Shaun Springer

Making the future of small business software @headroomai

[Shaun Springer @Shaun_Springer]

agentic coding for me resembles a video game / gamification of my attention rather than a rigorous task I need to focus all of my energy on.

[Shaun Springer @Shaun_Springer]

@glamboyosa Dispassionate or not this is the beginning of a tectonic shift in work, labor force stability, and career stability

[Shaun Springer @Shaun_Springer]

The days of warm bodies filling seats are over. Either you create value or you’re gone. If you can’t use AI to create more value than before you’re absolutely cooked

[Zeb Evans @DJ_CURFEW]

Today we reduced headcount by 22%. The business is the strongest it's ever been. So I think it's important to be direct about what I'm seeing and why.

First, I made this decision and I own it. I did it because the way to operate at the highest level of productivity is changing, and to win the future, ClickUp needs to change with it.

Second, this wasn't about cutting costs. Most savings from this change will flow directly back into the people who stay. We'll be introducing million-dollar salary bands. If you create outsized impact using AI, you'll be paid outside of traditional bands.

Most importantly, I have the deepest gratitude for those affected. We're doing this from a position of strength specifically so we can take care of people properly. Everyone affected receives a package aimed at honoring their contributions and easing the transition.

I only see two options: wait for this to play out gradually in the market or be honest about what I'm seeing and act proactively.

THE 100X ORGANIZATION
The primary change is that we're restructuring around what I call 100x org. The goal is 100x output. The roles required to build at the highest level are fundamentally different than they were a year ago.

Incremental improvements to existing systems won't get us there. We need new ones. That means creating enough disruption to rebuild rather than iterate on what's already broken.

The common narrative is that AI makes everyone more productive. It doesn't. Many of the workflows of today, if left unchanged, create bottlenecks in AI systems.

These roles will evolve. But waiting for that to happen naturally means falling behind now.

The 100x org is actually heavily dependent on people - infinitely more than today. This is only possible with 10x people that have embraced and adopted new ways of working.

THE BUILDERS, AGENT MANAGERS, AND FRONT-LINERS

— THE BUILDERS: 10X ENGINEERS
I don't think most companies have internalized what's actually happening with AI in engineering. The common narrative is that AI makes all engineers more productive. That may be true in isolation, but at an organization level - that is the farthest thing from reality.

Here's what we've validated recently at ClickUp: the great engineers, the ones who can orchestrate, architect, and review, are becoming 100x engineers. They're not writing code. They're directing agents that write code. The skill is judgment.

AI makes the best engineers wildly more productive, and everyone else using AI slows these engineers down.
Think about it - the bottlenecks are (1) orchestration - telling AI what to do, and (2) reviewing - what AI did. Everything is leapfrogged and no longer needed.
So who do you want orchestrating and reviewing code?

And how do you want your best engineers to spend their time?

If your best engineers are spending time reviewing other people's code, then this is inherently an inefficient bottleneck. These engineers can review their agent's code much faster than reviewing human code.

The new world is about enabling your 10x engineers to become 100x.

The wrong strategy is to push every engineer to use infinite tokens. Companies doing this are celebrating 500% more pull requests. But customer outcomes don't match the volume of code being generated.

I call this the great reckoning of AI coding, and every company will face this soon if not already.

More code is just another bottleneck to the best engineers, and ultimately to your company's impact as well.

— THE BUILDERS: 10X PRODUCT MANAGERS
Product management and design roles are merging.

Designers that have customer focus, become more like product managers.

And product managers that have intuition for UX become more like designers.

The bottleneck of user research is gone. It takes us just one mention of an agent to kickoff research and analyze results.

The bottleneck of product <> design iteration is also gone. The product builder iterates on their own, along with agents and skills that ensure alignment with quality and strategy.

Also controversial today - I believe that the wrong strategy is to have your PMs shipping code - that just introduces another bottleneck that the best engineers will waste their time on.

To be clear, PMs should be coding but they should do this in a playground to iterate, validate, and scope. That code should not go to production.

Everything outside of managing systems, orchestrating AI, and reviewing output becomes a bottleneck.
That's why the other roles that are critical along with these are the systems managers (to reduce bottlenecks) along with a bottleneck you can't replace - customer meeting time.

— THE SYSTEM MANAGERS
Ironically, the people that automate their jobs with AI will always have a job. They become owners of the AI systems - agent managers. We have many examples of these people at ClickUp.

The underlying systems in which we operate are absolutely critical to get right. I think most companies are delusional to think they can iterate on existing systems and compete in this new world.

You must create enough disruption so that old systems are deprecated entirely. If there's any definition for 'AI native' that's what it is.

— THE FRONT-LINERS
In a world that will become saturated with AI communication, the human touch will matter more than anything to customers.

This is a bottleneck that you shouldn't replace - even when agents are high enough quality to do video meetings.

One-on-one meeting time with customers is something that shouldn't be automated. The systems around the meetings should be - so that front-liners spend nearly 100% of their time with customers.

REWARDING 100X IMPACT
In a world where companies are able to do so much more with less, where does that excess money go?
In our case, much of the savings in this new operating model will flow directly back to those that enabled it.

We must reward people that create productivity accordingly. This aligns incentives on both sides. Plus, in a world where your best people create 100x impact, you can't afford to lose them.

You should aim to retain these employees for decades. The context they have and their ability to efficiently orchestrate and review will be nearly impossible to replace.

Compensation bands of today should be thrown out the door. We're introducing $1 million cash/year salary bands with a path available to nearly everyone in the company if they produce 100x impact by creating or managing AI systems.

THE FUTURE
Nearly every company will make changes like these. The ones that do it proactively will define what comes next.

The future is not fewer people. It's different work, new roles, and better rewards for those who embrace it. We're already seeing entirely new roles emerge, like Agent Managers, that didn't exist a year ago.

ClickUp is positioning to lead this shift, not just internally, but for our customers too. I've never been more certain about where we're headed.

[Shaun Springer @Shaun_Springer]

@christinacaci this is very similar motivations that led to @headroomai
being created!

[Shaun Springer @Shaun_Springer]

Composer 2.5 is so insanely good, but also its cheap and fast which is a real game changer for my workflow

[Shaun Springer @Shaun_Springer]

We’ve made it boys

[VCs Congratulating Themselves 👏👏👏 @VCBrags]

🚨Drake mentions venture capitalist Peter Thiel on his new album Iceman

"Zero to one, but I did it twice. Thiel told me monopoly, I took his advice. Palantir in my pocket, Founders Fund on ice"

[Shaun Springer @Shaun_Springer]

Only deeply technical and hard to make / distribute products will survive the SaaSpocalypse.

[Mark Cuban @mcuban]

Message to entrepreneurs Your product is their feature

[Shaun Springer @Shaun_Springer]

i think people want to code their own apps as badly as people want to build spreadsheets. which is not at all

[Shaun Springer @Shaun_Springer]

Showed the latest @headroomAI to an old friend who is a staff level software engineer. his mind was blown at what he could build without writing a line of code or touching any technical concepts.

[Shaun Springer @Shaun_Springer]

Before AI I really loved multitasking and prided myself on being able to do multiple business operations and coding at once, now I can do half a dozen things at light speed and its fucking exhilarating.

[Shaun Springer @Shaun_Springer]

Claude for SMBs is evidence they can't see what businesses actually need. It's certainly not a set of prepackaged skills

https://t.co/91t0o06KNr

[Shaun Springer @Shaun_Springer]

@Jishai 🤫

[Shaun Springer @Shaun_Springer]

Yesterday members of our team were on a board meeting of a $500mm/year fashion brand, and today they're onsite with a 30 person construction company. Deploying the same software, for vastly different use cases. Amazing times

[Shaun Springer @Shaun_Springer]

AI is going to accelerate the companies the economy overlooks the most. SMB's have always been crafty and found a way, yet Silicon Valley has overlooked their skills and production of labor for far too long.

[Jason Saltzman @saltzman_jason]

The businesses getting the most out of AI right now aren't tech companies.

They’re plumbers, agency owners, dentists, Etsy sellers.

New data from @OpenAI (cc @RonnieChatterji) makes the pattern clear: tech startups account for about 5% of ~active~ U.S. users doing entrepreneurial work with ChatGPT.

The other 95% are spread across services, retail, healthcare, and trades.

AI adoption for entrepreneurship isn’t concentrated in tech. It’s happening inside everyday businesses, folding into routine work that used to be slower or outsourced or entirely overlooked.

[Shaun Springer @Shaun_Springer]

When I said more software jobs would be created by AI I didn’t expect that supply chain security would be the biggest opportunity. But here we are

[Socket @SocketSecurity]

🚨 BREAKING: 84 TanStack npm packages were compromised in an ongoing Mini Shai-Hulud supply chain attack, adding suspected CI credential-stealing malware.

Socket flagged every malicious version within six minutes of publication. This is a developing story.

[Shaun Springer @Shaun_Springer]

Everyone talks about AI making software production approach zero marginal cost.

But compute and energy are already becoming bottlenecks.

As inference gets less subsidized, the true cost of tokens will show up, and “infinite free software” starts looking a lot less real.

[Shaun Springer @Shaun_Springer]

@julien__levy Elastic markets!

[Shaun Springer @Shaun_Springer]

@Seanfrank i feel seen

[Jishai @Jishai]

https://t.co/udqGu50brJ

[Shaun Springer @Shaun_Springer]

The most interesting part of @VoriHQ's Series B announcement is this:

"By 2035, ~6M SMBs face ownership transitions as boomers retire — up to $5T in enterprise value. Incoming owners grew up with smartphones and zero patience for paper and faxes."

The world is changing fast.