Some insights from watching founders build vertical AI SaaS companies:
- distribution beats technology every time
- domain expertise is your moat not the ai
- go deep in one vertical before expanding
- build for ai being wrong
- compliance takes 40% of your roadmap
- the best features come from watching users struggle
- initial wedge product determines everything
- incumbents are slower than you think
- implementation is where deals die
- change management is harder than the tech
- professional services become necessary
- land and expand works differently with ai
- model choice matters less over time
- youre building a software company not an ai company
The hard part of being a founder isn’t raising money, that’s the easy part.
It’s waking up for years wondering if it’ll ever work.
It’s hearing “no” constantly.
It’s choosing to believe when logic says you shouldn’t.
It’s pivoting for the 7th time in 3 years.
It’s watching your best teammates quit.
It’s pretending to be confident when you’re terrified inside.
It’s reinventing the company because the last product stalled at a few million in revenue.
It’s firing someone you personally recruited and still care about.
It’s being two payrolls away from death and still showing up every morning telling everyone you’ll win. It’s getting crushed by a competitor who just started. It’s sleepless nights because your brain won’t stop and the anxiety won’t leave.
It’s being in a constant state of not knowing what to do as the company evolves.
And it’s keeping at it anyway.
Everything is hard, and it compounds.
Stay in the game, win the game
The hard part of being a founder isn’t raising money, that’s the easy part.
It’s waking up for years wondering if it’ll ever work.
It’s hearing “no” constantly.
It’s pivoting for the 7th time in 3 years.
It’s watching your best teammates quit.
It’s reinventing the company because the last product stalled at a few million in revenue.
It’s being two payrolls away from death and still showing up every morning telling everyone you’ll win.
It’s getting crushed by a competitor who just started.
It’s sleepless nights because your brain won’t stop and the anxiety won’t leave.
It’s being in a constant state of not knowing what to do as the company evolves.
And it’s keeping at it anyway.
Everything is hard, and it compounds.
Stay in the game, win the game
Wanna look good all the time?
Avoid mistakes.
Play it safe.
Only do what you know you’ll crush.
You’ll LOOK good to people who barely care…
But you’ll never grow.
You’ll never lead.
You’ll never win.
Every breakthrough is on the other side of looking a little stupid first.
My wife just compared all this tech-adjacent extreme longevity focus in men to anorexia in women. A physical manifestation of anxiety and lack of control. And now I can't get the thought out of my head. Spot on.
Ok I spent the day vibe coding on @Replit
It is truly awesome — especially as it is so easy build an app, QA an app, >and< put it into production. The trifecta.
Clicking Deploy is so rewarding.
I built a lightweight Cluely clone today for fun (sort of … it’s not very good, but learned) and have a few things I want to build this week. Super cool.
Also …
No friggin’ way anyone is gonna roll their own Salesforce or Notion via vibe coding. No one has the time to rebuild all those workflows, make them secure, enterprise grade, build all use cases, etc.
I’d much rather spend $20-$200 a month to buy an app that already exists and is bulletproof.
I now think SaaS is cheap again. My time is worth more than $20/month.