Joe Mathewson 🌈

SaaS entrepreneur. Co-founder at @fireflyteam. Views here my own. Also @[email protected].

[Drive Tesla 🇨🇦 @DriveTeslaca]

Here it is - the world’s first fully autonomous vehicle delivery, direct from the factory to the customer.

FSD was able to navigate both highway and city streets flawlessly.

Congrats to the entire @Tesla_AI team, this is huge! 💪

[Matt Turck @mattturck]

Is SaaS dead?

What seems to be happening:
* tough macro, cost cutting
* AI sucking the air out of the room
* SaaS vendors perceived as “last generation” despite best efforts to add AI quickly
* enterprise budgets for AI are not net new, they’re taken from somewhere (SaaS budgets cut)
* Bulk of budgets going to OpenAI/Azure etc because low hanging fruit to “do AI” (knowledge bot, coding)
* for the more specialized enterprise apps, customers feel like they can/should “build” internally rather than “buy”

What happens next:
* customers realize that “build” is a headache, not always good
* OpenAI / Azure etc can’t / doesn’t want to build hundreds of problem specific/ vertical specific apps
* Takes time, but legacy and new SaaS companies truly become AI-first (not just marketing), abstract away complexity of deploying LLMs
* macro environment eventually rebounds
* AIaaS becomes the new SaaS - what is old is new

(unedited Sat morning thoughts)

[Suhail @Suhail]

Chatbot UX is the MS-DOS of the AI era

[Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin @jasonlk]

Not a sub-tweet

But I wonder if most VCs really understand AI as well as they think they do

I don't and I'll be the first to admit it

[Joe Mathewson 🌈 @j0ejack]

@danmartell Partner!

[Tom Blomfield @t_blom]

The best founders can describe in detail what they’ve built today and then clearly envision how it becomes a really big business in 10 years’ time.

It’s essential to hold this micro and macro view in your head at the same time and communicate both very clearly.

People mess up when they confuse the two. They miscommunicate the big vision as what they have done today, and seem like they’re bullshitting. Or they continue to project out this micro view for several years into the future and seem like they’re not ambitious.

[Jesse Pujji @jspujji]

“You are the ceiling for the company.”

If you were sitting in the GX office in STL, you’d hear me saying this regularly to our CEOs.

What do I mean by it?

The CEO sets the standard for EVERYTHING:
+ Do meetings start on time?
+ Are deadlines met?
+ How much rigor goes into prioritization?

A lot of CEOs focus on the big stuff (hiring, strategy) not realizing that every action they take becomes the standard for the company.

Rarely (especially early on) will a person come in and raise the bar above what the CEO does or asks for.

So what do you do with this?
1) Model the behavior you want to see
2) Invest in your own learning and growth
3) Ask for feedback early and often

Growing yourself is actually the best way to grow your company.

[Lewis Goodall @lewis_goodall]

The fact that pieces like this are now being written should bring shame and shudder to the West.

[Joe Mathewson 🌈 @j0ejack]

@MoraySouter Ha! When we drove past it was so muddy and the shop so small we decided we didn’t want to get out of the car.

[Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin @jasonlk]

To be a great CEO,

You have to enjoy telling certain stories over and over again

Sometimes 100s of times

[Aaron Levie @levie]

The best founders I know — no matter their company’s scale — thrive on doing customer support directly. There’s literally no better way to understand the pulse of your customer base, what features to build next, or where systems are breaking down. It’s always upside.

[Grant Sanderson @3blue1brown]

Product idea: An app/website that's identical to YouTube in every way, except without any shorts.

[Joe Mathewson 🌈 @j0ejack]

So X takes the advertiser’s money, shows the ad and then displays a warning under the ad that it is a scam. Innovative!

[Joe Mathewson 🌈 @j0ejack]

At this point this is reaching Selling Sunset levels of soap opera

[Ilya Sutskever @ilyasut]

I deeply regret my participation in the board's actions. I never intended to harm OpenAI. I love everything we've built together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company.

[Joe Mathewson 🌈 @j0ejack]

Definitely possible

[Leo Polovets @lpolovets]

I read the news that Sam Altman is joining Microsoft, and the first thing I thought about is Paul Graham's description of Sam: "You could parachute him into an island full of cannibals and come back in 5 years and he'd be the king."

So basically 5 years until he's CEO?

[Joe Mathewson 🌈 @j0ejack]

Seems like an exceptionally smart move by @satyanadella. But there is a wide gamut of what “working for Microsoft” could mean. Will be fascinating to find out what it does in this case.

[Joe Mathewson 🌈 @j0ejack]

@clivebull so great to have you back in your true slot Clive!

[Aaron Levie @levie]

What a horrifying tragedy in Israel. Thinking of all the Israelis and anyone affected by this gruesome terrorist attack. Peace can’t come soon enough.

[gaut @0xgaut]

ok this is absolutely *wild*

using AI to live translate and sync your lips

[Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin @jasonlk]

I've been doing this long enough to know there is no karma

Folks do awful things and do just fine

But I've also been doing this long enough to know if you are really, really good to a lot of people

A few will really surprise you down the road and pay it back many times over