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The SaaSiest Podcast
211. Massimo Arrigoni, CEO of Beefree - The SaaS Apocalypse? Massimo Arrigoni Says No
00:56:10
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- [00:03]
A
You are listening to the Sassiest podcast in the world. Born in the Nordics, democratizing B2B SaaS knowledge everywhere. Hi, I'm Daniel.
- [00:12]
B
And I'm Thomas. And we are experienced SaaS professionals that are curious about how other successful SaaS companies go to market scale, build winning teams and great products.
- [00:22]
A
Join us on our journey as we speak to SaaS leaders trying to get hold of their secret sauce.
- [00:26]
B
And today's guest is Massimo Ardioni, the CEO at Befree.
- [00:31]
C
If you say SaaS meaning like we're going to go back to a delivery of software where you're running your own infrastructure and installing the software, like maybe in some cases, but in most cases no way. So that also is not dead.
- [00:46]
B
Hi there and welcome to another episode of the Sassiest podcast. You are coming right in the middle of conference season here. Sassy as we are working hard on our upcoming flagship event that is just around two weeks out, May 5th and 6th in Malmo, Sweden. Hope that we can. Yeah, hope we see you there, Daniel. Anything particular that you want to highlight?
- [01:06]
A
I mean great content like always, fantastic speaker roster with great how to sessions. I also want to highlight a couple of things that you guys have been asking for that we are really elevating this year. And it's about how you meet peers. So there's one to one meetings, there's group discussions or you can sit at roundtables, role specific roundtables, there's workshop deep dives, so there's even some hackathons. So lots of ability for you to walk away from this to actually not just have listened but also interacted. And hopefully you walk home with something, a playbook and if you're lucky you might even walk home with a mini agent or a process workflow.
- [01:41]
B
So this is our goal and come to Malmo already on the 4th if you can. We have social activities like the Canal tour, the Padel tournament and there's also things that are going on during the conference we have in the morning. You can go for a run, you can do yoga, you can actually take a cold punch if you dare. Let's see. I'm thinking about doing that.
- [02:00]
A
You have promised Thomas. You got to be there now. Like you heard it here first. Thomas stood up in one of the meetings here internally. He was like, I'm doing the cold plunge. So it's written in stone.
- [02:10]
B
I was an advocate for that. And then we end up with a poker tournament. So a lot of cool stuff around that as well. But today we have a special guest and there's a lot of talk about the SaskApalypse, what we call it, I don't know, nothing like that.
- [02:26]
A
So, I mean, there's a big debate out there. You've all seen it, you've all heard it. It's like you open up LinkedIn, it's in your face every day. The big debate, what's the future of SaaS? Is the SaaS model dead or is there a bright future for SaaS companies? We're going to discuss that here today with somebody that has a firm opinion about this and his opinion is justified because he meets tons, and I mean tons of SaaS companies every year and has these types of discussions with them. So I think we should just open up the virtual door here and let's get cracking at it. Let's welcome in Massimo.
- [03:04]
B
Let's do it. Today we are super excited to have Massimo here as a guest in the podcast again. Hi, Massimo, how are you?
- [03:15]
C
Very good. How are you guys?
- [03:16]
A
Very, very good. We're excited. The sun is shining. We have our busy season just around the corner here. We have our flagship event around the corner in May. And then some people would think like, oh, how nice to have that done in May. But then right after that, we actually have two new events for us, one in Munich for the German market and one in Paris for our French friends in June. So it is a busy, busy time for us. But that is the only way. We like Katamas, right? Yeah.
- [03:46]
B
And I understand that you're in Dublin right now, but you guys, you're a little bit all over the place. So where are your people?
- [03:55]
C
Yeah, we talked a little bit about our company, what was it, a year ago or so. And be free, still fully remote, about 100 people or so. And so the management team comes from different countries and Dublin, Ireland, is one of our favorite spots to meet. It's just flying in is easy. Some people, like myself, love good beer. And I really enjoy this city. It's one of my favorite cities. Cities to just walk around and feel that history that I miss when I'm in the United States.
- [04:32]
B
And where is your home base?
- [04:34]
C
Home base for me is Santa Cruz, which is about an hour and a half south of San Francisco on the beautiful Monterey Bay. That's one of the joys of working remotely. And yeah, I love it there. My wife is from that area, so I grew up in Italy in Milan, and then I met my wife in California. She's from Santa Clara, so just across the hills from Santa Cruz. But she then grew up in Santa Cruz So it's especially special place for her and I love it. And yeah, I love the outdoors, I love the. I love sailing. So I started sailing again a couple of years ago. So super fun.
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A
Okay. Do you surf as well?
- [05:09]
C
I'm not a surfer. I tried and yeah, I suck at it.
- [05:14]
A
I took surfing lessons once in Hawaii and well, surfing lessons is not true. It wasn't plural. I took a surfing lesson and I can't remember, but it felt like I was on this thing for hours and not a single time did I manage to stand on the board. Once I managed to like grab a wave. Laying on the board, that is my claim to fame when it came came to the surfing career. Thomas, have you surfed?
- [05:45]
B
I haven't surfed. Bodyboarding and stand up paddleboarding is the closest thing I've come. All right. My daughter spent a year and a half in haw, so she, she tried it a little bit, but I don't think it's in our genes really, unfortunately. But, but it looks really cool.
- [06:04]
A
It looks fun.
- [06:05]
B
And anything where you need to stand on a board and keep your balance, that's not my thing. Whether that is a skateboard or, or snowboard or where. Yeah. So if it's a board, yeah, count me out.
- [06:17]
A
All right. So Massimo, I wanted to do a quick recap with you. We had you in the podcast here some 12 or 18 months ago, but let's just do a quick recap of like your business, what you guys are all about, and let's put some numbers on it before we jump into the main topic today. And you reached out and we discussed a little bit and we've been all having this discussion like, you know, do we all need to AI or die? Is SaaS dying and I don't know another CEO that does as many deals and businesses with other SaaS CEOs as you do and you have a firm opinion about where the SaaS industry is going and where it's not going. So we're going to dig into that in just a moment. Your opinion about here, like, do we all have a bright future ahead of us or are we all going to be out of jobs in just a moment? But before we go there, tell us about Be Free. Like what are you guys up to and what do you do and for whom do you do it?
- [07:11]
C
So Be Free is in the content creation space, emails, landing pages and other content types. And you can create content with our builder if you just go to Befree IO or. Actually the majority of our revenue comes from other companies. Software companies that embed our builder into their software. And that's why, like you said, we're exposed to thousands of software companies and many of them are SaaS companies.
- [07:37]
A
Right.
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C
And so we have a kind of a unique perspective on this.
- [07:40]
A
Yeah, yeah. And you guys are also, if I say this right, let's see if I can get it right. Like, you also run your own conferences. Like, one of them is around emails, and you do a bunch of big reports on, like, what the best newsletter looks like and so on. And I think you guys have built quite a nice community around, like. So if anybody is working and is in charge of the newsletter of a business, they probably know who you guys are in your conferences. Right.
- [08:07]
C
So we're taping this in mid April, and in fact, next week we're going to have this conference called unspam under the really Good Emails brand. So we acquired really Good Emails two years ago, and we've been in the email space for a long time. And the reason why we acquired really Good Emails is that they had done an incredible job building a community around email professionals. And they did that by putting together a catalog of thousands and thousands of really good emails. So curated catalog of fantastic emails that designers from around the world and marketers created. And so it's a great product, but even better is the community around it. And so UNSPAM is kind of the community event that we hold once a year, and then we have smaller events during the year, but this year it's in Long Beach. Next week it's going to be great.
- [08:59]
B
Yeah. And since we have a fast turnaround here, this is actually going to be aired tomorrow. So if you listen to this, you can check it out. It will be next week.
- [09:10]
C
Yeah. If you're in California or in the U.S. you know, come join us. UNSPAM is a really unique event. It's a community event. There's no booths, there's just marketers, you know, especially email pros talking real things.
- [09:23]
A
So where do they find this, like, online? Is it on spam.com or.
- [09:26]
C
It's. If you just go to really good emails.com you'll see the links there. But it's unspam.really good emails.com.
- [09:33]
A
awesome.
- [09:34]
B
Okay.
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A
Awesome, awesome. All right, so coming back to be free as a business, tell us a little bit about, like, how big is your operation today? Like, what's your ARR? How many people are you and where do most of your customers sit? Geography.
- [09:47]
C
So customers around the world. Again, majority of the revenue from our embeddable Email builder. And so many of those customers are where software is built. So North America, Europe, you know, India and Australia, all those places and about 100 people and we passed 15 million in ARR some time ago and still growing quite a bit.
- [10:11]
A
Nice.
- [10:11]
C
So it's still a very fun company to be involved with.
- [10:16]
A
That's good. That's good. And talking about fun company and fun times, let's dig into the main topic of today. So I think we should just jump right into it. You see a bunch of companies and everybody's talking about the death of SaaS and so on. I mean, there's lots of noise out there and some of it is justified, some of it, I don't know, I have a hard time to. Is it true or not true? Is AI making SaaS obsolete? What is your honest take here? Are people panicking for no reason or should we panic?
- [10:48]
C
First of all, being in email for a long time, we've heard that email has been dead for 20 years. So we're not new to this discussion. But jokes apart, I think it's a really interesting topic, but it's also one of those cases where people get stuck on the idea of the SaaS apocalypse and they confuse different elements. So let's maybe go through them a little bit. One is valuation. So in terms of valuation of SaaS companies, there's a readjustment, but quite honestly, some of the readjustment makes perfect sense. Let's take a great company with a great product like Figma. Okay, it went public last summer, the end of July. Again, great company. And so some people got excited when there was the IPO and they shot up from $33 to 140 the following day. Wow. At 140 they were trading at over 70%, 70 times revenue. So that's a really aggressive valuation. That means that you're growing like crazy. And they were. But that's one of those cases where then there started to be a question mark. Okay, how are software companies in general going to grow? And maybe there's going to be a slowdown. And so when you add that kind of valuation that you get hit hard. And right now Figma is trading at around $20. So if you bought around those days, obviously you're bumming you're not a happy person. And it's totally understandable. And you could even argue that right now Figma is trading at around six times revenue. So now we're down to like maybe almost oversold.
- [12:32]
A
Right.
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C
Because it's still a great company, great product with a great future. And so you could argue that maybe it should trade at a bigger multiplier. But Figma is also one of those companies that's still losing money, so I'm sure they'll become profitable. But so when you put it all together and you see this across many, many companies, there's just valuation just being readjusted and you guys agree that it's one of the, one of the key things.
- [12:57]
A
Yes, 100%. And maybe just like some people have said, it's like this is the real normal. What we had maybe a few years back ago, those valuations were, they were deviations from what normal used to look like. And now we're back to normal levels, like having a 70x multiplier that is not maybe normal. And very few aggressive, a little bit aggressive. Very few companies can adjust that. So I definitely agree with that, that that maybe SaaS as an investment asset is not as attractive as it used to be a few years ago. But that to me doesn't justify the fact that when people say the model is dead, maybe for some VC companies it's dead, but the business model still carries water, at least in my world.
- [13:45]
C
Absolutely. So the second thing about SaaS is just the delivery of software. Okay. And again I'm in my 50s, so I've been around for a while and I remember the days when you installed everything. In fact, my first company was an E commerce company, pre SaaS, so pre Shopify and we were very early in E commerce and our software, you would download it and then install it on a web server and you would basically run it or you know, with the help maybe of the hosting company. But that's the days of software and we're not going back. So the delivery of software also is not going back. So the second thing about SaaS where if you say SaaS dead, meaning like we're going to go back to a delivery of software where you're running your own infrastructure and installing the software like, like maybe in some cases, but in most cases no way. So that also is not dead.
- [14:31]
A
Right?
- [14:32]
C
Right. So SaaS companies, maybe they, maybe the valuations are being reset a little bit. I think it's still an asset that's super, super interesting for many reasons. Margins, et cetera. Second thing, the set delivery of software, that's not changing either. The third thing is the model, the business model now on that side, then there could be some adjustment as well. Especially people say, well somebody is pricing their software as a service on a per seat basis, then maybe there's a problem. There and the reason why they're saying that is a couple of different potential issues. One is if the software is getting better because of AI, the people using the software are more productive by definition. And so you sell fewer seats because the software is getting better. So paradoxically your software is getting better and therefore you're selling fewer seats. Right. So that could be one reason is if the other companies, the other technology companies are going through the same valuation adjustment, then they're shrinking maybe a bit. And so maybe you're selling less seats, fewer seats, because if you're selling to other technology companies, then they're shrinking, you're shrinking. And then there's a third unfortunate circumstance which we are living in a really uncertain time and unfortunately kind of a bummer time with wars. And so if there is an issue overall at the macroeconomic level, then any company is going to hurt. And so that could be part of it. That has nothing to do with business model, but just macroeconomic environment. But if you go back to the seat issue, then people say, okay, you may need to change the way you're pricing your software. But that also is not, I'm not totally convinced about that because when you look at the other models that people talk about, so outcome based, for example, those are not simple. People come up with examples like Intercom that price their software at a dollar per ticket. Solved. There are some examples that sound simpler than others. But defining what the outcome is is extremely difficult in many, many cases. And so it's not a slam dunk. Take for example our software, let's say we charge based on the email that you created. Well, there's many, many different emails. Some emails are super simple. Maybe a transactional email, a password reminder. Another email might be a super important email that took days to put together. Meaning the value of the outcome can change dramatically from one to the other, even if the single unit is the same. So building models on that is not easy either. Again, the business model also, maybe there's a crisis because of the C based. But then the last point that people are making is SaaS is going through a crisis because people are just going to develop their own software. And I'm sure you guys are going to be talking about that even at your conferences, right? Because it's a big new thing. What do you think about that one? And then I'll give you my opinion.
- [18:03]
B
Absolutely. I just have one thing before you talked about the business model and so on, and why the SaaS business model was so loved was the predictability of it. And it's also a very high margin way of pricing software. Right. And now if you are leaving the seed based, if you're leaving the sort of the flat subscription and you're very dependent on AI services, AI providers where you're a customer and you pay for tokens and it's really hard to one, get predictability in your costs to deliver this to the customer and two, that you are very dependent on the supplier of the AI services and you don't have that markup when it comes to your margins. And even if the AI first, whatever you want to call them, companies now get great valuations. So looking at the margin of what they offer, it can be hard to motivate in the long run. So right now everyone is looking for the companies that's going to take over the world. And the market is so big, the time is so big and so on. But then when you see what potential profit you can get, it might be harder. And a lot of things are so easy to copy as well. Yeah, so that's one thought that I have. And then you mentioned here lastly that people can build themselves, which I think is really interesting. I think certain SaaS companies are in the danger zone that they can be commoditized and that companies can tailor things better to their business. But then again, then we have more complex software, we're talking about ERPs and so on. Where there is so much is security, compliance, it's, you know, all of those things that is harder to replicate and you don't want your own IT department sitting and you know, dealing with all of these things. Enterprise kind of stuff.
- [20:14]
A
Yeah, I mean, and I would agree with you, Thomas. I think there are some companies that, and I say this with the greatest respect for those companies, no names mentioned, but maybe their offering is more of a feature than a platform or than a big business. And some feature sets people will be able to build themselves and they will be. I mean, we can hack this together
- [20:42]
C
in a day and if it works
- [20:43]
A
okay, it is enough. But my firm opinion though is that, and maybe I am reflecting this and projecting my own thoughts and how I work as a person and how I operate is that just because you can doesn't mean that people will do it. So I mean, I can paint my own house, but I won't do it as good as a professional painter. I mean, I can get it done and it will look shiny and nice, but I'll probably miss a corner here and there. I won't layer that as nice. Maybe you'll see some streaks here. And there. But the house will be protected. But is that really what I want to do?
- [21:22]
B
Is that where I want to use the wrong paint? So.
- [21:24]
A
Yeah, or you use the wrong paint. So I think there are many things that we can do and I think when it comes to AI and SaaS, yes, of course there's, you know, your engineers. Massif. Well, I'm sure if you tell them like, hey, build us a new CRM, they can do it. But if they're doing that, then who's going to build the next version of Be Free? Like there's an alternative cost. Like you're not going to make more money because you built your own custom CRM, you're going to make more money and grow the value of the business if you develop Be Free to be a better, stronger product.
- [21:59]
C
Yeah. This is an area where we do have a unique perspective because as you said, we see thousands of thousands and thousands of SaaS companies that have embedded our tool across industries.
- [22:09]
A
Yeah, you must be scared of this where you feel like, okay, they use your product as a white label and it must have crossed your mind like, oh no, do I live in a world where 50% of my customers will just decide to build their own tool instead of using our white label solution.
- [22:25]
C
Sure. First of all, that's always there as a possibility. Right. It's just accelerated now because there are tools that help you do the things thing faster. But this is where we go into the importance of context. How much context do you have about the thing that your tool helps create, how much understanding you have of jobs to be done and industry knowledge, etc. Etc. And this actually applies to all of the companies that we see as customers. So when people say, well, people are just going to develop their own thing, right. They they forget that a lot of SaaS caters to very non technical people that buy the SaaS piece of the business just because it makes sense. So let's go through some examples of that. For example, we have many SaaS platforms that cater to golf courses. And because golf management, if you're running a golf course, the last thing that you want to do is develop your own software to book tee times and do the POS system at the desk and manage the golf course and all that. So imagine a golf course that decides to develop their own bespoke software. It would make absolutely no sense. So maybe the cost of that software may go down just a little bit because of additional pressure that we just explained earlier, but it's very unlikely that a non technical business would do that. Sometimes when people talk about, oh, they're just going to develop their own thing, they're actually thinking about a tech company that will do that instead of using HubSpot or whatever, CRM or our marketing platform. And the vast majority of SaaS is actually sold to companies that are not tech companies, companies at all. And therefore what you were just saying, just like you're not a painter and therefore typically you don't paint your own house because that's not what you do. It's the same thing. And so sometimes we lose perspective on that.
- [24:41]
B
Yeah, because we live in the SaaS bubble. Right. And that's a lot of our reference when we see to it. And I guess you've been in a similar situation with Open Source because I mean there are editors that are open source that you can get for free and you can, can sort of get that into your solution. But then you need to deal with all the potential security and other things that has to do with using third party, maybe not that, what do you say? Orchestrated solutions, right?
- [25:14]
A
Yeah.
- [25:14]
C
Or Open source. And you're right and you make a great point. So cost cannot be the reason why SaaS would have a crisis, because Open Source has been around forever. So if cost was the reason, the only reason, then people would have used Open source software for years. And there's Open source basically available for almost anything you can think of. So clearly cost is not the issue. So if cost is not the issue, then the issue is you have to then run your own thing, maintain your own thing, figure out how to optimize it so that it really gets the job done for you. And that's where we go into, if you agree with me, that most buyers of software are actually non technical people. And again, we sit in a place where we see that constantly because our software is embedded in church management software. Right. In event management software, in restaurant management software. Can you see a restaurant owner developing their own restaurant management thing to take reservations? There's no way. Not because they don't want to. They, that's not their business. They have absolutely no expertise in that and they recognize that and therefore they're going to buy the thing just like we do with anything where we don't feel like we have expertise in that
- [26:32]
B
thing until we have come that far. So the restaurant owner can just say that this is my business, this is what I need to run my business, and then that's it. And not having to think about anything else than what you want to get done. And then, and just medically, AI gets everything done the way you want it.
- [26:53]
C
So that's where it attaches to the second thing that you said. So imagine that that's the case and then you ask an agent that knows the restaurant business really well and so can actually come up with something that makes sense for a restaurant business. Then you go into some of the things that you just mentioned. So will that restaurant. The minute they take PII personally identifiable information, because people are making a reservation and entering their name and email, then you're getting into privacy regulations. So is that software that you created SOC2 compliant and GDPR compliant and all this stuff and you know, and secure, et cetera. And that's where you increase the level of headaches because this is really what it's about, right? When you, when you buy something, it's one of the reasons why you're doing it is to limit to a minimum the headaches that you would otherwise have managing the thing instead of running your own business, in this case running a restaurant and figuring out what's next on the menu and hosting the next profitable party. So even if there is an agent that does that for you, you have all the other headaches potentially to think about. And at the end of the day, do you want those headaches because the opportunity cost is actually extremely, extremely high, because the cost of the software is typically very low. Whereas if you do it yourself, you're talking about managing all of those additional headaches that otherwise someone else is managing for 30 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month, whatever it is.
- [28:28]
B
So I have a question here because since your main business is the white label editor that you have, right. I think when you see all of this, what do you say, development platforms like Lovable, similar things, I mean they are some kind of wrapper, some kind of interface, but it utilize different components underneath the database, different software for payments and so on. It comes from somewhere and it connects. I know we mentioned Figma. Now you can do something with Figma and Lovable, I've seen the connector and so on. How do you, you play into that ecosystem with all of these new Vibe coding building stuff. Are you a part of that also?
- [29:21]
C
Yeah, I think we probably talked about it the last time we spoke where software really is a puzzle and you put together pieces of a puzzle. So if you will, Vibe coding is a way to put the pieces of the puzzle together yourself and the coding agent that helps you compose that puzzle. Even if it's a puzzle that technically speaking you weren't able to compose before that product existed, you're still in large parts, putting together existing pieces, whether it's an API to send an SMS or a tool like ours to design a complex marketing asset. So absolutely we see ourselves as part of that. In fact, in our developer documentation it explains how to use our tool within a vibe coded app. But again, when you're vibe coding an app, typically you're solving a fairly simple use case for which it makes perfect sense. You're not, at least for now, building a complex product that takes into account a lot of context and gets a series of jobs done that are complex jobs done. Because normally there, there's workflows etc that require a lot more work and understanding.
- [30:42]
A
Yeah, so I mean I hear you loud and clear and I 100% agree with you and correct me if I'm wrong here, but you don't believe SaaS is dead? Not at all. SaaS as a model will stick around, maybe valuations will take a hit. But maybe like you said in the opening statement, actually we're back to some kind of normalized level again here, which is maybe a healthier approach. What do all the companies that you work with, when you sit down with the CEOs of other SaaS companies, do they share this opinion and this take with you or do they is it panic mode out there and do they fear that their business is going to be out coded or out vibe coded by somebody else tomorrow and suddenly they're out of business?
- [31:25]
C
If the product that you developed gets a simple job done, then you have a problem because it might be that that can be solved fairly easily with a vibe coded app. Still, there's all the headaches that we talked about earlier. So in that make versus buy somebody, especially if it's a business and not just a single person that's trying to prototype or something like that, I think that a lot more, more thought will go into do I really want to do this myself or not. Because again, typically the cost of buying that ready to go solution that prevents those headaches is actually pretty low, especially even when it's an enterprise tool at the individual personal level, it's a fairly low cost. Now that said, there's definitely a ton of development done around the AI, but not because SaaS necessarily is in trouble, but just because it makes a lot of sense to introduce a smart agent in getting the job done, regardless of what that is. So what we see. So earlier this year, actually last year we introduced for example the model context protocol in our system that allows our customers to develop a gentic experiences to help their users use AI in the creation of emails, landing pages, et cetera. And we have about 10% of our user base, so 10% of the SaaS applications that use our software that are heavily exploring with that kind of AI. This also gives you an idea of how many people are really heavily exploring versus others that not yet. Right. So in our customer base we see about 10% of companies that are really kind of at the forefront, they want to be innovators and so they are using this latest technology to really introduce AI as part of their user experience. In this case, in our case as an assistant in the creation of marketing content. And then you have some that are less committed to like real exploration, maybe let's call them instead of innovators, like pragmatists that are going, you know what, if I don't do something in this area, I'm going to be perceived as a dinosaur or like a legacy application. Right. So it's almost, if you will, I have to do this versus I see a ton of value in the job to be done by introducing an AI assistant. It's more like let's sprinkle some AI here and there so that I, I'm perceived as somebody that's staying up to date. And then you have applications that are a lot slower and in some cases it's not because they don't see what's happening, but it may be highly regulated industries where there's still a lot of uncertainty on even what can you do without creating problems for yourself because you might be violating some things that you do not want to violate. And so it's a lot more complex than it looks at first sight. And we're really just at the beginning of this evolution.
- [34:44]
B
So fun fact here, I asked Claude here if I wanted to build an app with an email builder. What do you want me to use? Happy to say that you were one of three alternatives that it suggested. Also said that the commercial drag and drop builder, very polished. It said higher cost but minimal development efforts. So if you have those non technical users or solutions out there, Claude gave you a good grade here.
- [35:11]
A
Good.
- [35:12]
C
Thanks Claude.
- [35:13]
A
Thanks Claude. Exactly. And thank you, Thomas. Live research here. So Massimo, there's a human aspect to this. I don't think we can neglect the fact that, I mean people are nervous. People are nervous for is my employer going to survive, is my role going to change? Or maybe if I'm unlucky, maybe my role won't exist at all. Like you probably have some of these conversations internally as well and also with your fellow CEOs when you guys get together, what's your take on this? How do you tackle this and preempt some of these maybe potentially concerns internally? Do you guys do anything proactively here to try to paint a future view and what that means for the actual humans in your organization?
- [36:00]
C
I love the definition of that that Dharmesh Shah, co founder and CTO of HubSpot, gives that AI is very likely to take your job and give you back a better one. So it's a very optimistic view, but I love it because I essentially believe I agree with him. I believe that it's true. Meaning that in many cases is what AI can do is remove some of the boring stuff, the stuff that's fairly easy to automate, and therefore give you back a job that focuses a lot more on the creative side and the added value side and removing some of the bottlenecks that have to do with capacity, et cetera. Take for example, our own space, the email space. Typically, the email team in almost any company forever has been under resourced. They've been complaining that they don't have enough time to do all the welcome series and all the variations of the automation sequences that they'd like to do and whatever, right? So if we give them an assistant that gives them the ability to do their job faster so that they can ideate and create more things that actually ultimately help their customers because some of the capacity, capacity constraints have been removed, that makes absolute sense. And in fact, we're heavily developing around that concept. But it's very much human plus AI. So the human is at the center in the driver's seat, deciding what makes sense and giving it the right flavor, etc. And then AI can definitely help. Now, will we get to a point where most of it can be automated? I don't know. A lot of us don't know. In the end, we are, as a software company in this space, in the creation space, we firmly believe that it's always going to be human plus AI for many reasons, but one of them is just accountability and brand control and brand protection. So especially if you are a brand that have invested in, in, you know, in who you are for a long time, the cost of letting automation put out something that could potentially be very damaging to your brand is so high that it, you know, honestly, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Yeah, and now I have, I have driven Waymos on the street in San Francisco, right? So you can definitely get to AI that can solve really complex use cases. So I'm not, I'M not, I'm not naive when I say that, but I still see the human in the center in most of these scenarios for the reasons that we discussed. That's what we personally, that's how we see it. That's how we develop the evolution of our own tools and that's also how we talk about it internally with our colleagues. Almost any job, there's component of that job that, that honestly are not that fun and maybe you've been frustrated with for some time and now we have an opportunity to use tools that were not available before to possibly remove some of those bottlenecks and as Dharmesh says, give yourself back a better version of your job.
- [39:24]
B
Yeah, exactly. And I mean, you're in the content creator space. We struggle or we actually do get the newsletter out each week, but it's a lot of work. It's a lot of manual work. I mean, it's built, the interface is built for people to drag and drop, but still you need to remember to change the links. You need to duplicate things. It's a lot of things that you need to think of when you're doing it. And as I understand what you're talking about here is that the role of a person that creates the newsletter, it's going to be less of dragging and dropping, renaming. I mean, do all of that and more focus on maybe personalization. Maybe a B testing will be something completely different when we have AI as a companion.
- [40:20]
C
Yeah. In your case, because of the fact that putting out that newsletter takes you an hour, two, three, whatever it takes. Right. So imagine that now it takes you a fraction of that. You can now redeploy that time either to. To make, as you said, potentially variations of that newsletter that appeal to maybe SaaS, companies of different sizes or whatever it is that makes sense in your case, or just redeploy it to other things that you need to get done. But that's always been the case throughout history, honestly, of just we get better tools and so we get more stuff done.
- [40:54]
A
Yeah. And I like your approach to this. It's like we're giving ourselves a chance for a better work future at least. Like we're going to come back here and in a few years, or maybe not even a few years, maybe it's in the next six months we're all going to have more fun and more rewarding jobs. And then personally, I'm always a firm believer that people overestimate the ability of humans to adapt. So technology will always be ahead. We can do so much more with technology already today and in six months it will be even more. But it takes some time for the humans to grow into this and to accept that this is the new reality and to start using it and for it to become a normal element. It's like there's some of the greatest industries and the companies that drive the global GDP are still running on fax machines. Yeah, yeah. It takes time for the humans to deploy all of these things.
- [41:57]
B
And even if you create the most coolest thing with all of these AI features and so on, totally new interfaces and then you have tens of thousands of users out there, how are they going to grasp and start using all of these new functionalities? The golf course, they are used to that the first week every month they are putting out their news out there. And yeah, learning a new AI tool might not be highest on their agenda.
- [42:26]
C
It's also very hard for us to imagine what's going to be next. We tend to say well because that part of my job is potentially going to be replaced, then there's almost like a void, it's not going to be filled by anything. And that's where some of the panic maybe kicks in. So I always tell my kids that my personal experience, it has a little bit of that uncertainty, but in a good way. When I started college in 1991, the Internet was at the very beginning the world Wide web didn't even exist. Actually it existed for a few scientists but then it came out in 93. I actually graduated in 96 with a thesis on E commerce. So I started in 91 where the Internet basically wasn't even there. The web did not exist. Graduated a few years later with a senior thesis on electronics commerce. Like that thing that I wrote a few years it didn't. I didn't even. I had no concept of it. A whole industry. And then I later went on to co found an E commerce company. So that thing that became part of my career for many years I had no concept of it. 0 like I would have never even imagined that I would do that.
- [43:41]
A
Right.
- [43:42]
C
And so that's why it's hard for us to say oh no, no, because this is going to happen. This and that like we like this, that uncertainty. But it's actually and this is one of the things that we talk about in the company too be okay with uncertainty. It's fine. Like you know, like be obviously that that curiosity and that openness to see what's going on is very important. But also it's okay not to know. We just don't know in many, many cases. And I, and I've experienced it myself.
- [44:10]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [44:11]
B
So if we look here in the crystal ball a little bit, just maybe six to 12 months ahead here, what do you see for your company? What is happening at Be Free?
- [44:21]
C
Continued exploration around what we just said. Clearly, AI can be a helpful assistant. It can help people get those jobs done. That our tools have helped for a while, but much better, honestly. And so we're heavily involved in figuring out what and how. And then you get into the nuances of the user interface and really the interactions. And in our case, for example, we believe that AI can be very helpful, not just at the creation phase, but all the qa. Right. As you said, you need to check links, but not just links accessibility. There's tons of stuff in terms of quality assurance that can be automated and maybe even fixed automatically. So again, you're giving back people their time that otherwise would have gone maybe into do some manual quality assurance that can now be done in a smarter way. And when you talk about qa, there's so much that could be done, from brand consistency to knowledge based consistency. Is this consistent with the latest product updates that we just released two weeks ago? I mean, there's so many things that you can do in content creation that have to do. Not just being creative with what you're doing, but then ensuring that that thing is okay to be put out. So there's a lot of work that.
- [45:50]
B
And all of us have sent out emails where, you know, it's, you got the facts wrong or you got the links from last year and all kinds of things. Right. So to have that external brain that knows your business and know what is right and what is wrong could be a great help.
- [46:08]
C
Yeah. Like today, for example, we released a feature in our end user product at Befree IO that allows you to copy with AI a lot of times. And you've probably done this yourself. When you create a new newsletter, you start from the last edition and you go like, make a copy. Yeah, guilty, exactly. That makes perfect sense. Right. You're reusing an existing asset and then just so imagine now you give the assistant some context about the new thing that you want to do. So it'll start with the existing structure and template. Now it has the context of what you want to talk about that's different and it will create a good draft because it starts from what you just did. Right. So that's a perfect use case where copy with AI is probably better than copy by yourself.
- [46:50]
A
Absolutely.
- [46:51]
C
And so that makes sense. Then let's it do?
- [46:54]
B
Yeah, we want it. We definitely would have use of that. So now in this transformational time, is there any particular talent that you're looking after? I mean, AI talent. It's quite difficult to find the right people. What are you looking at? What kind of talent?
- [47:11]
C
Yeah, I know it's commonplace because everybody's talking about it, but the tools are moving so fast that really we want curious people again. I know it's a word that we keep repeating, but. But that hunger for, hey, let me get my hands dirty. I'm curious about what this does, where it can go. That's what you really need. And whether somebody is 60 years old or 20, it doesn't matter. Honestly, if you have that curiosity and openness and willingness to step outside of what you. You thought that your job description was, you know, that's what you need. You need people that are very adaptable because we're all adapting to a world that's changing pretty darn fast.
- [47:59]
A
High agency is the new buzzword on the streets. People with high agency. That's what we like.
- [48:05]
C
Yes.
- [48:06]
B
And do you know someone with high agency or someone at least that you would like us to get on the show here to learn from or in this particular topic that you think we should dive deeper into?
- [48:18]
C
So again, because I have four kids that either just finished college or getting into college, so the idea that what's happening with jobs, entry level jobs especially, it's a topic that comes up a lot where, okay, the first jobs that are going to be hard to get are the entry level jobs. So maybe if you get somebody that can talk around that topic, that would be a good topic to talk about because it's very hot for a lot of younger people. And obviously I believe that they have a ton to bring to the table. Exactly. Because they have a. I just had a wild idea.
- [49:04]
A
Thomas, your oldest daughter is a law student right now. And some people out there say maybe that the entry jobs in law might not look the same way. There will be entry jobs in law in the future as well, but they might look very different from what they look today. Maybe we should get the Lagora CEO here and see what he believes, how the work of the lawyers will look in the future.
- [49:34]
B
Yeah, there are definitely legal tech companies that would be interesting to talk to. But what I'm curious about, Massimo, is what do you tell yourself, kids? What advice do you give them now when they go out in this new world?
- [49:46]
C
Well, first of all, the story that I told earlier is just my own personal experience of how, when you don't know, you just don't know. And there's going to be a lot of jobs that we can't even think about because we just don't know. But when the tools get better and allow you to do more, what really matters is the what what are you going to do? What are you going to build? What are you going to not build? Because it doesn't make any sense. And so that concept of getting out there and talking to the people that you are building for or building with to better understand what it is that you should be doing. For example, one of my kids loves photography. He's done photography for bands concerts and stuff. And so yeah, getting out there, talk to more bands, you know, understand exactly what it is that they need. Because even in that, in that, you know, in the world of photography, the tools are getting so much better. And so the how you do it is probably changing fast. The what you do matters as much as it ever did. And so getting out there talking to people and for this generation, that's not trivial. They have a hard time, you know, doing that.
- [51:02]
B
It's a good old get out there, know your customer, know their pains and so on and then figure out how to help them. But as you say, getting out there is not as natural for maybe this generation as it was previously.
- [51:17]
A
Here's to a bright future for us and for the coming generations. We cross our fingers and I'm a firm believer that the world will only become a better place for all of us slowly but surely. These days. It might feel a little bit slow, but sure, sure enough. And we'll pick up some speed again and move in the right direction. Massimo, this was a pleasure having you on here again. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on the future of SaaS. To be or not to be. If you agree with Massimo, why don't you reach out to him? But if you don't agree with Massimo, this is when the fun stuff happens. Like where do they reach you, Massimo? Where do they find you? If there's somebody that wants to continue this discussion and debate.
- [51:59]
C
Yeah, hit me up on LinkedIn. I post, you know, this type of thoughts pretty frequently there. And so, yeah, let's have a conversation there.
- [52:08]
B
Yeah, I love the to be or not to be. Pumped there, Daniel. It was very fitting for the episode here, but again, great having you. Looking forward also to meet your team here at the upcoming Sassyst conference. Hope you can join us another time. And yeah, with that, see you around.
- [52:27]
C
Thank you so much. See you see you guys.
- [52:33]
A
All right, Thomas, what you think here? Our business is built a little bit on some of the working thesis here, like what's your big takeaway from today's discussion?
- [52:42]
B
But one thing that is really interesting is how AI is changing our roles. And I mean they have solution, it's about creating content. And you have people that has that as a job, right? They are creating newsletters, they are creating advertising type of content and with new technology they can work in a different way and hopefully they will be able to create higher quality and also, you know, probably be more strategic and elevate what they are doing in their communication. So interesting to see how different roles, different jobs will change over time. Yeah, that's true.
- [53:25]
A
And for me here, what I want to take away is the discussion about, you know, there's been a public debate. AI is pushing cost of software to nothing everybody can build and so on. Which is one of the reasons maybe why SAS will die. But then we discussed it a little bit here and it gave me at least a new perspective like well, that challenge has always been around with open source. There's an open source solution for, for everything. There's an open source solution for your CRM, for your billing system, for your HR system, for anything and everything. So if cost was an issue, everybody will be building on back in the days an open source solution.
- [54:06]
B
But it's not.
- [54:06]
A
There's some companies that have built entire stack on open source, but most of the companies have not. So clearly it's not the cost that's the issue. If there's an issue issue, it's something else. And I thought that was a nice way to, to frame it. So for me that was a little bit of a aha moment. I haven't thought about that before, so I'll take that with me here. Whenever somebody tells me like it's the cost of building software is going to zero and that's an issue. Well, apparently that has always been the case if you wanted to use open source.
- [54:35]
B
And I mean there is a lot of challenging, there's a lot of things changing in the industry right now and I think it's so good that we can come together, help each other out in the challenges to come. And there is so much opportunity out there as well. So super excited about that. And if you want to have peers to discuss your challenges with, whatever type of position you have as a company, whether you're in finance, product marketing, customer success or what it may be, if you're a leader at the B2B SaaS company scale up. You can join our executive networks or our CEO network, if you're a CEO. We meet on a monthly basis online and then we also meet in person a couple of times during the year. So you can head over to Celsius.com and go to the community menu. And then you will find different options there for the different networks. And you also find the Slack community as well that is open for everyone that is working as an operation Operator within B2B SaaS. So with that said, hope that we see many of you at Sassiest, either in Mamu that is coming up, or in Paris and Munich, that is a little bit later here, before the summer, the 16th and 18th of June. And then in the fall, we're heading to London and Amsterdam. So it's going to be a full calendar here with CESIS conferences throughout the year. And see you there.
- [56:02]
A
See you around.