Matt Macri-Waller

and then.....
Builder | Founder | Investor | Former CEO @benifex

[Matt Macri-Waller @MattMacriWaller]

@AnthropicAI is a business living by its principles and values. Incredible clarity, vision and courage by @DarioAmodei this is the AI leadership we need, not naked AI videos and placating ‘yes it’s dangerous speeches’. Even more of a fan of the anthropic and the team there 💚

Full interview: Anthropic CEO responds to Trump order, Pentagon clash https://t.co/42nwuix4oP

[Aaron Levie @levie]

https://t.co/O7OiUYKjbh

[Matt Macri-Waller @MattMacriWaller]

@sama Congrats @sama

[Matt Macri-Waller @MattMacriWaller]

@paulg Taste + data - as ever it was @paulg https://t.co/BKrhsAJR8T

[Matt Macri-Waller @MattMacriWaller]

@Podium has done an exceptional job showing there is a new category of worker where SMBs can't afford to pay for a person, but there is a job to be done to help them drive growth. There are hundreds of these opportunities if you can bridge the gap from model to effective agent

[Eric Rea @ericwilliamrea]

We just crossed $100M in AI agent ARR in under 24 months.

Not because of a viral launch or AI hype.
But because of a crazy bet we made in 2023.

At the end of 2023, over 60k local businesses were using @PodiumHQ to centralize their leads and customer communication into one platform.

It’s a great product. Customers convert more leads and make more money with it.

But one reality became impossible to ignore:

Our customers’ biggest constraint isn’t software. It’s staffing.

→ 75% annual turnover
→ 30% of leads come after hours
→ Every missed call can be $20,000+ in lost revenue

Business owners don’t care about software.
They care about making money.

And the best software in the world doesn’t matter if there aren’t enough people to run it.

So we built Jerry, the perfect user of our own platform.

Not a chatbot. An AI employee that uses Podium to:
- Qualify and schedule every lead
- Handle objections and follow up
- Learn through natural-language coaching
- Work 24/7

Demos are easy.
Real AI employees are not.

To work in the real world, AI has to think, act, understand context, and use tools.
It has to handle thousands of edge cases every day.
It has to be coachable. Like a human.

That leap is enormous.

Agents aren’t a feature. They’re the foundation.

That’s why we rebuilt Podium as an AI-first system of agents.

Today:
- 10,000+ AI agents live in production
- AI now outperforms humans in many jobs
- $100M+ in AI agent ARR, and accelerating

This is still day one.

The future isn’t software. It's AI employees that do the work and unlock growth for businesses.

We’re early in building what we believe will become the most impactful AI employee ecosystem for the $3T SMB market.

We’ve seen 300% year-over-year AI revenue growth and we’re just getting started.

[Matt Macri-Waller @MattMacriWaller]

Bearish or bullish SaaS? For me its all about speed...if you can't adapt to this fundamental technology shift (as with all previous tectonic shifts) your product will (and deserves) to die...

[Chamath Palihapitiya @chamath]

We've talked a lot about this on the Pod, but the Great SaaS Meltdown has started and there's no going back.

What exactly is happening?

In short, hi growth, low/no profitability SaaS is no longer a winning strategy because the big question mark is the durability of that growth in the short term and, because of AI, the lack of profits in the long term. Every SaaS company has sold the dream (to investors and employees) that they will growth quickly now, and harvest lots of cash later. With AI, this assumption may be completely out the window.

Now the threshold question is whether their growth will be overtaken by a much cheaper AI-developed solution?

If you are a venture supported SaaS startup and are a legacy Heuristics+APIs+CRUD product, it is likely that a new AI oriented workflow is coming for you.

Investors in private markets can see this now and think that money to fund short term growth will not be rewarded. Investors in public markets no longer believe long term profitability is possible. They would rather pivot into something they think is more resilient.

This is a change in the risk calculus that has existed for the past 15 years and why the chart below is the chart below.

Good luck to all the players!

[Matt Macri-Waller @MattMacriWaller]

@justindross @roelofbotha @rabois playbook

[Matt Macri-Waller @MattMacriWaller]

@t_blom Solo founder ponders life choices…😬

[Matt Macri-Waller @MattMacriWaller]

every day you learn a little more about yourself...some days its surprising how much!

[Matt Macri-Waller @MattMacriWaller]

@friedberg - finally someone else is talking about the US deficit increasing more than $1trn per annum... https://t.co/Q7nYmPgpn4

[Matt Macri-Waller @MattMacriWaller]

My mind has just been blown by Devin from @cognition_labs. These demos are achievable in reality…wow…is it the end of co-piloting?

[Cognition @cognition]

Today we're excited to introduce Devin, the first AI software engineer.

Devin is the new state-of-the-art on the SWE-Bench coding benchmark, has successfully passed practical engineering interviews from leading AI companies, and has even completed real jobs on Upwork.

Devin is an autonomous agent that solves engineering tasks through the use of its own shell, code editor, and web browser.

When evaluated on the SWE-Bench benchmark, which asks an AI to resolve GitHub issues found in real-world open-source projects, Devin correctly resolves 13.86% of the issues unassisted, far exceeding the previous state-of-the-art model performance of 1.96% unassisted and 4.80% assisted.

Check out what Devin can do in the thread below.

[Matt Macri-Waller @MattMacriWaller]

@Barney_H_Y But a little part of me died reading that update...thought OpenAI was going to become a new foundational company, platform, way of doing biz. Let's see what happens from here...other real winner was Elon - OAI Chaos + Cruise CEO resignation + Starship launch - all in <48 hours!

[Matt Macri-Waller @MattMacriWaller]

ChatGPT can now see, hear, and speak…was just talking about vision x chatGPT with someone the other day…this will unlock a ton of high value use cases. Kudos ⁦@sama⁩ and ⁦@OpenAI⁩ https://t.co/CZ0nKlf7r2

[Matt Macri-Waller @MattMacriWaller]

@elonmusk @engineers_feed But look how happy the Danish one looks @elonmusk

[Matt Macri-Waller @MattMacriWaller]

Must be Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays…

[Matt Macri-Waller @MattMacriWaller]

People just astonish me every day…some good, some not so much, but always astonished

[Matt Macri-Waller @MattMacriWaller]

@matt_gray_ Loving these…got to be this one for me…a metaphor for life as founder of a startup!

[Matt Macri-Waller @MattMacriWaller]

😲🤯

[Martin Lorentzon @MartinLorentzon]

Spotify is 17 years old today! 🙏🏻

[Matt Macri-Waller @MattMacriWaller]

My entire timeline on all social platforms right now…