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- [00:00]
Sean
You described SaaS as a sinking ship.
- [00:02]
Amit
You look at like, cloud code going from like 0 to 2.5 billion in ARR cursor going to like 2 billion ARR in just like, the last few months.
- [00:09]
Sean
I've just never heard a software vendor honestly say it's a dying business. Everyone else is talking about how AI is just going to make their software better and that there's no competition.
- [00:18]
Matt
I think it's irresponsible for any founder to not be going as deep into all of this as possible. You need to get your hand dirty. Like, you really need to understand how all this works at a pretty intimate level.
- [00:31]
Amit
90% of the code was being written by AI. Today, it's up to 100%.
- [00:35]
Sean
Customer service is the same thing. It used to be in your warehouse and then it was outsourced to max code. That's outsourced to the Philippines. It's just because it's the cheapest place to get those tokens. At a certain point, the cheapest place to get those tokens will be on the Internet.
- [00:47]
Amit
Half the software engineers, half the lawyer, half the financial analysts will get displaced in the next to 24 months.
- [00:55]
Sean
Half.
- [00:55]
Amit
50%.
- [00:56]
Sean
You're never going to hire another customer service rep by the end of the year. That is a shocking world to be in.
- [01:01]
Amit
The directive I've given to my entire team is our right to win is how fast we play in this new economy and how much value we deliver and, you know, help our customers get that vantage point by getting there quicker. Like 12 months before somebody else does, six months before somebody else does.
- [01:17]
Sean
Imagine if you're in the 1990s or whatever and they're like, hey, this thing with the Internet, they're like, ah, it's boring. I don't care about the Internet. I'm like, dude, you're not going to survive, man.
- [01:26]
Mike Beckham
Welcome to the operators podcast. My name is Mike Beckham and we are proudly brought to you by Fulfill After Sell, Rich Panel, North Beam, Sarah's analytics and postscript. We are a community for entrepreneurs that are building things. And if you want to be a part of this community, you can listen to the podcast, but you can also go sign up for our newsletter. A ton of awesome information in there. We also partner with E Commerce Fuel, a forum for you to connect with other entrepreneurs that are building businesses where we can learn from one another. So without further ado, onto the pod.
- [02:04]
Fulfill Representative
Dealing with big box retailers means EDI connections, and that's often a trigger for needing an ERP system. We've Been using EDI connections to Costco forever. And the only way that we've really solved that problem to make it seamless is through Fulfill. EDI adds complexity to everything you do and Fulfill solves that complexity with their connections to their systems. You need Fulfill to move from being just a D2C brand to being a true multi channel brand because big buck retailers are going to require you to connect to their systems using edi. Let me tell you, it's way easier if you do it with Fulfill.
- [02:37]
Matt
I got my first thing. Sean, I got a question for you. Have you installed this open clothing? Have you got a computer going where you have like your own little, your little dude that can do stuff for you?
- [02:49]
Sean
No. So I haven't, I haven't installed OpenClaw. I've been using a lot of agents. So there's, you know, Claude has one, OpenAI has one. I'm using the, the Manus one the most, which is, which is owned by Meta. So Meta, if you just ask them, they'll give you a bunch of credits because it gets really expensive fast to have agents do stuff. But I've, I've, I've done a lot of agentic work and I really, really like it. The reason why I haven't done openclaw yet is just the security issues. But I've been listening to Jason Calacanis has a podcast this week in startups. They've pivoted just talking about openclaw every single day. So I'm definitely diving into what's possible.
- [03:30]
Matt
Yeah, Amit, I don't know how much you've played with it. I have, I've installed it, I have a MacBook Pro that was not doing anything. So I like, I decided to use that as like a little sort of sandbox machine and I got this thing sitting on my desk at home and I'm just finding it a riot to like give it tasks and have it do basic things like hey, can you go in and check my email and tell me, tell me what the latest three Emerson like while I'm on my phone just walking around, I haven't, this is where I'm curious and I'd like to start because it's pretty remarkable at how quickly that thing grew and how much people are using it. And I think it's like, it's a good signal for what we're entering into this year. I haven't taken it to the level where like I'm giving it permission to do a lot of editing, writing, like doing anything itself yet. Mostly for What Sean said, I'm terrified in some, some dimension, you know, like for the amount I'm doing with Claude code. This thing for some reason freaks me out. So like just being honest. So Ahmed, maybe walk us through. Like you, you run a software company. The narrative around all this right now can't make you feel good. On some dimension. Right. And on another, because like you and I, I've walked through what Rich Panel is doing with agentic customer service. On another, you guys are like charging full, full speed ahead and you must be optimistic. So give us, give us the thesis, like where, where do you think things are now? Where do you think they're going to? Just give us, lay a land from your perspective because John and I are dumb e commerce operators. We need to get smarter.
- [05:10]
Amit
Absolutely. Absolutely, I think. So. What we are seeing is this happened like a year ago, that 90% of the code was being written by AI. Today it's up to 100%. And all the software engineering work is limited to now or what? The scope of software engineering is actually, actually guiding these agents. Like having the taste, having the direction, and reviewing the work that the agents are finally doing. So the humans have become the bottleneck. And if you look at Dario's recent interviews, he said that phase one is 90% swe work or like code writing. Phase two is 100% of code writing. I think we are on phase two. Then he said phase three is going to be 90% of swe work, which is everything that software engineers do, which is not just limited to writing code, but deciding what to build, talking to customers, talking to users. So he says that will also be done like 90% and 100% over the next 12 months. And I certainly see it happening too. So. And I don't see this lightly, but I've said this to the entire team, that the core business that we have is sort of like a dying business and we have our feet in both. So, you know, one of our foot is inside that sinking ship because I don't think software the way it is today will continue to exist. And then we have another feed in this rocket ship where we are also playing part in this agent economy and building agents for our customers and even our customers agents. So that's how I see happening the SaaS as we know it is going to cease to exist completely.
- [06:49]
Matt
Yeah, I mean there's always, there's just. There's going to be more software. Sean. What? Actually, Sean, you've got a thought on this, but I got a question for you too, because I Think this is interesting.
- [06:58]
Sean
I've just never heard a software vendor so honestly say it's a dying business. That's, that's the crazy, that's the crazy thing about the podcast, dude. It's like, you know, everyone, everyone else is talking about how AI is just going to make their software better and that there's no competition. But you described SaaS as a sinking ship, so that's probably just worth unpacking. Like what do you think happens to your business in the next 12 months?
- [07:23]
Amit
I don't think it will continue to exist unless there is like friction points, you know, like so all of these things that we discussed that people are slow to adopt and there is this enterprise implementation friction. So the diffusion is going to be much quicker than anything that we have ever seen. So gone are the days where Salesforce now have like 20 year modes after they've gotten into Fortune 500. Because the pace at which that this technology is like diffusing in organizations, you know, the revenues that you have now is not going to be durable. I would like to share with anecdote with all of you guys. So do you know Gainsight by any chance the CSM tool, Customer success tool. So they're worth like billions of dollars. What they do is they are for software companies like us and they help us do QBRs and MBRS like monthly business reviews with our customers. So you're able to step one, you actually integrate Gainsight with your product data. Okay, so it's a CSM tool, customer success tool. So if you're going to like Rich panel and talking to your csm, you're going to like North Beam talking to your CSM or Klaviyo. They all have these CSMs, right? They all have this like CSM tool. What that basically does is it plugs in your product usage data and it tells you like which accounts are at risk when the renewals are coming. And they have these like cadences that they sort of like store there. Think of it as like CRM but for your customer success team, right? And they have these like risk profiles like who's about to churn? Why are they about to churn? Did the usage go down? All of that signals, right? Typically it would take you after you buy this tool, it would take you like couple of weeks if not more to integrate this with your entire product stack. Over the last weekend my head of engineering, he built this tool and it's forget integration, it's like completely built out. He's a God engineer but he built it to that Level where Sean, if you go on a QBR with a rich panel csm, that deck is also automatically generated. So there is a dashboard where you see all the accounts, how much each account is paying, how many seats do they have, when are they renewing, all of that stuff and the risk profile. But you can click like one button and generates like a gamma tech for the review. So CSMs don't have to spend like three hours preparing for the call, they can do it in like three minutes. So it's mind blowing. Like how amazing. Not only is it like an alternative to Gainsight, it's, it's plus plus at least for our use case. So you can clearly like, you know, draw, draw a parallel from here. So this guy was able to build it over one weekend to 80% level. Then he took another weekend to perfect it. So four days for a very great engineer to build it. 12 months from now he'll probably take six hours and another 12 months or like six months from then it will be a non technical user taking 6 hours to like build that out. I clearly see it. I don't, I don't see any way that's not happening. I could have liked or laughed.
- [10:24]
Matt
Do you navigate Amit? Like so you're, you're the, you're running this company, right? Rich panel, how are you thinking of it from your go to market over, over the next 12 to 24 months? Like how does rich panel change?
- [10:41]
Amit
Yeah, so, so, so the couple of things that has to happen for like all of these companies is like you have to, you have to be like not emotionally attached to whatever you built. Like I'm 37 years old, it took me like all my life to build this thing and you know it's going to like get completely disrupted over like 12 months or 24 months is my. So I think the mental model has to be like, yeah, it's a video game. Like life is a video game. So the levels have changed, the whole thing got done and then you can die again in the next stage. So that's the mental model. And I say this nonchalantly, but I've gone through that entire stages of you know what the is happening. No, this is not going to happen.
- [11:21]
Matt
And so all of that, the stages of grief.
- [11:25]
Amit
Yeah, yeah, all of those five stages of grief, I've been through it. So that's why I'm saying it calmly that we have this time, we have this opportunity and if there are other companies, like if you look at like Claude code going from like 0 to 2.5 billion in ARR cursor. Going to like 2 billion ARR in just like the last few months. They went from like one to two in like four months. So my thought is like, hey, why can't we be playing in that economy? Because those guys are new. Those are also like software engineers. They're pretty talented and so are we. So why can't we play in that economy? And. Which is exactly the direction we took, you know, 18 months ago. And I think we are very well positioned to play in that new space.
- [12:04]
Sean
Yeah, yeah. And this is where company structure, I think, is so important. Like, you guys haven't raised venture capital. So. So you can sit here and be like, yeah, so the business model we're currently in is going to die in the next 12 months. We have to launch a whole new business model. And here's the reason why it's going to work. But, you know, if you had $10 million in venture capital and you just saw software multiples compress, I think there's a way more doomerism. It seems like you're very optimistic that your business model might be destroyed. So are you telling me to short software stocks?
- [12:39]
Matt
Not investment advice, Sean.
- [12:41]
Amit
Not anymore. Revenue has already shorted them. Like, there are like, these software companies I used to look up to are trading at like 2x the revenue multiple. Like, it's. I think people have already done it, like, so I don't know what role they will pay going forward.
- [12:58]
Matt
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- [13:50]
Sean
I'll.
- [13:51]
Matt
I'll. I'll send it to you if you haven't but it's really, it's a very cool example of how they did the same thing or are doing the same thing you're talking about, which is they built the thing that ate their old thing. Right. So like they looked at their company and said like, this is not a good direction. We need to stand up the thing that kills ourselves. Right. And then that, that product, I think it's called fin.
- [14:16]
Sean
Yeah.
- [14:17]
Matt
Is at like 100 million in ar already and it's basically eating the old thing. Like they birthed the new child, the old child, which. Yeah, I mean, I think the. I guess I got a couple thoughts on this. I think that that feels like that's exactly what technology has always done. Right. Usually it's just somebody else coming for your lunch. I also, I don't know if you guys have thought about this, but like, it sort of to me seems strange that we expected SaaS to never commoditize. So like every industry in history has had margin compression. And the only argument I've ever gotten from SaaS people is that our margins are perfect, they can't compress. I'm like, are you sure about that? You know, like, like every industry in all, like history of capitalism, lots of them started out with obscene, obscene profit levels. And eventually competition arrives and we commoditize. Like, that's just what happens. So is this that moment? Is it because. And then Amit, is this because AI can write code so like we no longer have a supply side problem of code? Which is what I always understood as the big issue.
- [15:37]
Amit
Yeah. So I think writing code has not been a challenge for the longest time because there are like too many capable engineers that are capable of writing code. And the SaaS margin compression has happened like years ago. That's my belief. It's just the way that we do modeling. Because if you have what's our biggest P and L item, it's salaries. And within that also it's developer salaries. That's like, in any SaaS company you look at, it's very common to have like 50% of your revenue going as salaries. But the way that it is itemized in the P L, it, it doesn't show up because a lot of that shows like, oh, this is R D budget. Like we can decide to not spend it and take that money home. And while that might have been true for Salesforce in 2000, it's no longer true. You have to build X number of integrations, you have to build X number of features just to stay relevant. So I don't Think that is R and D budget. That's more like cogs budget. But it's just been wrongly categorized in all SaaS PNLs for ages.
- [16:40]
Matt
So margin compression happens I find hilarious.
- [16:44]
Sean
Yeah. So what do you think the future of something like a Klaviyo is? You know, Klaviyo has a lot of integrations. Klaviyo is like it's consumption based. Right. They charge me percent if you break it down that way. So like are they going to be eaten as well or is this just coming to like the legacy bloated players? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
- [17:07]
Amit
I think we'll have to do some simulation in our heads to see how this is headed. Right. So even if the cost of writing software goes to zero, let's say would you still write it yourself or would you just lend it from somebody else? Would you rent it from somebody else? So the arguments can be made for both. If you are renting it from somebody else, you get best practices on all these 55 integrations already built in that you will probably use. You will have like security baked in because you know, these are like very talented software engineers. They know like, you know, you don't like white code security vulnerability and you make sure. So the trust factor is going to be huge in the new economy where you get all of this SOC2 HIPAA compliance from these vendors and the agents are running within that trusted environment. The second is going to be like this domain expertise. So even if you look at like emails, the writing code is okay, but then all the code is like, you know, saving all the engagement rates, what happened to each email and then doing analytics on top of it so that domain expertise will always remain. And the third piece is the continuous evolvement. So even if you guys decide to like replace the 60 SaaS apps, you'll have to like have an IT team of like a few engineers just to maintain them. Right? So you may decide like, hey, it's not worth doing it. I will still pay for that SaaS, but it better be like a huge upgrade to the traditional UI where my agent is capable of using your software agent to do its task. So it'll be like you will have your own agent that you will give objectives to and this agent is then going to rent other agents. So instead of people buying software built by other people, it'll be like your agent will interact with our agent to get a particular task done. So your agent will be like, yeah, I run an E commerce business and this is the next product I want to launch what all will have to happen. So you're like, okay, we'll have to get this much supply. We'll have to do this testing. We'll have to run these metads. We'll have to ramp up our customer service team so they will go to rich panels, AI agent and say, yeah, I want this much capacity. That's what I see is going to happen.
- [19:22]
Sean
Ahmed.
- [19:23]
Matt
Are we going to see more and more versions of all these companies? So, like, let's use. Let's just stay on the Clavio example. They kind of own E commerce and email. Right. There's been one challenger in the last several years.
- [19:38]
Amit
Yeah.
- [19:40]
Matt
Is. Is because the cost of writing code is effectively zero or going to zero. Do we see more competition in the space? Like, there's been certain. Certain ones that just haven't had any competition. Like, does that stop now? Do we get more?
- [19:57]
Amit
You see, the code is not the only issue. Right. Like, to be. If I'm being, like, completely honest, it's not like Richman is successful because we wrote some code that others couldn't do. It's a combination of other things. Those other things are like, hey, there has to be like a distribution mode. There has to be, like, brand recognition so those things don't go away. Even in that new economy. One thing that is also going to change is probably how this trust is going to be built. So, like, traditionally, human beings were trusting based on, like, what they see on X or Twitter, or, like, what their peers are talking about. You'll also have to earn the agent's trust next time onwards. So, like, I just integrated like three tools yesterday, which my agent recommended that it wants. So these tools were like, web search tool. Like, I can go and like, tell my agent, go set up a demo for Pela Case or, you know, Ridge, and it needs to, like, go and, like, scrape your website to read your FAQs, read your policies, and then set up the demo based on that. Right. So I had to buy like, two tools. One is like a URL fetch tool, like, get me the bunch of URLs that is registered on ridge.com and the second is web scaping tool. Both of them are like other APIs. So you'll have to become discoverable for your agents because your agents will also be doing a lot of buying for you.
- [21:17]
Sean
Yeah. So Agent Marketplace is going to be a definite killer service that somebody launches the App Store for agents. Right?
- [21:23]
Matt
Yeah.
- [21:24]
Sean
And it's going to have its own reviews and everything else. You know, it is. It is Interesting to be at this, you know, crossroads in time. I think, I think maybe you said this on a, on a call we were on. You said you're never going to hire another customer service rep by the end of the year. Right. And that is a shocking world to be in. Right. So, you know, we have two full time people in the US who manage our customer service program and then there's a bunch of, you know, overseas contractors who actually answer the tickets or whatever. And you totally see how an AI agent will deliver better service faster, like with way more detail than an overseas contractor. And we'll do it infinitely. We'll do it 24 hours a day or whatever. And then I think, I think I still have the US Manager because that has to roll up to somebody. But the people actually answering tickets, I think that'll be the first massive layoffs of the AI era. So what are your thoughts on that? Is it just inevitable that agents are going to answer every ticket?
- [22:25]
Amit
Yeah, that's going to happen like very quickly. Like, the only reason that you wouldn't have access to that technology is because you didn't act fast or, you know, you had like, other priorities as a founder or a CEO. But if you really make that like a priority, like, hey, I want to like get this done, that's, that's going to be possible in the next six months if it's not already possible today. The only thing that is stopping you from today is like the amount of setup it takes to like train the agents. You know, like you took Matt, the example of Intercom or there are like other companies. I believe that the way that the current setup is done is pretty manual. Like you have to train the thing for like six weeks before.
- [23:04]
Matt
Yeah.
- [23:05]
Amit
Before it becomes right. You use your, you know, Claude code. It takes a lot of setup before it becomes useful. But that's where the SaaS vendors have to like step in and say like, hey, you just plug it in, give it your website, give it your past tickets and it will do all the setup come to you only for reviews. That will also become like an agent.
- [23:24]
Matt
What's the. Have you guys boiled this down to a cost per ticket? I know, Sean, I think we've talked about this in the past, like a couple years ago. But like using overseas labor, there's like a certain cost per ticket we can get to. And then ultimately, if AI is doing it, we're talking about tokens. Compute. Right,
- [23:45]
Sean
Right. So. Oh, Matt, I have a very interesting thought on this. So I think all human work is tokens. This podcast could be translated to tokens. So tokens is just a currency, Right. And you know, a plumber coming to work on your house is infinite tokens because you don't have robots yet. You know what I mean? Like, like you, we, we can't put enough tokens onto that problem to have them do it. But this has been true for 20 or 50 years or whatever, right? So it used to be in your building, in your office in Manhattan, and then it moved to an offsite location and then it moved to India. Right. And it's because the cheapest way to get those tokens done. So like the tokens is just the work. In this case, the cheapest way to get that done was to put it in India. Right. Customer service is the same thing. It used to be in your warehouse and then it was, you know, outsourced to Mexico, that's outsourced to the Philippines. And it's just because it's the cheapest place to get those tokens. And at a certain point, the cheapest place to get those tokens will be on the Internet. But the problem is just like if you're trying to use Claude 4.6 Opus to do your customer service tickets, the cost per ticket will be a dollar. Right? But if you're trying to use Kimi, the open source model from China, the cost per ticket is going to be about 4 cents. So it's really just how fast you can do the up, the actual integration, what Amit was talking about, actually set up these agents and train them. And when do you actually want to go all in on doing it? Right. Right now you can get cheaper cost per tokens if you go through open source models to do your customer service. But if you try to do it off like, you know, Sienna is a competitor, their cost per ticket is over a dollar.
- [25:22]
Matt
Where, yeah, it's cheaper.
- [25:24]
Sean
Yeah. If you're doing it in the Philippines right now, your cost per ticket is 25 cents. So there's at a certain point where humans are competitive in the labor market, but we just know that the way things are going to, it could be six months, could be 18 months. Eventually open source will match whatever cost per ticket you're doing right now. So what am I wrong about there, Amit?
- [25:44]
Amit
100%. Right, Sean? I agree. That's how we also view things. Like everything, the unit of work is like tokens.
- [25:51]
Matt
Now.
- [25:51]
Amit
That's the new world that we live in. So 100% agreed on that point. Based on the initial analysis that we have done. Even if you're doing like customer service in Philippines, the cost per ticket comes down to like for most brands comes down to like two or three dollars. Right? That's, that's all blended in the labor cost, the number of tickets they do.
- [26:13]
Sean
Those people should sign up for Rich panel. Because my cost per ticket is like a quarter, bro.
- [26:18]
Amit
It varies, it varies from like brand to brand. And you mentioned like, you know these other players are charging like a dollar per ticket to resolve with AI. There are a couple of problems. Even for brands that are at $3. They would not, they're not adopting to that AI as quickly is because saving $2 per ticket might mean like saving $5,000 or $10,000 of bot online per month. But you may have like higher other leverage tasks to focus on instead of spending like six weeks training this agent. And even after you train this agent, today's players are not able to like completely replace the cxd. You still need like some members here and there. They automate some. The escalations are still going. They're doing like the tier one ticket. So when it like makes when these two things hit like when it the six weeks time to set up becomes maybe 30 minutes or one hour and when, when it is not replacing half the team but the entire team, people are going to like flock towards it because it would just become like a no brainer. So that's the next piece I see happening in the next six months that's pertaining to customer service. And I was talking to Sequoia by the way, Sean, we have raised Venture from Sequoia. Like in the very early days we said no for the remaining stuff for the subsequent rounds because we became profitable. So I was just talking to them and we had like a huge debate over like how to charge for this. So my inclination was that we charge based on tokens, based on plus plus. So if the cost per token for one ticket was like 25 cents, we charge like one third on top of it for providing the platform on which it runs. That was my inclination. And they were like, they were rightfully telling me that hey, there's going to be like objection from the end customers because they want unit of work, they want like cost per ticket. And the reason I want to go per token is because the work profile is going to become very versatile. So you will be able to tell your customer support agent that at the end of each conversation assess the sentiment and if the sentiment is good, then upsell this product. It's not a ticket anymore. It's an upsell conversation. You'll be able to tell your AI agent like hey, at the end of each conversation I want you to go to Memory MD and tell me what was interesting about it. And then you know, every week or every day in the morning send me a slack message telling me like what was interesting about it. Now this is not cost per ticket. This is plus plus work, right? So and the thing is going to become so versatile that you do like ask it to do like surveys. You do like ask it to like, you know, reach out to all the members that haven't purchased in the last three or six months with like a personalized message. So the work profile is going to be very, you know, diversified. So just like human beings, the intelligent ones are being built like lawyers and all are being built per hour. AIs will be built on token basis. Like how much work do you want me to do? Because I can do anything. Like as a lawyer I can help you get out of a ticket, but I can also defend you in a case or a M and a representation. So I don't know what that unit of work is going to be.
- [29:32]
Sean
Sean here to tell you about Saris analytics and Saris Pulse Ridge is profitable every single day. And we've taken that super seriously since we built this business. We track contribution margin by day. We look at the SKUs we sell every single day and we have to do this manually up until Sarace Linux came out. We take all of our SKU level data, we build it into the data warehouse. Everything that goes into making a true P and L I get on a day to day basis. Sara's Pulse gives you clarity. So your CLO and your CFO and your CMO start speaking the same language. Contribution margin shifts teams away from hoping profits survive the season to manage them in real time. Book a walkthrough with the Saris Pulse team today. Click the link in the description and thank you Saris for bringing you this show.
- [30:14]
Matt
An interesting idea that we all become so used to thinking and talking in tokens that our pricing expectations for software is, could actually just wind up being like, now I understand what it costs, you know, whereas like in the past I have, I have no idea what the cost basis of Ridge Panel is to run that company. It was really hard for me to say like I want to negotiate based off of your cost. I have no clue. But everything's in tokens. I'm kind of like, it's pretty transparent now.
- [30:45]
Sean
It's, it's going back to the media buying model. It's like you know, I'm going to charge you 10% of media buying or whatever. It's like, look, the more media buying I do, the more your company's successful. It's alliance incentives that I want you to spend more money. There's people, rightfully, there's a lot of problems with that. And we've, we've thought about if you should charge percentage of ad spend or whatever, but the reality is the seat based model is dead because I'm going to have less employees and you're going to charge me for my, for my agency. It just doesn't make any sense. And then I totally get where the core is coming from. As a customer, I would love for you to be like, yeah, I want a dollar per ticket. I understand that, but that's still, I think, old school thinking because like, like what you just said, what if the thing could do my taxes for me too? That's not a ticket anymore. You know, like, like in your example, the lawyer. Yes, it could be a lawyer. It could also be a customer service person. Like if you're, if you have a, you know, if you're on the Supreme Court, you're probably pretty good at doing other too. Right? So I do just think they're probably thinking in a more limited stroke I would love the idea of just all work being done on tokens plus. Right. Just like a commission basically.
- [31:53]
Matt
Yeah, yeah. It's like it's cost plus pricing. It's just a new form of cost plus pricing which is a very big break for the SaaS industry. Amit, do you. Yeah, do you. Something you said is like, so you know, you could have your agent do all kinds of tasks when it comes to the customer. They could reach out and do a survey. They could reach out and say, hey, I saw you bought this. How about this? Like all that stuff. Do you see a convergence then in consumer, consumer SaaS? Right now I have lots of SaaS that does all these things. I have post purchase surveys. I have like, you know, cross sell, upsell post. Like all, all this is everywhere in my company. All of it is kind of, if I could group it all, all of it is talking to the customer in some way that like there's some kind of conversation happening with the customer. So we have like lots of different software brokering messages to our customers for different workflows. Do you see all of this converging? Is there going to be like one master broker that's working with all these specialized tools or do you just sort of see like, no, it's just going to get so easy to do all of these tasks with such intelligence that, you know, Rich Panel will be in competition with other people who do messaging of other forms right now.
- [33:07]
Amit
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's pretty fluid, Matt. So it's, it's difficult for me to say with a lot of confidence. I do see like a lot of convergence happening. But by that same token, I also see that the capabilities will level up. So if you look at an E. Com brand from like 2015 versus the E. Com brand of 2026, there's a massive difference in the amount of things you have to do to earn that same dollar. Right? Because yes, you know, you guys got like Shopify, you guys got KV, you got rich panel, you got, you know, like 50 other tools. But that leveled up your capabilities. Like, you didn't stop there because that's what we will do. Like, in a competitive capitalist market, when you have these capabilities available, you'll just do more. So by one logic, all of the things that you're doing now, there is room for like, consolidation. But because of the capabilities that be available to you and to your competition, you'll just be expected to do so much more to compete in this new marketplace.
- [34:08]
Matt
Okay, so how, I guess, what are you expecting on the brand side to change? So we're talking a lot about like rich panel and SaaS and everything. So one theory is that we stop hiring, like, net new people to do customer service. Right. CX as we know it today. How. But then let's talk about like, the people that are left. Right? So like, when you, when you have all of this work being done by agents, what do you think our teams look like? Like, what is the head of, like Sean's head of customer experience that he has stateside? What does that person's job evolve to?
- [34:48]
Amit
Yeah, so let's look at it like a couple of ways. I don't know if you guys are following, like, what's happening to Figma's stock. You will see, like, people are just skipping. Like in my company, people are just skipping through the Figma step. So first it used to take like a few weeks of design reviews. Like, you know, you come up, you talk to like 15 customers, you come up with a use case, you validate it, then you do 50 more interviews, you propose a feature, then you do Figma design reviews. This entire process used to take three or four weeks. Now people are just skipping past that stage where you ask Claude or GPT to be your customer and you talk to it like hey, pretend you're this, pretend you're that. And you do those conversations again and again. It gives you the insight. And then you skip through the whole design phase of Figma reviews and all of that. You just have like a skill built in, like a front end skill that builds and mocks the whole thing and then it also builds the thing to take it to production. So same thing will happen for the head of CX where they don't have to do all of this mocks and things. It's an agent that decides what experiment to run today. Goes and like builds the landing page, then does like 13 types of tests, like, is it compatible on mobile? It's compatible with all widgets. That's the orchestration that SaaS people will have to provide because it's very easy to build a landing page using AI tools even today. So where we will stand is giving you the infrastructure and the protection that once you make that change, it's being tested against all iOS, Safari, Chrome, all those devices and we ensure that whatever you wipe coded did not break the thing. Then the second step you can think from there is it will run the experiment by exposing it to like 10% of your audience and it will pick the winner and then pick the next experiment. So it's going to be like continuously evolving. Right. So that's how I see it happening because you know, we as humans, we're not going to stop just because I was able to do this thing so well. Because your competitor is going to say like, oh Matt, you're doing some agentic thing to like do this once a week. I'm going to do it like six times a week. I'm going to change my landing pages. I'm going to run like 60 experiments at the same time. So that's, that's what I see happening.
- [37:00]
Matt
And do you see like a head of customer service then becoming more technical? Or do you think that AI gets so good at just removing the technical needs that they're actually just like a great thinker?
- [37:14]
Sean
Yeah, I think you're head of customer. I think your head of customer service just becomes your head of customer and like it is one person who manages 50 agents or one master agent or however you want to talk about it. And they'll do, they'll manage customer service, they'll manage, you know, cross sells upsells, they'll come up with more better flows, look up with customer events. Like, I think we end up spending more time taking care of our customers in this new world. And let's talk about the job displacement part, because AI is going to be very bad for SaaS companies in the same way that cars were very bad for stable boys. Right? Like there used to be a lot of stable boys, now there's no stable boys and cars are to blame. And that's going to happen to SaaS companies. I will take the argument that US jobs are less at risk because if it hasn't been outsourced already, why, why would it be outsourced now? I'm not saying in four years, like, you know, U.S. jobs aren't at risk. But the first people who are going to lose their jobs are call center employees, are people answering tickets, are, you know it. So it's really going to hit the outsource economy the hardest. I think. You know, if you're, if you're somewhere which is like a VA placement tool, like and you're in, you're placing VAs who answer people's emails, I'm like, well no, Claude can do that right now. So anyway, that's just to think about the job displacement. I think the US won't be hit that hard.
- [38:44]
Matt
Yeah, so.
- [38:45]
Amit
So the job will get displaced irrespective. Like Dario himself said it, like half the software engineers, half the lawyer, half the financial analysts will get displaced in the next 12 to 24 months. Half. 50%. So the economy is different. You know, like if, if I am running a law firm and I get to like remove 50% of my lawyers or just to like 2x my throughput, I benefit. But the lawyers as a whole do not benefit. So jobs are potent. Like in both the cases, it's going to suffer. But when you're outsourcing, that company was probably only relying on outsourcing as a revenue. Right. Like so, so there the jobs will also be gone and the economy will also be disrupted. Both things will happen
- [39:32]
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- [40:16]
Matt
I guess. But hang on. Can I push back on this for both of you guys? Like, yeah, Is it more true that companies are simply going to go after cost savings, or do you think that there's going to be companies that go after more land? Like, will they. Like, if I have a thousand lawyers right now, Yeah. I could take two approaches. I could say I want to go get 10 times the business with my thousand lawyers, because I can now. Or I could say, like, I'm happy with my business at the size it is and I can just cut my costs by half. Like, what. What's more likely to be True in
- [40:46]
Sean
the US I think the best firms will 10x their business because. Yeah, you know, the problem with lawyers is that it's very hard to become an expert. It's very expensive. It takes years and years of training. And if you could just have infinite lawyers overnight, you're going to file more lawsuits is what's going to happen. You're going to clog the whole system. But so if everyone gets 10x more productive, I just don't know if the world can tolerate 10x more legal output. Right. Or a thousand x more legal output. I think at some point it's going to both. The best firms will take over more land, but half the firms will just go bust. So it's going to be, what about your consumer, Sean?
- [41:28]
Matt
Like, how are you, how do, how do consumer brands react here? Like companies that have, like us, what
- [41:34]
Sean
do you think we do? I think this hurts SaaS and this hurts service businesses. That's what we just talked about, right? So SaaS is. SaaS is screwed because now everyone can make a SaaS product and there's market compression and service businesses are screwed because you make an arbitrage on people. And the idea of people being workers has just broken because your computer's gonna be workers and you're gonna charge people on tokens. And so, you know, if you're in services, if it's accountant employers or whatever, you're screwed. Dude, I think it's the best time ever to be a consumer brand. It's like, yes, there might be disruption in the labor market, right? But you know, it'd be very difficult to even, even in two years to have the world's best agent and be like, make me a gummy brand that does $10 million a year in revenue. Right. If you, if you said that as a prompt. It's just, this is a cascading world of Events that still intersect with the real world because you're going to say make me a gummy brand. They're going to have to find the people who make the gummies. You know what I mean? They're going to have to go, go through that entire world. And then also earlier Amit said this distribution is still a moat. Like you have to get customers. Right. And it's just going to be very difficult to, to break into consumer. I think. But I think it's a great thing to be a consumer brand. So bearish on SaaS, bearish on services. Super stoked to be in consumer.
- [42:56]
Matt
I don't. I, for some reason I guys, I get really bullish on SaaS and bullish on services because I just think, I mean this might be the optimist in me. But there, there would in theory Sean, there could actually be demand for 10x more legal services if the technology from a diffusion perspective is like evenly spread. So like if all, like if your landscaper can get more efficient and take on more business or if you're whatever like all companies in all sectors, like if consumer can get bigger, if everything can expand, then there's demand for more of everything. Right? And that, that's very much like the other side of this which is maybe there is actually like a lot more demand for more software because we're just going to need a shitload more of it.
- [43:43]
Sean
Oh yeah. I, so I, when I say bearish, there's going to be way more software. There's going to be like everything will have software everywhere, right? But the. I guess what I say bearish, you won't have a company that does 100 million ARR be worth $10 billion or whatever.
- [43:58]
Amit
Right?
- [43:59]
Sean
Yeah.
- [43:59]
Matt
The multiple compression is real. Do you think that the multiple compression is because of quality of revenue then it's not that there's more software or less software, it's just more competition.
- [44:11]
Sean
I think it's going to be quality of revenue and also it's going to be very hard to get those big, those big outcomes. Right. We talk about Salesforce. Salesforce is a multi billion dollar a year SaaS company and I think it goes to 200 million and like that's, I think that's just like the upper threshold. I think eventually they people will replace Salesforce and that's going to take longer than two years. Like you know everyone's been talking about the death of Salesforce just because you have to get Walmart to get off Salesforce or whatever and that's going to take five years. Or whatever, but they will go towards agentic solutions, I think. But yeah, so you know, we've already seen this where there's companies like Lovable who get to 100 million arrangements. And I think those cohorts look worse than the cohorts from a supplement brand. I think those people are churning like 50% every single month. I think consumer, consumer SaaS is just like a very, very blood, blood in the water business.
- [45:11]
Amit
Revenue is no longer durable as it used to be because the barrier to entry is so low that the thing that made you so successful is also the thing that makes you so susceptible to disruption. So whatever you're talking about, like lovable and replit, that is, that is 100% true. It's not as durable.
- [45:33]
Matt
So Amit, how do you think about defending your business then, like Rich Panel right now? Are you. Is the idea like we're just going to always stay at the edge of like building the best tools and the best agents or our customers and that, that will, that we're gonna have to just like somehow triple down on product, even though product. I guess this is the thing that I'm finding too. Like I, again, as a power user of cloud code right now, I can build lots of stuff, but there's a big difference between the crap I'm building and like something I could sell to someone else. There's a huge gap between those two things. Like I can build crap for my team to use, but like, it's not sellable software and there's a lot more that's going to go into like how to sell it. So I guess until like agents are buying software, humans are totally out of the loop. But I don't know when that is. So how are you thinking about this, Amit? Like the how do you build Rich Panel going forward? Tell us why we should continue to pay you.
- [46:39]
Amit
I think you answered it, Matt. You know, the directive I've given to my entire team is our right to win is how fast we play in this new economy and how much value we deliver. So we have to be like always on the edge of whatever is new and help our customers get that vantage point by getting there quicker. Like 12 months before somebody else does, six months before somebody else does, and continue to do that so that our customers have that vantage point or that advantage over their peers, which is why they should come to us like, hey, there's somebody who's thinking about CX all the time, you know, taking all the agent capabilities and giving me that, that advantage over what my peers have but six months and 12 months before everyone gets there. Because by the time everyone gets there, it's, it's commodity, it's no longer an advantage. So that's, that's the role I see us playing.
- [47:35]
Matt
You go ahead, Sean.
- [47:36]
Sean
Oh, I was going to say one thing I'm very bullish on is just people being AI implementers. Like the reason I'm gonna pay Rich Panel is they're, they're closer to the source than I am. One, they're engineers. One, they're coder, like, two, they're coders and you know, they are very incentivized to make sure that they are on the cutting edge of working AI tools for customer service. So it's like, look, the, the fee is cheap enough. It's like look to, to, to kind of outsource that thinking to them. I think it makes a ton of sense. And if you're a service business right now and you can make a ton of money just setting up Open call for people to be like, hey, I know exactly how E commerce agency or E commerce businesses should use open call. I'm going to set it up for you. So I think there's, there's still a lot of money to be made right now. And just being the expert in the hyper specialized field of AI for Blank. So I'm a big supporter of that.
- [48:27]
Matt
Ahmed, this might be a super technical, like, weird, weird. Do you, do you think that Rich panel, do you think you're going to build Rich Panel in such a way that like every single person, every single customer using it is ultimately going to have their own version of that piece of software? So like, will it change itself based on our needs as a business? Like, my needs are. There's a lot of common stuff between Sean and myself, right, as businesses, but then there's a lot of weird things that I have that Sean might not and then vice versa. Right. So are we just going to get to a point where I'm like, I Rich Panel I. Instead of like going and talking to your customer team asking for a feature request, am I just going to tell, tell Rich Panel like, hey, I could, I'd really love it if you could change how we handle this and it just writes the missing software for us?
- [49:18]
Amit
Yes, that's the vision. That's our vision entirely. And I see it being completely possible. So the loop is going to be like, first there is a support agent which is able to like resolve 99% of your tickets. That happens in the next six months. Simultaneously, we'll give an Agent which manages the knowledge base for this support agent which we are calling like CX manager. Like that's the head of your customer service department or the CX manager that is responsible for building the guidance for these people. So the reason we build a second agent is because this is the person you talk to and you eliminate that six week setup time because this agent knows how to manage other agents. So that's the CX manager. So this is stage one and stage two is you will be telling the CX manager hey why don't you go and like add this sop, why don't you build this integration out for me? And stage three is where it has like a open claw style heartbeat where it comes to you every day and says that hey Matt, there are like 15 customers that are upset about this particular SKU or variant. We should consider sunsetting it, right? Because it was able to like track that it will come to you and say like this is how the customers are reacting to something yesterday and we still had 230 escalations last week because you had to do some operations in ship Bob or fulfill erp. So can I go and build that integration? So you're like yeah, don't go ahead. So when it goes it spends like a bunch of tokens, spends like a couple hundred dollars, makes the full fill ERP integration with Rich panel. We already have a full fill integration but this is just hypothetical. So you just go like build your own stuff and says that I will no longer escalate this shipment delay or like reshipment queries to you because you were editing some button on fulfillment. Now I have that capability to do it. So it becomes like this proactive person that's coming to you next. That's, that's how I see it happening.
- [51:22]
Matt
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- [52:06]
Sean
Yeah, I just think it's a great time to be like the Challenger SaaS company, you know what I mean? We left Customer, which was bought by Meta, and it totally screwed up. They did not know, they did not have a customer vision or whatever and they were lost in the sauce. We went to Rich Panel just because it was lightweight, it was new, it was cheaper, and they're delivering better services. I think it's just a great time to be that challenger because there's going to be so much innovation and if you're already coming from a place of being a challenger, like you're just, you have to embrace it. It wouldn't surprise me if. Yeah, like you said, 99% of my tickets are done by the support agent in six months. I mean, that is crazy. If that happens going into Q4 and like, I don't have any more customer service reps, basically, like, that'd be, that'd be, that'd be nuts. But I do think it could happen. I think we've seen the technology, that
- [52:59]
Amit
that's what's going on. I believe it's happening. I would be shocked if it doesn't happen.
- [53:07]
Sean
Yeah.
- [53:08]
Amit
Which is the same if we're not the ones to do it. I'll also say we have a lot of steps to get there, but I will be embarrassed if we don't do it. But I believe we are competitive enough to be the ones that get you there. But yeah, it's happening. I think.
- [53:26]
Sean
And this is, this will be the wake up call to the whole industry. I think it's like, look, if we have a Q4 where there's one human in the loop, that's crazy. It's like, then it's like, you know, there's a lot of just like people concerned about what happens to accountants or what happens to lawyers or what happens to whatever in this world of E comm. What does it do to the economy? But we're going to see all customer service reps be replaced within the next 12 months. And that is a scary, scary time. So that, that'll be the big wake up call to the industry. But what, what, okay, let's, let's end the pot on this. 10 minutes. What do we think E commerce brands should be doing right now? Like, should they waste their time to set up open claw? Should they, like, how can they actually, like be on the cutting edge and not just have anxiety, but where the future's going? Matt, what are you doing? And, and how can, how can you advise everybody?
- [54:16]
Matt
I think it's irresponsible for any founder to not be going as deep into all of this as possible. I understand that. We can hire people. Dude, I am, I am like, Sean, how many years have you known me? Like, I am such a, like delegate, build team, like all that. Right? I am that guy. And I am right now telling everybody that I talk to, you need to get your hand dirty. Like, you really need to understand how all this works at a pretty intimate level that I'm not saying that you gotta go build everything yourself, but this is not a moment to like just assign an AI person and then hope that they do it. Like, I think every operator and consumer right now needs to be going so deep in this and then, yes, hire out delegate, like, do all that crap. But man, you need to know how this works. I think this is like absolutely critical.
- [55:10]
Sean
Yeah. And I want to be kind of a realist in this whole thing. It's like, I think your teams will get 5% smaller every year going forward. I think you'll still hire highly specialized people, but just in general, I think your teams will get smaller. Not to the point where there's no maybe, maybe in 10 years. Nobody works at Ridge. But we were talking about this the other night. I'm like, look, I still need a core group of 20 to 25 people to continue to grow my business. And I like, here's an example. We have an amazing inventory manager. I think she's going to have a job here forever because inventory has to roll to somebody. Even if AI is doing that in all the work, if it's doing all the projections, if it is doing everything because it's so expensive, I just want somebody to click the button, yes, we're ordering this. And it's like, if it's not going to be her, it has to be my coo Andres, or has to be me. And I like it rolling up to Emily right now. So it's just, you know, I, I think it is the people who are still employed are running entire functions in an organization. So anyway, I, I, you know, it's very easy to, to come on here and be like, every job is going to be replaced and everything's going to go out of business. It's all going to blow up. I, I, I completely agree that CX reps are going to be the, the first wave in this, in this AI war. But yeah, Amit, what should people be doing right now? If you're an E Commerce brand, what should be thinking about?
- [56:36]
Amit
Yeah, I second what both of you guys said. I strongly believe that all operators, ecom brand owners, need to be time boxing two to three hours, if not more on a weekly basis to be spending time and exploring these tools and understand what is now capable. So in both of your cases, you're probably not logging into Meta every day and creating ad campaigns, but you do know how to do it, right? You do know what the capabilities are. You may not be like going into Shopify and building like a landing page yourself, but you do know what the capabilities are. And this is a new tech that you're working with. So it's very important to understand its edges, its capabilities. So you'll have to like time box it like two or three hours. And unlike Meta and Shopify and all of these other tools or technologies which were not changing that much, this thing is changing and like leveling itself up every three to six months. It's a step change, it's not even like a minor change. So things that you were not able to do six months back, you probably would be able to do those things now. So you'll have to stay competitive. You'll have to understand what you're working with, like one or two levels down and then encourage everyone in the company to be harnessing and using these tools to their advantage. But not within
- [57:56]
Sean
now.
- [57:56]
Matt
I think it's going to be a ton of work in consumer. I mean, I'm just going to talk consumer, not every other industry, but I think it's consistent in all industries. I think we all have a lot of work right now on the people side in identifying the people that can and want to participate in this new way of work, right? So like, who on our team is actually going to dig in and be curious and build with AI? Because every job is going to have to, like my head of customer service, they're going to have to know how to use all this stuff, right? And if they don't, I'm going to have to get somebody who does. So I think we're just going to see like, Sean, I'm with you. I don't, I don't think this is like some dramatic. I'm going to like, there's just, I need, I need a certain number of people. Like there's no dramatic like people change coming. But I do see over every year going forward a pretty serious upgrade and replacement process. Like there's going to be people that just can't keep up. They just can't do this. This is just beyond them, particularly the next two years. While there's still like a bit of a technical hurdle to some of this. Like I showed my wife openclaw and she's just like, yeah, I'm not doing that. It's like not even close is she going to get anywhere near that thing. And I think that that's pretty, that's a reasonable response, right? But yeah, I think, I think that's going to be the work, Sean, is there's just going to be a ton of people work for all of us.
- [59:18]
Sean
And I think everybody listening to this is familiar with agents. And if you're not, use Manis. So Manis is owned by Meta. It is a baby agent. And what I mean by baby agent, it's a browser only agent. So you don't have to download anything, you don't have to set anything up. It has security to the quality and standards of Meta. So like, I'm comfortable giving Manus access to my email, to my Slack, to everything and it will do stuff for you. Like, I've shared this a couple of times and I'll share this. But like, I needed to build an image database of celebrities. I got a list of names of celebrities we're going to put in a, in a commercial. I didn't know who they are and I wanted to see their faces. So I just gave the list of names to Manus and it built me a database with their, you know, link to their Instagram and their followers and a bio and their last movie and like all of this data, they're like, it would have, it would have took my assistant, a human assistant, three hours to do or whatever, right? Maybe longer.
- [60:15]
Amit
5.
- [60:15]
Sean
It could have been a whole day. And it just does it. So it can do that work for you, right? So get started there. If you don't want to download openclaw and do, do all of the hobbyist nerd, just start using Manus today. And then for your, for your teams, get everyone access to Claude. And then if they don't know what to do, have them ask Claude what to do. Claude will tell them how to get started, how to do their jobs. It is the first technology ever that can teach you, in layman's terms, to exactly where you are. It's why education is going to be upended, right? Like it meets you exactly where you are and coaches you and it never gets bored.
- [60:51]
Matt
So you know what's incredible, Sean, with that, that last statement in my company, at least, I don't know if it's been the same for you guys, but probably not you because you have so many technical people. But in our company, like we're. People are used to asking someone technical how to do something technical. So, like, I have like developers, right? And like, when we need to do something technical, what do people do? They go to the developers. Now it's, it's such a break mentally for them to just ask Claude. They're like, well, I don't know how to use Claude. Well, I'm like, well, ask Claude how to use Claude. Like, that's the weird loop that you have to break is like, you don't go to another person to learn how to do this. Like, the number of times I get messages is like, how are you getting Claude to do this? I'm like, bro, ask Claude. Like, that's what I'm gonna do. I don't know. So it, I find that that right there is a place to start with a lot of organizations. It's like just kind of asking, dude.
- [61:47]
Sean
And I've, I've brought this up. We do every month or every two months now we do AI game building. And you just, you give everyone a couple hours, everyone builds a game. It's a fun little thing. And you can see how far Claude has advanced doing that. We used to be, we used to build like, you know, Pac man simulators basically, and now you can build, you know, full 3D shooters, bro. Like, it's crazy what you're able to do.
- [62:10]
Matt
Yeah. So, yeah, I think we're going to do more hackathons now. Like as a consumer company, I never thought I would use that word, but I'm going to get like everybody to install cloud code on a Friday and we're just going to start playing around and building stuff. Like everybody, anybody who wants to participate. That's going to be your signal that you tell me that you're curious and I'm going to show you how to do stuff, build your own little tools, like little things that you can use. But I think that's a great step too.
- [62:38]
Sean
Yeah, look, it should be mandatory and if people complain, they should get fired. It's like, that's the reality. It's like imagine, imagine if you're in the 1990s or whatever and you're like, hey, this thing with the Internet, they're like, it's boring. I don't care about the Internet. I'm like, dude, you're not going to survive, man. What's up, operators? Welcome to the Rich Panel Ad read. Rich Panel has been a sponsor for over 12 months. I've been a paying customer for over 12 months. And guess what, I just renewed the pay again for another year. We have cut our SaaS bill in half and automation dropped our cost per ticket by 70%. Our CSAT has also improved from 88% which is still really good, to 96%. Best in class. All powered by Rich Panel. I told them last year, hey, you guys need to do the same thing with returns. And now Rich Panel has a returns portal. It's built to cut down your tickets and convert more refunds into exchanges. They do the heavy lifting, data import, self service, retention flows, team training, all of it. And they'll be live in two weeks. If you want to save 30% guaranteed on help desk and now returns, book a demo.
- [63:39]
Matt
Okay, so Amit, we're talking a lot about like how Rich Panel can be disrupted, right? And you've like been pretty honest with us and kind of what you're doing to, to defend against that and how you're just going to kind of do that to yourself, which I think is brilliant. How are you then thinking about like that's the defense side. How are you thinking about growing Rich Panel, like growing revenue, growing the capabilities of the platform? Like are you guys adding things? Are you or is it more like depth? Just give us, give us a lay the land.
- [64:11]
Amit
No, absolutely. That's a great question. And in fact when we initially started the pod, we said that the cost of writing code is going to zero. But there are a couple of other things that remain relevant and maybe more relevant than before in the AI world. So one of that is distribution. The second of it is the brand that you've built in the industry. We've done a fairly decent job of earning the customer's love and we want to extend that by launching set of new products. So when I was talking to Sean and others, I think this was like June of last year where Sean is like dude, you guys should be building returns. And he said that in passing, but I took that seriously. I interviewed like a bunch of other customers and as it turns out that people do really want a new solution that is a has like the capabilities, all the high tech capabilities as some of the leading players out there, but it's also easier and more cost effective. So with that thesis, we built our own returns portal. This would have traditionally taken us a couple of years to build it, but we did it over the last six months, ironed out all the edges. We launched it in January 1st and we've signed up 31 brands already. So that is how we are thinking about using our existing customer base and the existing brand that we have to offer more services and help them cut costs in each of these other areas too. And by the way, there is no announcement. This is not even on the website. There's no even a page on the website. It's just like talking to a few customers based on the capacity we have. We are onboarding them on the returns platform. But I do see that the reason
- [65:51]
Sean
why I wanted to return so bad is I was with Loop and I hated it.
- [65:58]
Amit
Like, I mean why?
- [66:00]
Sean
Yeah, yeah, like, like Loop, Loop I think is considered to have the best in class features. And like this isn't a dig. I like, I like all the guys from Chubby's and whatever. But the problem with Loop is they raised a bunch of venture capital and then the cost got crazy and like they were literally trying to charge me $10,000 plus per month to use a returns portal and I'm like what the are you talking about? It's. Yeah, you know like and then we, we shopped around other returns portals or whatever and like you know we went to a company I think they're called Return Go and they just didn't work. It's just like it just didn't work. It was just like it just wasn't built well. You couldn't do exchanges for instance, like just, just horrible, horrible software. So you know I, that's probably when I approached Rich Panel. I'm like Guy, I don't know why it's so hard to build a returns portal but somebody should do it and to give me loops functionality for half the price and I'll be happy. So that was, that was where, where it came from. Matt, what are your thoughts on returns as a, as a service?
- [67:01]
Matt
I think it's brilliant man. I just, I, I come back to your comment Sean and like this whole brands are going to have a head of customer and that head of customer is going to have like a whole series of agents and things that it, that person is going to control. And I can just see a world on it where like Rich Panel can be the platform that has like a whole whack of those agents. Like I don't know which ones but there anytime like that we want to talk to our customer. I could see a world where like Rich Panel has the agents that let us communicate to our customer whether we're selling something supporting them handling a return. I can just see that, that, that, that has to be true. Like someone has to own that, that set of pipes.
- [67:38]
Sean
Right? Yeah.
- [67:38]
Matt
And I love it and I just
- [67:41]
Sean
don't know why reviews has so many people building in it. Like there's Okendo, there's Judge Me, they're stamped, there's Yappo. I think Rebo has, has reviews now. It's like everybody's building in reviews and I'm like, I don't know. I don't do that. Returns is a way bigger pain in the. I don't really care about how I get reviews on my website. Like, it's all cookie cutter to me. Review returns should be just as cookie cutter. And for some reason, Loop was really trying to charge me a six figure contract for the, for the. Yeah, the joy of running my returns through them. It just, it was the most egregious thing I've seen. So that's why there's not a lot
- [68:15]
Matt
of categories of SaaS and consumer that should charge more than Shopify. Like that's sort of my baseline for pricing. Like, if you're asking me to pay more than Shopify, bro, you better show me how that's going to make me more money. Because that's hard.
- [68:30]
Sean
Yeah. And I brought this up. Shopify has tremendous restraint. Like people, people love to talk about everything. The most you'll ever pay Shopify is $40,000 a month. That is. That is.
- [68:42]
Matt
Yeah.
- [68:43]
Sean
They have a variable fee and it's a percentage of revenue. That's the most you can by contract, the most you can ever pay them. You could be doing a billion dollars a month and that's the most they're gonna charge for you. I'm like, that's a pretty sweet deal, guys. Like, like, if you send too many, too many emails in a month, you might pay 40 grand. So. Yeah. Anyway, I got pissed off at, at Loop Returns. So that's why I'm trying to have people build it. And thank you, Rich Panel for building the cool software, Ahmed.
- [69:08]
Matt
I think it's super smart, man. That's my, that's my short answer. I think it's smart that you guys are doing that.
- [69:12]
Sean
That's great.
- [69:12]
Amit
I was saying that's the exact brief I gave. Like Sean said, build build returns platform, but half the price. So that was a brief feature.
- [69:20]
Matt
Brief Loop is too expensive.
- [69:22]
Amit
Make no mistakes. Make more mistakes. You don't build this.
- [69:25]
Sean
Yeah, yeah. One shotted loop, dude. In a cloud prompt. Okay. A $10,000 bet to charity. Rich Panel is going to deliver an AI agent that does 50% of my tickets for this Q4. And if they do, I will give $10,000 to the charity of your choice. But if you fail and you only get to 49%, $10,000 of charity of
- [69:48]
Amit
my choice, I will. I will.
- [69:51]
Matt
Cool.
- [69:51]
Amit
Done. I. I'll take that bet.
- [69:53]
Sean
And if you want 50% of your tickets answered by AI by Q4, you can go to richpanel.com you can talk to him it he's got you taken care of. I appreciate you guys. I'll talk to you later.