Transcript

[A]

So the information we surveyed our subscribers. So 67% would not move.

[B]

So that means you should change it to be like 33% of our subscribers are billionaires.

[A]

I do believe we have the highest daily active billionaire readership on the Internet.

[C]

Daub.

[A]

More or less easy no.

[C]

Or easy yes.

[A]

We'll debate the text. That's best when we get More or Less. Dave and Brit, plus Sam and Jesse, put it all right to the test. More or less.

[C]

Why?

[A]

Hello, friends. Welcome to More or less. It's been another week. How's everyone holding up?

[D]

Great. How are you?

[A]

Great. We got a great.

[C]

It's mid January, but I'm. I feel like this year's already been long so far.

[A]

I'm ready.

[C]

Ready for the next one.

[A]

We're ready. You're ready to roll in 2027. How are you doing, Sam? You're wearing a lovely shirt.

[B]

You're welcome. I actually have two shirts on. I'll show you the other one later.

[D]

Sam and Lumberjack chic.

[A]

Oh, is this a surprise re. Reveal thing?

[B]

Yeah, I have a reveal shirt.

[C]

Only for Jess or for all of us.

[D]

It's got to be a Jackson Hole shirt.

[B]

I got one for Dave too. It's just for me and Dave.

[C]

It's another AI shirt.

[A]

We need some shirts.

[C]

All right, we'll make sure Sam's wearing

[A]

a nice shirt and another shirt. Brit's feeling like the year is long. And Dave, how are you doing?

[D]

I said great.

[A]

I know, but I need more than great.

[C]

Dave got a haircut today.

[B]

Who cares? He's got a hat on.

[D]

Yeah, I've got a hat on. Got the podcast hat. I'm awesome. I'm like, mind blown by some of the stuff I've built with AI in the last few days.

[A]

Uh oh, we're going down that.

[D]

It's crazy how fast this stuff's moving. We don't have to rabbit hole. We don't have to rabbit hole into this too far.

[C]

But, like, I will be a witness to this. As someone who also has been playing with all the vibe coding stuff, but also watching Dave play with it and the productivity it's created for our household with the things he's built has been high. I'm very proud of my husband for thinking about new types of vibe coded apps that make everyone's life better.

[A]

Okay, now I'm just curious. So Dave and we are we. You know, if we look back on this week in tech, there has been big vibe coding news. We've got the continued rise of Claude code. We have anthropic coming out with Cowork, which I have not played with, but I actually feel like I should have taken a day off to play with because everybody's talking about it. So this is a great topic. So let's dive in. Dave.

[D]

And there's some secret underground stuff going on.

[A]

Well, now you've perked my ears up. Cause we have to talk about the secret underground stuff or I would more

[D]

call it just nerdy stuff going on.

[A]

Nerdy. Nerdy. Okay, I want to know about this Morin household app. Her. What's it doing?

[D]

Okay, the interesting nerdy thing going on is that every once in a while in Silicon Valley you think you're living in the future and then you try something and suddenly it leaps you forward even further in a way that kind of melts your mind.

[A]

Waymo would be that for me, but yes.

[D]

Yeah, there's this open source project called claudebot which cloudbot's great.

[B]

I was posting about the other day. It's pretty cool.

[D]

Are you using it?

[B]

Yeah, it's cool. Cloudbot's impressive. It also, I like that when you open it up, it gives you the. What needs funding?

[D]

Yeah, well, NPM needs funding. NPM's always raising.

[B]

No, but Cloudbot also is like gives you a prop being like 37 projects looking for funding. Whatever. Whatever. It's cute.

[D]

No, Sam, that's npm. Like, are you sure? Yeah, the Node Package manager is always raising money for all of its like various pro. All of its various projects.

[B]

I know that, but I actually, maybe I missed Reddit. I thought when cloudbot opens it also, which I think is clever.

[A]

Okay, you guys, I need, I need the TLDR and cloudbot. Dave.

[D]

Okay, so claudebot's an open source project built by this really talented engineer who's, you know, been around for a really long time, big contributor to the open source community. And it's a local AI system that you can run on your own Mac Mini and then it has tons of skills and various. You know, I guess one way to think about it is plugins that you can, you know, plug into everything from your eight sleep to your Notion account to Google to. It can use your own computer to access basically anything on your computer. And then you can use WhatsApp or Telegram or Signal or iMessage or whatever your favorite messaging app is to talk to it all the time. And has also really smart and very powerful programming tools built into it. So you can use every single model you want to program. It can, you know, obviously it can use your computer. So it can see all of your projects. So if you've got a lot of vibe code projects in like one folder, it can check out all of those. It can, you know, see what you've already been doing there. It can use small models, big models, like, it's really powerful. And it's the first time that I've used something where it just like leaped forward. My AI experience in a way that I don't know, has just been very, very productive.

[A]

So this is an open source project. So this is not an.

[D]

Okay, it's not a. It's not a company, it's an open source project.

[A]

Can you give me an example of something you've done with it?

[D]

Yeah. So over the weekend I decided to throw a challenge at it that I'd been doing some things like this with Claude code, but I just decided to do it with this instead. And just see, I actually ab tested it. I started a Claude code terminal window, a Gemini or sorry, not Gemini codex, which is OpenAI's version of this. And then I started started a Cloudbot window. I wanted to see if I could reverse engineer the mural frames, which are the photo frames that a lot of people have on their walls that have the world's worst interface and the world's worst app.

[A]

You guys are the first persons that. These are the big ones. I remember actually speaking of a living in the future moment, walking into your house like eight or nine years ago and seeing those with digital photos was one of these.

[D]

They've been around a long time. They're the only ones of their size.

[C]

Well, and Netgear, which owns the company, which is a great company in itself, but has not really prioritized the mural product and definitely doesn't build great software. It's more known for hardware. And so like, the software is terrible, the app is terrible. You try to upload new photos and everything fails. And so we're just constantly trying to get new photos on our walls of like, the stuff we've been doing lately. Okay, back to you, Dave.

[D]

And the app is terrible. You upload photos, it fails for no reason. It doesn't tell you why it failed. You can't really put things into it and there's just no feedback. It's always been this way. And so you just never change your photos that frequently because it's just really difficult to deal with. And so my new favorite thing to try with Claude code or any of these tools is to just point it at the thing and say, reverse engineer this and try to discover the API, try to Discover the authentication method, build me a new web interface for it that's simple, easy to use, and maybe I describe some features that I want with it. In this case, I want to be able to sort the photos, I want to be able to upload photos and resize them. I want to the correct size that works perfect for the frame, just stuff like that, right? Like easy management interface. So I started this project on all three different tools and Cloudbot got it done in less than 20 minutes. I had a brand new web interface. It had reverse engineered not only the API and the ways that people have been doing this, but it turns out that Netgear has not kept up their authentication scheme properly. And so you can't authenticate into their API using a normal method. And so it actually figured out how to do it through like a really weird thing I had never even heard of. And boom, I was up and running and managing our photos on our photo frame like in less than 30 minutes. And then I spent the rest of the day just in my break times, just adding little features to it, like AI processing of the photos to make a better title, like doing all kinds of things that are kind of pretty cool. And now I've got this amazing Mural Manager project that I open sourced on my GitHub for anybody to use to manage their own mural frames if they want to. And it's just mind blowing to me that you can do a project this simple, this quickly and you know, have a better interface for something that you've always wanted. And that's just one example.

[C]

Hey, didn't you also reverse engineer an API into our tonal at home?

[A]

To do what? That's funny.

[D]

So I wanted to get the data out of it and Tonal doesn't have an API and there is no documented API. So.

[A]

Okay, so this brings up.

[B]

Okay, finish this and this effectively hacking Tonal with it.

[D]

Yes.

[B]

Which is fine. So this is actually, this brings to the point, I would point which is

[A]

Black hat Dave or white hat? What hat are you?

[B]

Here's the big problem. It's because I look in the last day, actually a week ago, Mike Galpert was the one who was like, you got to use Claude bot and play with it. So I started playing with MSG and I was like, started playing with it and then today I did download the, the Claude desktop agent and whatever. Here's my issue. It's fucking sweet. It is a security nightmare and terrifying.

[D]

Yeah, totally.

[B]

And like I did think it was really funny. Like I. The fir. I did a thing using interface with iMessage. Fine. I'm like, get these files for me or G. And I'm like, oh, my God, you now have access. Like, if you get access to this, it's like a disaster. It's a backdoor to everything. It's really funny. I actually did a thing, one project I started working on with Plod, and I'm like, locally. When I'm like, as I want this, but it's pretty dangerous. Is just like, open signal, pull all the group chats. I'm not reading fast enough. Get all the content from them, store it and then summarize it for me because I can't read. Here's the problem. It's great. It's fucking terrifying that it can do that. Right? Like, and like, it's the same thing. It's like you're going through. It's like, oh, you want access to screen recording. Okay, Chrome. Okay, this. Then you're like, it's like, I need a full system, I need full file of an interaction. And I'm like, I want to give this to you because I want what I want. But I am absolutely terrified of the security implications of this. And so it becomes a thing where

[D]

I'm like, this is actually the really important conversation in this.

[B]

So then I'm like, do I actually need. Part of me is like, you know, what I need is like, I actually literally need to buy a new laptop. Right. And only run cloud code. But the problem is then, like, it's this really interesting personal security problem because, like, there's so much.

[D]

You just put it on a Mac Mini that's like a empty box.

[B]

Yeah, but the problem is it needs access to shit.

[A]

I want to slow this down for a sec for our non engineer listeners for a second because I think this is an important conversation. So basically your point is that these AI bots are able, like, any sort of security or encryption around any individual service can be penetrated by cloudbot.

[D]

It's sort of. It's just. It's on your computer, Jess. So it's just looking at the files on your computer, or it's looking at.

[A]

Right, but my Discord chats aren't on files.

[D]

No, it is, actually.

[C]

And same with Cowork, by the way. Just like yesterday I was trying Cowork, the new thing from Claude, and you can connect Asana and like Notion and all kinds of a hundred things into this. And I was.

[D]

Cowork is actually the, like, consumer version of this. Like, everybody, when Cowork came out, all the people that have Been on cloudbot community for like the last many weeks were just like oh this is just like the simple consumer version of what we're all doing but it's not as powerful but it does the same kind of stuff.

[B]

It's basically you are literally just hacking yourself is what you're doing.

[A]

Napster and then we'll all sort this out.

[C]

Like what, what are some analogies?

[D]

AWD bot, it's like a lobster claw clawed bot.

[B]

No, he's just saying like what's the moment here?

[A]

Here's the deal, like are they the Napster moment? And then I want to know what's going to happen to the kazjillion dollar valued anthropic if the open source version of what it does is more powerful and you never have to pay Anthropic.

[D]

It still needs anthropics models.

[B]

Like yeah, but it's, you're front ending them. It's a top of wallet. I mean here's the, here's the upshot. I think when you play this all out, here's what's going to happen. It's actually all just a massive security breach. And because of that actually what's going to matter more than anything is who do you trust. Right? And we all trust Apple effectively because they already have this shit already, right?

[D]

Yeah but Sam, they really need, I think they actually have to start thinking about this pretty serious.

[B]

No, I agree, but just let me finish. So like the thing is like when you're like who's going to win this interface layer? I'm like giving Claude effect. I'm basically giving, I'm rooting myself with Claude Claude and like with full knowledge that there's a whole stack behind there can do terrible, terrible things to me. And then I'm like okay, well I do actually trust Google more. So like I actually think when you think about the AI wars which happens a lot, what's going to happening is like in order to do good stuff beyond the like you ask it a question or a chat bot, you give it access to such a level of scary security stuff that the people that win are going to be the people with like the trusted brands and security and all that type of stuff. And I don't, I think it's going to make it even harder for startups to compete because look, I basically just rooted myself with cloud bot, a bunch of other stuff and like even I am like oh my God, I'm, I'm not giving you root file access, that's too much. I'll give you but it's terrifying what you do and don't give access to and then what it can do with speed and automation. So it's like I just don't think it's a place startups are gonna be able to play and I think it's gonna get locked down super fast. Cause it is super powerful but it is super dangerous.

[A]

So I, I understand. So that helps me Sam, understand like you think that we're gonna have to really trust the people who sort of as AIs get into these operating systems level plus agents plus all this. You really have to trust them. But I have a different question which is the open source version of this you guys say is better. So why would anyone use the cloud version? Because they don't trust the back end of this open source or it's too

[C]

hard to like it's really nerdy.

[D]

It's too hard. It's, it's really difficult. Like it would, it's really difficult to set up.

[B]

You're not going to set it up, Jess. It's not that difficult. But like I think the pro, the real story is just going to be like what's going to happen at some point is someone's going to come out with one that's great, right? And it's open and whatever and it's free. And then you're going to be, and it's going to be totally controlled by like some hacker network that's going to do terrible, terrible things. Like everyone's like, it's just a disaster. And so it's going to happen is there's going to be some blow ups on this and then everyone's going to retreat and be like, I can't use this stuff unless it's coming from Google or Apple, right? And I think that's how it's going to play out. Now the point about the tokens, this goes into the whole, how the ecosystem evolves because I actually do kind of trust anthropic but not as much. I definitely don't trust, you know, OpenAI. But you have this spectrum of trust. Here's the thing. I'll still use the free compute token resources of almost anyone and if someone comes with a better model, great. That is its own security threat. But the middleware that sits on your computer and has all the file access that's like critical. And so it'll end up being like maybe you have some Neo clouds or whatever that like do AI requests or specific things that these things route to. But who do you trust and who do you have to trust. It's like the thing that's sitting on your computer and has full root access is like the most scary part.

[D]

That's the, I guess dystopian take. But the optimistic take here is this is a really powerful tool. Like that's. I guess I'm trying to find the middle ground here of like how do we explore what this future looks like? I mean, Sam, I think you're right that we have to get the security question correct. The apples and the Googles have to give us. They have to engage in this. But I think the reason I'm excited about this and you're excited about this and MSG and everyone I know that's a tinkerer or hacker is excited about this is that they're really powerful. It's like a really cool way to think about this. And I really want this.

[B]

I want it. But here's the problem again. I just go back to like, yeah, here's the thing. What's it worth to you? It's super cool that you can like backdoor your and get data off of your tonal. Is it worth all your bitcoin? Of course not. Right? And so like, like, is it worth like what's it worth? Right? What risks? It's kind of like, are you willing? You ready?

[D]

You ready?

[B]

I'm going to bring it to Sam topic to get some clicks on the day.

[A]

Oh, the poor in the porn.

[B]

You ready? It's like, it's a super hot chick. Are you willing to have sex without a condom,

[D]

Sam?

[C]

Listen guys, I thought you were going to say something about it using being a native in your browser and seeing what you're actually looking at all day, so.

[B]

Well, I mean, that's like the mild version of it. That's the mild version.

[D]

Oh God.

[A]

Can someone take over moderating? I got nothing.

[C]

It was weird when Claude took over my browser. I was feeling that was. I haven't had that totally happen before where it's just like running a whole window.

[D]

That's the frontier.

[A]

Okay, so Dave, I want to, I, I want to go deeper into what you are excited to envision being built. And I think that that is important. It's also of course important to think of the other side of the coin and it's possible to do both. But what about the company whose proprietary ecosystem of software is their business? Like the other thing that comes to mind? Well, like Tonal, I mean, I guess to the point that maybe if tonal's expertise is the hardware in this situation. But like my reaction is that there's like swaths and swaths of businesses where some of the moat around their business is this UX and software that are just going to be obliterated.

[C]

This is the Napster part of the analogy, Jess, because, like, Dave just made a new version of Murals app and like, at some point so many people are going to be doing this and it's gonna be open source. Are you really gonna police all these people? Like everyone that burned CDs back in the day? I don't think so.

[A]

Well, we did ultimately. I mean, again that, that there was

[D]

itunes, but this is the real thing that. I don't know, maybe we can add some value to the Silicon Valley conversation about this today, which is, I heard a story yesterday that a big SaaS app we all know won't say which one had, I don't know, something like $150,000 contract out to try to sell their package to another, you know, another company. And the company was like, yeah, no, too high. So they lowered the price to 70k or something like that. And then the CTO shows up in the meeting and is like, we can like vibe code this in three weeks using cloud code. Just let me add it. He got it done in like a week. And then they just like let go of the contract. And everybody's kind of been talking about that this is a risk, but I think the risk is actually here and it's real now.

[B]

That's why SaaS is trading at zero right now in like the public markets, because everyone gets this.

[D]

What do we do? Like, everyone's saying, like, look, it's happening, but like, I, I don't know that anybody's talking about, like, what's actually software

[B]

is not a business. It's just not a business.

[A]

I think that's right.

[B]

That's what it is. It's very simple. And like, that doesn't mean you can't build businesses. And that doesn't mean you don't use software to build businesses. You use the written word to build companies, but, like, it's just like, not a thing, right? Like, it's just a.

[A]

Well, Sue, I, you know, in my heart, I always have a stuff. I guess I'm a legacy media disruptor. But I like, I like to make sure we air the, the point of view of these legacy companies who, by the way, and maybe I'll be at liberty to say more, depending on what my lawyers say, but these software companies are just scared shitless right now. They are running around like chickens with their head cut off and from my point of view, in my day job, I see it constantly and it's honestly baffling to me and I think it only makes sense in the context, in this broader context. So they are, they are paranoid and there is a lot of behavior that they're undertaking.

[D]

In what way?

[C]

Which software companies are you talking? Like which realm?

[A]

You know, I'm not at liberty to stay at a podcast at the moment.

[D]

No, not companies, but like what, what's examples of running around? Like, what do you mean?

[A]

Just think of what my day job is and think of how I would encounter such people. I mean, I think they're, they're, they're telling narratives and they, they have their narrative and you know, they're fighting really hard to preserve their narratives.

[B]

What narrative they have?

[D]

Like they're, that the, that software is still a business.

[A]

Their AI is taking them to the moon instead of what you said, Dave.

[C]

But, and now that it's defensible but to the point.

[A]

I just want to make point Dave, though. So last summer I, any person who worked at like a forward thinking company, I'm like, have you killed your SaaS contracts yet? Like, what are you doing? You know, and most of the people at that time who I talked to said no, we're playing with things. But like at the end of the day there's compliance, compliance, there's security. Like you can't actually, you know, you can't do that much on the margin because like, you know, you might get audited. And so, and so has all this stuff. So a, I heard that answer and I was like, wait three months because I do think a lot of those pieces can be filled in. But, but there are like some modes. So software is dead, but the, the death will be long maybe. Although Dave, if you're hearing examples of companies that are really shutting down those contracts today, that's obviously fascinating. But they're, but that's why they're nervous. And so what are they doing? They're all pivoting to try and be AI first or integrating with other AI providers. But then you talk to any business out there and they're like, I have five SaaS providers who all have agents who all do exactly the same thing, which is mostly nothing, but sometimes something. But they all do the same thing.

[D]

And AI is not going to be your savior. Like adding AI to your SaaS business is not going to save you and suddenly make software a business again.

[A]

Well, that's what they're all doing, right? And so there's no, I mean, but that is kind of fascinating.

[B]

Look, I think the purest financial explanation of what's going on, if you want to understand, is Constellation Software. You guys watched Constellation Software recently? So Constellation for many years has been my absolute favorite stock in the world, right? It like it is a perfect growth chart from 2006 to 2000 to May 2026. It's a parabolic beautiful curve. But what they basically do is a roll up SaaS, right? And like make it more profitable. They have come down right from, from a 16,000x return, I'm sorry, 16,000% growth and over this kind of lifetime to 5,000 bucks. It's trading at 3,000 right now. Right.

[C]

And like since May of last year.

[D]

Wait, May? Have you said May 26?

[B]

Did you say May 2020? 2025.

[D]

25. Got it.

[B]

Again, it's trading back to where it was trading in like 2023 or something. The basic point is like it is I think a perfect illustration of what's going on in people's actual story on what's happening here. There's a few other things that. But like just that's the story. And then like look I, there are plenty of good businesses to build in the world. Like that's not going to change at a high level. But this, this idea that software is like defensible or remote or even a thing you can sell, like I think we're just at the end of software sales. Right Is the way to think about it. And like that means you focus on community, you focus on network effects. There are things that are valuable but like there's no such thing as software company more.

[D]

It's a real change though, Sam. And I mean I think that's like

[C]

the era we've been part of the Internet in like the last 25 years. It's been.

[D]

And there's a lot of seed funds out there that only know how to invest in this. And so how should they think about this?

[B]

Well, they're just going to go away.

[C]

Well, a lot of people's portfolios are going to get really fucked by this. That company that thought they could make 150k per partner in SaaS sales, not so great.

[B]

What I've been telling founders for 2026 is there's only two business types I'm interested in right now that touch into technology, right? One type is you have a secret about the universe and you should tell no one ever what that secret is because it is an incredible idea and insight, a way to make mint money. It's like a secret incantation and if you know what you're doing is like a great way to make money with all the tech technical leverage. But don't ever tell anyone and your hope is that no one ever finds out. There are lots of cool businesses being built right now that look like.

[D]

What's the example?

[C]

Yeah, give me an example.

[D]

No, I'm not saying like, I'm not saying a stealth one. What's one that's already exists? That. That was like this Coca Cola.

[B]

They're all pretty stealth. Yeah. I guess they have a formula.

[D]

But even Coca Cola, somebody on YouTube last week spent a year reverse engineering it and actually achieved it.

[B]

Nothing lasts forever. But there are businesses. I keep hearing of people business like

[A]

that, but it's not based on one of those. It's based on consistently generating those things that aren't known that are important.

[B]

Sure. But people know your business. These are companies where it's like someone has a brilliant insight about a way to make money using like a bunch of AI tools and like they're minting cash. But they will never tell anyone what they're doing because it's like it's infinitely copyable. Everything's infinitely copyable. Right. That's option one. Option two is there are these things that everyone agrees.

[D]

So there are none of these in option one. There are there? This is a new phenomenon that there's no such thing as an example that's big that you can point to.

[B]

Probably are, but in some ways you don't know what they're like. There are a lot of businesses in America that make a ton of money that you've never heard of and will never find. Right.

[A]

Like these existence, the copying at launch, like the second it launch.

[B]

Because you don't even know. There's no, there's no website for these things. Right. These are literally businesses people are minting cash off of very quietly using more and more technical leverage.

[C]

Are you saying these are not. These are venture types of businesses or

[B]

just some of them might need a little capital. Some of them need none.

[C]

Mostly not. Yeah.

[B]

It's most. And like with AI leverage and tech leverage, you can now build things and connect things together with an insight. We're like, oh my God, I can get this type of data here and sell it there. I can do this here and do this here. I can make this. There are all sorts of things going on with tons of levers that small teams are doing. They're making fortunes. That's type one. There are those things that exist. It's just they're really Hard to talk about and find. And like, the ones I know of, like, you can't say on a podcast,

[D]

yeah, it sounds like they're not venture investable. So is that helpful to, like, I guess I'm like, trying to find lanes to help the audience, help our audience forget venture capital.

[B]

Like a lot of entrepreneurs, it's like, go find a secret to the universe you can do this with. Maybe you need a little money, maybe you don't. It doesn't really matter. Like, whatever. Type 2, which I really do believe in is like, there are all these businesses out there which you can say will obviously be categories, right? Like, everyone knows what they are. Like, we all know that ads are going to get hyper, hyper personalized, right? Like, there's no question about that. So then the other thing is, the only way to win is you must own the narrative very loudly. I'll give you an example that we can talk about. You know, I love Meme Lord, like this. In, like, this mimetic warfare platform. It's like, I would argue everyone understands if you're smart that, like, the future of communication and like, marketing whatever is mimetic, right? And, like, there's an argument that you should be able to build the defining platform at scale in, like, AI mimetic warfare, right? You can make that argument. You might disagree with it, but it's an argument you have to fully own. That narrative is like, I am the mean warfare company. You will buy it from me, right? And so I think there's this big schism of, like, you either are a secret company or you're the most obvious company in the world, but you leave the narrative. You can't be in the middle.

[A]

Brit, what are you looking for if it's not software? Literally, I mean, anything that's not software.

[C]

Bio, life sciences, human connection, robotics, hardware, sort of defense space categories where you can't just replicate this stuff overnight. Or to Sam's point, it's almost like his first point, there's like a novel discovery. Like, there's a breakthrough in science. And, you know, a lot of these researchers or scientists have a discovery, but they don't know how to build a business around it and commercialize it. And so I'm like, I'm leaning into that market, though.

[A]

I mean, that's always been like, the business of drug discovery.

[C]

I mean, I'm not necessarily talking about drugs.

[D]

Not drugs.

[C]

Could be like.

[D]

Could be any kind of science.

[C]

Yeah, any kind of science. Materials. Like, you know, there's all kinds of breakthroughs happening right now.

[B]

My Historically, I'm too lazy to do that stuff. It's too hard to diligence. Now, you could make the argument that with AI it becomes easier for generalists to diligence all this stuff, and so you can kind of have marginal leverage on it or be in that industry. Maybe that's good. Maybe Dave's point about, like, what's good in all this is there's all this shit that should get funded that generalists can't figure out. But if you give them all the right AI tools, all of a sudden they can have productive conversations and make realistic decisions with leverage on these harder areas. And so you make more progress and fund more of the weird shit. I like, don't do that stuff because I think it's too hard.

[A]

Can I.

[C]

That brought up.

[A]

I wanted to circle back. We were talking a little bit at OpenAI Health and like, so I want to circle back to AI and health and some of the startups and opportunities there, because I have a big question called business model. But Dave, to your. I liked how you decided that our goal was to try and add something to the Silicon Valley conversation. It's a very high bar. So have we done that yet on this topic? Sam, I think you. One of your most viral tweets of 2025 was about software being dead or something. And then, you know, you got some pushback from that, from the software people. But it does seem like we've entered a new phase. Right. There's actual examples of contracts being obliterated. We've also raised the, like, wild west of data security concern.

[C]

But if software is dead for, for entrepreneurs, then it's also dead for venture capitalists. And that has. There's like this, like, halo effect to that statement being true.

[A]

Pretty dead for venture capital. I mean, talk to any firm about their stats on their books. They've been complaining about this for two years.

[D]

I don't know. Yeah, they've been complaining about it, but you look at a lot of people's. Yeah. Their portfolios and there's a lot of software in the last six months. Right?

[C]

Like, no, but even new companies, people are still investing in software.

[D]

Yeah. Jess, what I'm saying is that, like, if you're investing in something now or you're an entrepreneur starting something, like, you're. What, you're. You're shooting a rocket that lands five years from now. Right. And so five years from now, like, this is going to be crazy. Like, you, you know, like, AI is the new ui. Like, you don't even need a ui. For anything anymore. You can just like I wanted a new UI for my mural frames and I just instantiated it in 10 minutes. Like that's crazy.

[A]

Yeah. How far? So two quick follow up questions. One, how far are we from Jessica lesson being able to do that?

[D]

Pretty close.

[C]

Yeah, really close.

[A]

Like six months, six weeks, six days of hard work.

[D]

Six months. Okay.

[A]

Yeah, good to know.

[D]

You could probably do it with Claude Cowork actually, like, yeah, I'm not sure. I haven't played with it.

[C]

I've played with Claude Cowork. I did a big project yesterday. I like mapped the entire seed stage VC market. I like curled everyone's website and pulled in everyone's like key differentiator statement, how much their check sizes are categories, they invest in all these different things about them. And, and it was just like done for me while I was working.

[D]

Here's another good example. I took all of our transcripts. We have 131 transcripts for this podcast. And I ripped through all of them and generated essays across 131 transcripts and did that in less than an hour. And I saw Lenny, you know, Lenny has a great podcast. He was doing the same thing, like, and he took 250 transcripts and did the same thing. And then he actually today I saw open source them all so that other people can do stuff with his transcripts. Right. And so these are just massively leveraged AI moves that you can do using this stuff. And it doesn't have to necessarily be code. And the, the answer to your question, Jess, like how soon will you do it? I think actually is best answered through our 11 year old who over this weekend he, he wanted to build a Nintendo game. He had an idea for a Nintendo game for his Game Boy and so he used Claude code to develop a new Nintendo game and had it done like in a day.

[B]

Look, I think that's all true, but I'll give you, let me give you the counter.

[D]

But Sam, just one last thing, which is that it was very hard for him to understand GitHub. And there's all these intricate things that are very nerdy about how to interact with these tools, but they're not that complicated and will just get eliminated from the process. And so, you know, it's gotta be within six months that you can just deploy something onto Vercel and like have it in 10 minutes.

[B]

I do think there's gonna be weird things that happen. I'll give you, I'll give you my counterexample that, Dave, which is our kids are now deep Garmin watches. And I was like, like, they're like messing with watch faces. All the watch faces kind of stuck. I'm like, you know what? This is a perfect AI thing. I would never want to learn their stupid Garmin like, language to like program a watch face. But like, AI knows this. Like, I was like, let's just like pop open Cursor. We're going to make our own Garmin watch Faces. Right? Seems like a obvious perfect use case for this. All the things you're talking about. You go in, you're like, oh, wait a minute. Interesting business thing, Cursor. Split the store from VS code because they want to, like, create their own ecosystem that's independent, et cetera. And the way it all plays out is VS code is like, no, like the package you need to install to do Garmin Watch Faces. We're going to control that. Right? And so all of a sudden you realize it gets pretty hard to actually do it without VS code. So now you're using VS code instead of Cursor, even though it's the same thing. Right.

[D]

Did you try cloud code?

[B]

I haven't tried cloud code yet. I don't think it'll work.

[D]

I bet it'll just do it.

[B]

I don't. I'll try it. I actually kind of doubt it'll work, but we'll see. Because they have a forked. Because you go back to. You basically get stuck in an app store, problem with Microsoft, who has access to the packages. And then here's the thing. VS code and their AI, which is like basically all the same stuff anyway, just spins for hours trying to like get a dev environment set up. It like kind of knows what it's doing, but it's just not quite there. Now does that all get resolved?

[D]

Maybe.

[B]

But I do think there's gonna be all sorts of weird business development games that start getting played with lockdown app stores, lockdown code bases. Who has access to what? All of a sudden Garmin's gonna be like, hey, guess what? We had a whole business around watch faces. We're not gonna just let you push now that it's so easy to make them. We're not going to let you just like push them up. We're going to change our business model around them. Like, the world will reorient to try to extract value, whether it's app stores or whether it's like access points or whatever. Like it will be a game of chicken and mouse on this stuff.

[C]

Do you think they're going to just start Charging for that. Like with Claude Cowork. I was connecting all these things into it yesterday. At some point, is Asana gonna get any additional revenue from Claude because millions of people are integrating with. With it, or is that just net value add to Asana for more use? It's because it's actually depleting Asana, right? Because it's just writing on top of it and pulling, scraping it.

[B]

The good news is I believe Dustin's a very large anthropic investor, so he'll be just fine.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

Notion, for instance, is another example.

[A]

Well, no, this is the wild garden thing, right? And this gets back to when I was saying the SaaS companies are just trying to embed AI as fast as possible, but there's a new race to be the default to be the ux and I. I think it's gonna be very hard for like a single Pointus software.

[C]

I'm just saying there's no business model that exists so far in terms of who's getting paid to be the.

[A]

I mean, I remember talking to Aaron Levy a box about this and, you know, I think there's expectations that would be some kind of like reciprocal tariff structure or something like that. But we're also seeing this play out in shopping and I don't. I don't think that there are the right incentives for that to happen. Last thing on this point, we'll leave us a little time to get a little non. I mean, not non AI, but did you guys see Toby, the CEO of Shopify also tweeted something very much on this theme, which was like, he took an mri, I believe, and had Claude code, just. I think it was Claude code, had some AI coding software, just built him a better web interface for it instead of using, like the Legacy.

[C]

I was super excited about that because I'm getting two MRIs tomorrow, so I'm going to be uploading those.

[D]

Well, yeah, he had a. He had a USB key or something that was Windows software that he doesn't have Windows. And so he's just. I mean, this is the, this is the story that AI is the new ui.

[B]

You.

[D]

You don't have a UI to read the thing, so you just tell AI, figure out how to talk to this thing that I have and like make me an interface for it. Boom. It's done, right? Like, the number of examples of this this week have been.

[A]

And this is all possible just because of APIs. Like, no one, like, locked this down in a way or. It's just that the way the AI operates, it doesn't need a certain type of. It's just using some kind of predictive system to be able to do that.

[D]

No, no, it runs through the whole Internet. It goes and looks at the Internet. It looks at every example of everybody that's ever tried this. It looks at every forum and every, you know, every open source project, and on and on and on.

[A]

But how does it get the underlying data? You've given it the underlying data. Like you've given it the mri. It's reading, or the.

[D]

Yeah, that's on the disk, right? That's like there's a USB key that has the MRI on it, but you can't read the file format because it requires Windows and some legacy software. And so it just like digs into there and figures out the data and pulls it into a web interface.

[B]

Here's the deal. Forever. This is actually a rehash of an old argument that existed in the early days of Meta and whatever else about APIs in general and what you can and can't have access to. No, the only rehash, the rehash is this is just a lot faster and more scaled. But it's the same story of like, oh, you remember when there used to be RSS feeds for everything and those got shut off? Why do they get shut off? Because once you built readers on top of them, no one can make any money. And so, like, well, this doesn't work. And so the upshot is, is like, in some ways, all that AI is doing is rationalizing effectively the world of APIs and the world of programmatic access. Because when you drop access where it's not just like, like really sophisticated smart people who can kind of do stuff, and you're like, ah, this doesn't quite make sense business wise, but it's fine. You just like turn the dial to 11 and everyone can do it. You're like, oh, yeah, we can't have APIs to anything. And so to Jess's point, everything's a wall garden, everything's locked down, everything's a war, right? Everything's a fiefdom. And then you get back to this, this thing, which is. It's super hard to have a fiefdom and even have access to data when I can just sit something on my desktop and give it permission to everything and, like, let it sit there as an end agent and root it. All right, like, so what do you do with that? Right? Well, it's going to be a trust thing and a security thing. Right? Is the upshot.

[A]

Okay, so I just have so Many questions, and I'm the voice of the every woman here. But I understand that everything. Your desktop has a lot of stuff, but, like, my files are in the cloud. They're not on my desktop. My photos are in the cloud. They're not in my.

[D]

Yeah, they can, like, go on the cloud. It can open a browser. Open the cloud.

[C]

Like, literally. It run. It ran my whole browser yesterday. It was crazy running your browser.

[D]

It's running your computer.

[B]

Imagine it just as literally has your keyboard and mouse. Anything you can do, it can do.

[C]

Hence the security problem.

[A]

Was this what OpenAI's browser wanted to do? Anyone using that lately?

[C]

I tried it and was not impressed.

[B]

It doesn't really do anything.

[A]

So, Brit, what's on your next to build list?

[C]

Ooh, that's a good question. I'm mostly doing stuff internally for offline right now. And I'm like, we're working on what hires do we actually need to make and what things could we just build? And I don't know if you guys have been following this whole Boardy thing. Do you know Bordy just has information

[A]

written about Boardy yet? Sure. I don't. I. Tell me.

[C]

Boardy is a WhatsApp and email client that is a marketplace of founders and VCs. And so it's like trying to map, like, in one week, it will source 6,000 founders across its marketplace, figure out the types of VCs that it should introduce them to. Ask me, the VC, like, Hey, I got these five founders. Are you interested in any of them? Here's what they're working on. I say, yes or no.

[D]

Companies are paying it $10,000 a year to do BD on it on their behalf.

[C]

Companies themselves are the ones paying, so. And then on top of that, it raised like $150 million fund. Because LPs think this is magical. And this is like a new mechanism

[A]

for sourcing you guys. Like, this Isn't this just Slop? What about the AI slop?

[D]

It's unclear.

[A]

This is founder slop.

[B]

Well, also, doesn't it if it's perfectly efficient, you'll never make any money.

[C]

I think it's the notion that I'm talking about. It is, are all venture funds going to be building their own versions of this? Tim Draper launched this thing where you can talk to Tim AI and it's.

[B]

I built that thing a year ago.

[C]

It's just like, you can go to

[B]

my website and do it.

[C]

Is this like, what is the future of matching with founders pitching? Are there any secrets anymore? Is this all Just like a marketplace. Like, and like what are the internal tools everyone's building at their venture funds to like do all this stuff and experiment with all this stuff. I'm so curious how much time people are spending, how much they're paying or not paying, how hiring plans have changed.

[A]

Like I'm old enough to remember when Google Ventures was going to automate VC investing. I mean, do you remember this? It's probably like 2006 and it was all going to be an algorithm or whatever and then it wasn't.

[B]

Look, in the end of the day I think that the seed stage investing is the most defensible part of the entire investing world. Everything should get more efficient. ETFs, algorithmic trading, does that come down market? Of course it comes down market and expands. But any idea that a bot can route to the six right firms and everyone bids and everyone top ticks it, but no one will make any money, which is fine. That's actually what the whole point is. Like that's why capitalism works, is it creates efficiency. Right. So that's fine, but that's not what we do. Like I'll give you an example. Like candidly, like we don't do outbound sourcing at all. Like there are companies, there are venture firms inside river that have built machines for outbound and market mapping on stuff. I don't do any of that. Like we say shit on the Internet and then people email me. Right. And I only want to talk to a certain percentage of them.

[D]

We don't.

[B]

And so like the idea. I think the answer is for a lot of types of investing. Yeah, like the, all this data, if you're doing something like an associate can do in Excel, that's going to be overly efficient and you'll have no margin in it. But that's not really what we do. I don't think it's what you guys do either.

[D]

Well Sam, what I think is interesting is like in the seed market you have the multi stage firms and 2,000 seed funds competing for the 75th percentile of all of the sort of, just like you said, the mainstream stuff out there in the market. And so that effectively means you have almost perfect pricing and a bunch of synthetic beta in the top quartile of the seed market. And so where in the seed market is there alpha is like a question and it's, you know, I think you and I have always agreed it's in the illegible spaces. But the question is like how to stay there ever more.

[B]

You have to be smarter, more original. Have access to networks that everyone else doesn't have access to ideas. Other people don't be willing to take risks. Other people don't like all that stuff,

[C]

you know, But I think that at least 80% of other funds, seed and beyond, are. Don't think that way. And they're like, they're gonna. They want to build all of this stuff to automate a bunch of things. And like, they're on the AI train. And so I'm really interested to see where this goes this year given vibe. Coding has definitely peaked.

[A]

Each of you, were you more optimistic about seed investing six months ago or today? Or less optimistic?

[B]

Same it like this. It doesn't same.

[D]

Yeah, I'm probably neutral to six months ago.

[B]

I don't think anything's even like, I honestly, despite the fact that stuff is cool again, we get. We try to live a few months ahead of reality. Right. Like, I'm not that surprised by anything we're seeing.

[D]

No, yeah, I agree with that. That's why I'm saying, like, I'm neutral to it because I feel like we've been talking about it on this pod. And in fact, I've looked at all of our transcripts in many different ways now. We have been talking about this on this pod.

[B]

So the point is, like, I just don't find anything we're seeing surprising right now. Right. So it's hard to say that anyone's opinions have change. They're just the same.

[C]

It's just playing out in real time. As we were talking about that.

[A]

It would. Guys, it would have been a great sound bite. No one gave it to me. So now we'll move on. So what else is happening? Brit Golden Globes. What?

[C]

Oh, well, Nikki Glazer. I thought it was a worst year than last year. However, number of people on GLP1s year over year definitely increased at the Golden Globes. And by the way, Fun station grocery sales are down 5.3% since. Since the rise of GLP1 and 8% among wealthy and affluent people.

[A]

So people. But just.

[D]

I mean, but it's coming down across the board.

[A]

So people are eating less, but they're also cooking less. I would just want to point out groceries would be not perfectly equated to eating or cooking. Sam, how are you doing having not eaten for four days?

[B]

I'm fine.

[C]

You didn't wait. Did you do your prolon?

[B]

I do prolon. I love prolon.

[A]

This is your chance to do an ad for Prolon. Tell the people.

[B]

Prolon's great. It's Just you do the modified fast thing, your stress level goes back to zero. I slept. I got a 9097 on my sleep score last night. I mean, it's not something you want to do all the time, but it's great to do.

[D]

Okay.

[A]

So Sam's mood still up on day four or five of the fast?

[C]

I tried it, but I'm good with that Prolon. Oh, and everyone's moving to Texas, my home state.

[D]

Your hometown.

[C]

Welcome to Austin, everyone. I'm happy to tell you where the best case though is.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

So with the wealth tax that we talked about last week on the pod, the. You know, the Californians are all moving away. They're not going to New York. Some are going to Miami.

[D]

The new thing that you have to move to, you have to move. Move to Austin before series B. Is that like the new path for founders?

[A]

That's the new talking point. But when we. So the information, we surveyed our subscribers, which is always fun because it's a specific crew, to say the least. But. So 67% would not move.

[D]

Right.

[A]

So wealth tax, all that kind of stuff.

[B]

That means there are. That's the. Who's the. That's the percentage of your subscribers that are billionaires.

[A]

It's possible that those are. Yeah. I cannot verify people's.

[B]

You should change it to be like 33% of our subscribers are billionaires.

[A]

I know. I actually. That's really funny. I do believe we have the highest daily active billionaire readership on the Internet and daub. I use it in sales pitches by saying about Verify it.

[B]

The way I would frame it, which I'm sure is true, is you have the highest percentage of American wealth reads you every day. Right. Like, forget the billionaire thing, because that's just like a. You say, like, if you just take the number, the net worth of our readership exceeds any other publication in the world by a mile. That's what I would pitch.

[A]

Great. These things are all true. Like, deeply true. But. Okay, so Nevada.

[D]

But do they respond to the survey?

[A]

Texas and Florida edged out Nevada and poor New York.

[C]

Why would you think they would go to New York?

[B]

They have the same problem.

[C]

Yeah, there's.

[A]

But there's tax.

[D]

Yeah. Why would you. Why would you run to the socialists? You know they're going to take your

[A]

money too, because it's New York State. I know. I mean, I pointed all of that out in my tweet. I know people aren't racing towards Montana, But a mere 2%, guys, it's new York City where I would live if I Didn't live in California. I mean, it's. It's like, it's amazing.

[D]

But you're an east coast person. Like, you're an. You're an east coaster. And a lot of people, you know,

[B]

they have a wealth tax on the ballot.

[A]

I still 3%. I wasn't expecting 20%.

[D]

But like, I mean, it's pretty. It's. To Sam's point, it's entirely politics. Right. Like Florida and Texas are like leading the charge for the free world. That's like the guys.

[C]

Is there like real estate arbitrage we should be considering for Austin right now?

[B]

This has been my thing. I've been very excited for the mere millionaires who are going to get to buy all the billionaire research real estate in California.

[C]

I know, but should we also buy and then flip stuff for the billionaires to buy in Austin? I would like to get like both sides of the market.

[B]

I think that trade's already been taken. That trade's over.

[A]

Also, the stuff they want is really, really, really expensive.

[D]

Yeah, no, there's something like 240 lots on Lake Austin and they want one of those. Those are the lots that everybody wants.

[A]

Okay, well, time will tell. But yeah, this week also saw the rise of that meme. I mean, what's interesting to me now is like their attempts to organize the tech community to fight. Fight this more formally. I think Gary Tan at YC has been very vocal about that. But yeah, it's like, you know, start your company.

[D]

Won't that backfire? It could.

[A]

I mean, it can all backfire. We just. No one knows anything yet.

[D]

But how much truth was it? I also saw that there's an effort to create a new city in Greenland. Right?

[A]

Sure.

[C]

Everything is possible, Dave.

[A]

So we had the Golden Globe. Like, what's happening in the world?

[C]

Yes, the 49ers.

[A]

I know. I mean, it was amazing. I was on a plane for part of the game.

[D]

We're going to win the super bowl.

[A]

But Kittle's out. You think they're going to win the Super Bowl, Dave?

[D]

I mean, we lost Kittle, by the way.

[B]

Dave. Claude Code failed at making a Garmin watch face. I just tried it.

[D]

Really? Claude Bot Windows binaries be damned.

[A]

Let's end on this note. What percent so Claude Code. Claude cowork are amazing. You can squint, squint and see the future. What percentage of things you try fail? Like 80?

[C]

No, no.

[B]

It depends. Everything about inventive being. I just. The real problem I have, honestly.

[A]

Okay, now Sam's about to disrobe I'm gonna, I'll.

[B]

I'll reveal my shirt. But before I do, at the end

[C]

this, Sam is starting to unbutton himself. If anyone is not watching this, here's

[B]

the thing that I'm actually curious about this stuff. I love tinkering. I build projects all the time. I don't like, use any of the things I build really. Right.

[D]

And so maybe that's the problem.

[B]

No, no. So here's the thing. I am not convinced you don't use letter meme lettering is the only thing I do use, but I've spent more. That's more than a vibe coded project at this point.

[D]

Letterman's the main thing you've built that I use.

[B]

Letter name's great and it's only going to get better. But like, that's not. That's more than a vibe coded thing at this point. But like all the stuff I build, like little tools and shims and I've. I've spent weeks building cool stuff and it's very, very fun. Like, I love our line from the summer that the real thing is AI does replace Instagram because it is literally more entertaining to build toys. It's like Legos. It's super fun.

[A]

It was Netflix. I still like my Netflix.

[B]

It's like, it's really like Legos and Legos are really fun. I don't actually think that almost any of this stuff is actually that useful. Right. And so for me, I think the reality is this is gonna be the thing is like tick cloud code or any of these things. It's like you're gonna build a lot of toys. What percentage of or what do you actually use? I don't know. Like, I think it's going to be pretty few and far between. I think that will be an interesting thing where like tons and tons and tons of projects get built, but almost nothing's useful.

[D]

Maybe you just need better ideas.

[B]

I have pretty good ideas, Dave. That's not the issue. It's more just like, I don't know

[D]

what is a good idea. Good idea gets used. Right.

[B]

Like, I just. Let me put it this way. I've built. I've spent tons and tons of hours building fun AI things for myself. I've spent extremely few hours using it. Right. And I don't think that's because I'm stupid or building the wrong stuff. I think that most people just don't actually know what to build with it or what to do. I mean, I'll quote my Slow Ventures newly appointed partner, Yoni on this. Who Was like, this is cool, but I have no idea what to build.

[A]

Brings up for me an interesting point which is like, obviously these tools are still disruptive if you just think about like the future of software, which we're talking about. But I think the other narrative which we can get into in coming weeks and have continued to talk about is how we quickly. Now the big companies are also rolling out a lot of some useful, some not useful tools. And Google, unencumbered by the DOJ anymore, is basically going big Google and tying together all your data and all the things you actually really want as a Google user. And that will continue too. And so I think that also kind of explains like, you know, the tinkering. But that doesn't make what's possible with the tinkering less significant. When you think about that playing out across the whole industry. Industry, I don't know.

[B]

But look again, it's just like we're in the fart app era of the iPhone where like people are gonna build all the cool stuff. Most of it goes away. It's like I, I just, I do think it's really fun. Yeah.

[A]

But the fact that those tools existed, created and destroyed a lot of businesses.

[B]

Not as many as you think.

[A]

Well, the App Store did. Eh.

[B]

What did it destroy? Like it made the iPhone made really big business.

[D]

The taxi business.

[B]

Taxi business is probably the best example of what the iPhone did destroy.

[A]

I mean, probably the news business because of all the ways you could entertain yourself on your phone.

[B]

I mean, no, it was already going to be destroyed by the web though. I just, I think this is like, the thing is like what the iPhone did is just more Internet and it made the big companies bigger. As we've been saying. I really believe that, you know, again, in terms of no, no new information that in general what AI will do is make big companies bigger. I think it totally takes away software as a pricing mechanism, which means a bunch of software companies go away. But when you really, really scope out, I just, I still am in the camp of like, it's going to be less. I mean, I think it is socially deeply disruptive. I think it's going to like screw up our government and how we think about value and employment. And also like, there's a lot of things it will do, but I don't know, like in terms of like what applications I use day to day. I'm not convinced that AI is going to like dramatically change my app stack. Personally.

[A]

I wasn't arguing that it was, but okay, so everyone can have a listen to this episode and reach their own conclusions around what we spent the bulk of our time talking about. Whether it matters or not. I think it matters, but not necessarily. It can matter by making the big guys bigger, but I also think it's going to have deep implications for SaaS and the whole enterprise software world.

[B]

Yeah, SaaS is clearly going away. I agree with that. I just don't think, like, I don't

[A]

really agree on that.

[B]

I don't really use SaaS.

[A]

Many businesses do. Okay, friends, it's been a treat. Thank you to all our listeners, viewers, followers, subscribers, commenters. I won't be here next week, but the gang will be. So stay tuned and we'll more or less. We'll be back next week and I'll see you all soon.

[C]

Bye Bye. If you enjoyed this show, please leave us a virtual high five by rating it and reviewing it it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcast. Find more information about each episode in the show notes and follow us on social media by searching for more or less avemorin essonless lesson. And as for me, I'm Brit. See you guys next time.