Andrew Mitchell

[Andrew Mitchell @AndrewMitch3ll]

@MartinGTobias Adverse events processed in minutes

[Elisabeth Potter MD @EPotterMD]

A major cancer center near me asked a self-pay patient with breast cancer for $29,000 to be evaluated in clinic.

No treatment. No imaging. No surgery.
Just a clinic visit. For $29,000.
That is shameful.

[Andrew Mitchell @AndrewMitch3ll]

@levie They dont all have the tech stacks to make that happen - and replatforming is hard.. 😁

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

Regarding the SaaSpocalypse.

I am the Chief Strategy Officer of a major enterprise software company.

We've lost 47% of our market cap in four months.

Our stock dropped 6% on Monday.

My bonus is gone.

My options are underwater.

My second vacation home is in jeopardy.

The third one is fine.

For now.

I need to explain what happened.

We didn't do anything wrong.

Anthropic did.

They released plugins.

For Claude.

Eleven of them.

Open source.

Legal automation. Contract review. Compliance workflows. NDA triage.

Work that used to cost $400 per hour.

Now costs $20 per month.

We had a phrase for this.

"AI augments, not replaces."

That was the pitch.

The pitch to investors.

The pitch to customers.

The pitch to employees.

The pitch to law school graduates with $200,000 in debt.

The pitch to the senators we lobby.

"AI augments, not replaces."

It was a beautiful phrase.

Calming.

Reassuring.

Focus-grouped extensively.

Completely false.

We knew.

We all knew.

Every enterprise software CEO on the planet knew.

We discussed it at Davos.

Over $47 cocktails.

While wearing badges that said "Human-Centered AI."

The technology was coming.

The replacement was inevitable.

The timeline was unclear.

Our exit liquidity was not.

We just didn't expect Anthropic to be so... helpful.

On January 30th, they released the plugins.

By February 2nd, Thomson Reuters was down 18%.

In a single day.

LegalZoom dropped 20%.

Our Head of Investor Relations had a panic attack.

On a Zoom call.

With investors.

They saw.

We call it the "SaaSpocalypse."

That's a joke.

It's not funny.

My net worth dropped by $14 million.

That's two Teslas per hour for a week.

Jensen Huang said our reaction was "purely illogical."

Easy for him to say.

He sells the shovels.

We sold the promises.

He's up 340% since 2023.

We're down 47% since September.

But sure.

Illogical.

The promises that AI would make your existing software better.

Not obsolete.

The promises that you still needed expensive platforms.

Expensive integrations.

Expensive support contracts.

Expensive consultants.

Expensive lawyers.

The lawyers.

The lawyers are the real story.

Big Law runs on billable hours.

$800 an hour.

$1,200 an hour.

$2,000 an hour.

For contract review.

For NDA triage.

For compliance workflows.

For "adding value."

Work that requires a JD.

Three years of law school.

Bar passage.

Six years of experience.

A corner office.

A parking spot.

A subscription to the Yale Law Journal.

Claude does it now.

For $20 a month.

Claude doesn't need a parking spot.

Claude doesn't expense client dinners.

Claude doesn't bill 2,400 hours to make partner.

Claude doesn't have a Yale Law Journal subscription.

Claude doesn't have student loans.

Claude doesn't cry in the bathroom at 2 AM.

Claude just... works.

The American Bar Association had a conference last week.

They predicted "the demise of the billable hour model."

At a conference about billing.

They served $18 sandwiches.

The irony was lost on no one.

The sandwiches were mediocre.

Morgan Stanley called it "intensifying competition."

That's Wall Street speak for "your business model is dying."

Adam Parker at Trivariate Research said software stocks are "guilty until proven innocent."

He said we're "a falling knife."

He's right.

We are a falling knife.

And we sold you the handle.

For years.

With a service contract.

And an annual maintenance fee.

We said: "AI is a tool."

We meant: "AI is our tool."

We said: "AI augments humans."

We meant: "AI augments our revenue."

We said: "AI won't replace your job."

We meant: "AI won't replace your job until it does."

We said: "The human touch is irreplaceable."

We meant: "The human touch is expensive and we're working on it."

We said: "AI needs human oversight."

We meant: "For legal liability purposes only."

We said: "We're committed to responsible AI."

We meant: "We're committed to responsible AI until it's unprofitable."

It's unprofitable now.

It does now.

The associate lawyers are first.

The ones who thought they were safe.

The ones who thought "AI can't practice law."

AI can't practice law.

AI can do 80% of what associates bill for.

The other 20% is "relationship management."

That means: lunch.

Then the contract reviewers.

Then the compliance analysts.

Then the consultants.

Then the financial analysts.

Then the people who make PowerPoints about synergy.

Actually, we're keeping those.

Someone has to explain the layoffs.

Mike O'Rourke said it best: "If the legal industry can be disrupted, so can consulting and financial services."

He's not wrong.

He's terrifyingly correct.

He probably shouldn't have said that out loud.

His LinkedIn is now "Open to Work."

Every knowledge worker who bills by the hour is now in a race.

A race against a Claude plugin.

An open-source Claude plugin.

We didn't see that coming.

We expected proprietary.

We expected expensive.

We expected enterprise sales cycles.

Eighteen-month implementations.

Mandatory consulting packages.

Executive briefings in Aspen.

Anthropic just... gave it away.

Eleven plugins.

Free.

"Customize workflows."

"Slash commands."

"Consistent outcomes."

For $20 a month.

No executive briefing.

No Aspen.

No $47 cocktails.

Just a chat interface.

And the death of our business model.

The board meeting was yesterday.

The CFO cried.

The General Counsel updated his resume.

On company time.

Using the company laptop.

Bold move.

The Chief Revenue Officer blamed the sales team.

The sales team blamed the product.

The product blamed the market.

The market blamed us.

The PR team blamed "macro headwinds."

The CEO blamed "exogenous factors."

The board blamed the CEO.

The CEO blamed his predecessor.

His predecessor is on three other boards.

He's fine.

The market is correct.

We knew.

We all knew.

Every pitch deck.

Every investor presentation.

Every "thought leadership" article.

Every podcast appearance.

Every TED talk about "the future of work."

"AI augments, not replaces."

We said it.

We didn't believe it.

We had a private Slack channel.

Called "#inevitable."

We discussed the timeline.

We discussed our options vesting schedule.

We discussed which executives should sell first.

"Staggered for optics."

And now the market doesn't believe us.

$250 billion.

Gone.

In a week.

Because a company in San Francisco released eleven plugins.

For free.

And did what we said was impossible.

Replaced expensive knowledge workers.

With a chat interface.

A chat interface that doesn't need dental.

We have a new phrase now.

"Pivot to AI-native."

That means: "We're rebuilding everything."

That means: "The last five years were wasted."

That means: "Your job is also in jeopardy."

That means: "Please don't look at our executives' stock sales from Q4."

But don't worry.

We're "leaning into the disruption."

We're "embracing the paradigm shift."

We're "right-sizing for the new reality."

Right-sizing means layoffs.

Paradigm shift means our product is obsolete.

Leaning in means we have no plan.

AI augments, not replaces.

We would never lie to you.

Again.

Anyway, buy the dip!

Our investor relations team says it's a "compelling entry point."

They're also updating their resumes.

[Zvi Mowshowitz @TheZvi]

The part of these ads people aren't discussing is how (before the AI pivots to the ad!) they use inflection and detail to illustrate the banality of a certain type of AI slop response.

[Cardboard Crack @Cardboard_Crack]

Kai #MTG

[Andrew Mitchell @AndrewMitch3ll]

G.O.A.T. and a gent. Such sad news.

[Magic: The Gathering @wizards_magic]

We are deeply saddened at the news of the passing of Magic legend Kai Budde. His achievements in the game and community go beyond what we could say in one post. Our thoughts go out to Kai's friends and family in this moment.

Remembering Kai Budde: https://t.co/E4wXHdRLNb

[Andrew Mitchell @AndrewMitch3ll]

@TheZvi Tx - Relay was a great Christmas watch

[Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin @jasonlk]

The start-ups, scale-ups and bigger tech cos I’m most worried about: the ones that aren’t truly AI Obsessed at the product level

What do I mean?

I mean their teams aren’t constantly talking about what cool things they can do now, this week, to improve their product with AI. Constantly.

There is too much AI lip service in B2B

Too much talk, not enough action among incumbents, especially in industries where AI isn’t incredibly disruptive at moment (e.g., much of vertical SaaS, fintech, etc)

AI is not a feature, or an edition, or a box to check

It should be something your product and engineering teams just can’t stop talking about in B2B.

Almost to the point where you can’t take it anymore.

[Andrew Mitchell @AndrewMitch3ll]

@emollick All mountain mana base... Curious how it handles dif. formats like Pioneer, Legacy, and Commander

[Andrew Mitchell @AndrewMitch3ll]

@jlarkin353 One of them was me - needed more bars and time to try that deo

[Andrew Mitchell @AndrewMitch3ll]

@torrenegra And your coffee? Have you got a Descent? Taking data to turn the art of a good pull into a science

[Andrew Mitchell @AndrewMitch3ll]

@JohnCendpts @endpts @MDAndersonNews @Cigna Good luck, @JohnCendpts, and thank you for sharing your journey with all its ups and downs.

[Andrew Mitchell @AndrewMitch3ll]

@jasonlk Peter Gassner insisted on personally inspecting our data model when we built Vault Safety... Leadership actively engaged instead of becoming 'lifestyle' executives is another key to this level of success.

[Andrew Mitchell @AndrewMitch3ll]

@SullyOmarr Yeah it’s a big bubble.. they should all just pack their stuff up and go home.. that or just keep calling their old features ‘AI’..

[Andrew Mitchell @AndrewMitch3ll]

@aloktayi Emerging. Build a product for a top 5 pharma and you run the real risk of developing a custom solution or getting broken in the process cause you're not ready for that kind of client

[Andrew Mitchell @AndrewMitch3ll]

@Brock_Heinz @levelsio @Austen @bloomtech Just dive in... The underlying tech and how it affects traditional business models is moving so fast that you'll learn with the currents.

[Jake Miller @makerjak]

@jsfranklin221 @tjparker The business unit structure just makes it so much harder to do new things. You almost have to resort to using voodoo to get a shared service / business unit to care enough about any new product you are trying to launch

[claire vo 🖤 @clairevo]

There are two wildly different pursuits you must execute to build great products:

1. Build what customers want
2. Bet on an unproven future

We tend to over complicate or over-wield the former, creating complex mechanisms by which customer feedback is quantified, abstracted, frameworked-away. PMs find the simplest form distasteful (“ugh, why build for one prospect?”) and struggles to implement at scale (hence “no” culture.)

Building what customers want is a tactical, commercial minded pursuit with narrower lanes of creativity. This is where speed matters. The best at this are relentlessly practical, with real customer empathy and a big dash of competitiveness.

Then there are the big ol bets, which die of human causes: fear, bureaucracy, ego. These are the ideas that get killed in committee, or rot as a crappy MVP, or get called a distraction.

It’s extremely hard to get good at big bets.

The cheat code? Unreasonable people:

Unreasonable people who simply will a future to be true. They say “this is how the world will look, see ya there!” They are OK being wrong (but usually aren’t.) They are, for lack of better word, zealots. These are your founders or your founders-at-heart.

The worst thing you can do in a org that has a big thinker is pair them with a team of skeptics—the frameworks and “prove it” and the process. It’s like the first hires at a startup being begrudgingly assigned contractors. You’d never do it. They’d never win.

If the first group (build what customers want!) needs execution velocity, the second group (bet on the future) needs vision velocity, where an insight about the market hits an ambitious set of creative thinkers and builds an imagination flywheel that unlocks a Big Idea™️.

So think about which of these skills you need.
Think about which profile you are.
And then leaders: think about how to build human systems around them.

You’ll never get great without both models.
And your team is where the magic happens.

Build thoughtfully! 🚀