Shipping Excellence

SaaS Isn't Dead. The Moat Just Moved.

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SaaS isn't dead. UI is. The moat just moved.

Assaf Weinberg (Co-Founder & CEO, SetSale) joins Andrew Duncan to dismantle the LinkedIn narratives about software in the age of AI: "code is free," "SaaS is dead," and the founder myth that hiring a developer is the bottleneck.

Chapters

  • 00:00 The biggest limit on AI is what you believe it can do
  • 01:23 Building SetSale before AI tools existed
  • 04:31 Supastarter and the portal boilerplate origin
  • 06:47 Why the cost of software isn't zero
  • 07:43 The "I just need a developer" myth
  • 11:09 Every software company is a data transformation engine
  • 13:58 Why SaaS isn't dead
  • 17:08 Capture your data or AI can't help you
  • 22:20 The Austin distributor story: four days to ship
  • 27:34 Artists don't sketch in marble
  • 33:30 A developer's job is specification, not code
  • 44:13 The new bottleneck is customer adoption

    • Topics

    • Why AI made code cheap but didn't make software cheap
    • The "I just need a developer" myth and why it was always a crutch
    • UI as commodity, data and process as the only durable moat
    • Why every software company reduces to a data transformation engine
    • The Austin distributor visit: notetaker, AI PM, Cursor, four days to ship
    • Six-week bets as the new unit of org change
    • What roles look like when designers don't make mockups and developers don't write code
    • The new bottleneck: customer adoption now lags engineering velocity

      • Guest

      Assaf Weinberg, Co-Founder & CEO, SetSale

      https://www.setsale.ai/

      https://www.linkedin.com/in/assafweinberg/

      https://x.com/assafweinberg

      Resources mentioned

      Sense and Respond by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden: https://www.amazon.com/Sense-Respond-Successful-Organizations-Continuously/dp/1633691888

      Granola (AI notetaker): https://www.granola.ai/

      Supastarter (Next.js SaaS boilerplate): https://supastarter.dev/

      Cursor: https://www.cursor.com/

      Connect

      Andrew Duncan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-b-duncan/

      Vertice Labs: https://www.verticelabs.io

      Subscribe

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      Shipping ExcellenceBy Andrew Duncan