🛩️ Does all software need a copilot? The benefits of compressing timelines, ...
Today marks the 50th edition of Best Business Podcasts! I’ve spent over 500 hours listening to podcasts and writing this newsletter. Now, I’ve got a quick favor to ask. Would you mind taking 30 seconds to forward this to a friend? It’ll help so much in my next stage of growth. Thank you!
Now, onto todays’ post. Here’s what you need to know:
🚀 Launch, iterate, launch, iterate
⏩ The benefits of compressing timelines
🛩️ Does all software need a copilot?
🚀 Launch, iterate, launch, iterate
🥉 Third place (3 min read vs 21 mins listening)
Launching a product is a pivotal moment for any startup. It's the culmination of months or even years of hard work. But, should it be? When is the right time to launch and how should you do it?
Kat Mañalac, a startup advisor at YC, knows this better than anyone. With over 3,500 startups under her belt, Kat has seen it all when it comes to launch strategies. She distills all of her wisdom on why you should take a launch and iterate approach.
What they say
Launch misconceptions
Founders overthink their first launch. They think they have one shot at launching publicly and the messaging has to be perfect or no one will ever buy or use or invest in their product.
Founders are really good at lying to themselves. A lot of you have really strong convictions about how you're going to solve a problem and how people are going to interact with what you're building.
Putting your product out there, even in its earliest state, will help you determine if you're solving a big enough problem and if someone is willing to pay you for it.
If you launch too early what's the worst case scenario? People may think the product is ugly. Investors may hear about the product before it's ready. Competitors may see it. Or worse, no one will see it. That's fine. Just launch again.
In the same spirit of always be shipping, I want you to think about launching as something that you do continually.
Kat Mañalac
What I say
Why it matters: My favorite type of launch is what Kat coins the ‘silent launch’. You don't need anything fancy - just a domain name, a short description, and a call to action. From there, you find a way to bring attention to your product.
With a Carrd one-page website, you have all you need to test if your startup is a pain killer (it solves a real problem) or a vitamin (it’s a nice to have). By launching early and often, you can gain valuable feedback from users to help shape your product for the better.
Between the lines: I’m only now writing podcast and host bios on thepodup.com. These projects were initially on my pre-launch checklist 12 months ago, but I quickly moved them to post-launch. Yes, the site looked unfinished. It said ‘There’s no summary’ on every host page. But that didn’t matter. It freed up my time to concentrate on growing this newsletter and validating the structure and content with you, my loyal readers.
You have to be ruthless and cut, cut, cut before you launch. If you find it difficult to determine what’s necessary and what’s not, I’m happy to share my 2 cents and help you find ways to launch ASAP. If you need a hand, email me: adam [at] thepodup.com. Remember, even the best of us launch multiple times before we get it right:
⏩ The benefits of compressing timelines
🥈 Second place (3 min read vs 1 hour 6 mins listening)
Time is money. Companies that take too long to get things done risk losing out to more agile competitors. Frank Slootman, CEO of Snowflake, shares the concept of compressing timelines and setting ambitious deadlines to drive productivity and innovation.
What they say
Set the tempo
If you leave organizations to their own devices, they go slower and slower and slower. Go to a California DMV if you want to know what I’m talking about.
There’s slack everywhere. Do it better. Do it faster. Even the simplest conversation can be energized.
You can very easily amp up an organization by just setting different expectations. I call it compressing timelines.
Why not set a deadline of tomorrow morning instead of next week?
You may exaggerate deadlines and push people too hard. So what? We can still come back to something the next day or the next day.
Amp up the pace, intensity, and urgency. It starts to take on a life of its own. It becomes an electrified and energized environment.
Frank Slootman
The Elon example
This type of intensity drives away people who are not seriously aligned with the mission of your company. It engages people who are winners.
I saw this up close and personal with Elon when he was taking over Twitter. He brought a level of intensity and first principles thinking to conversations.
A little bit more pressure on the system can spark creativity and change people’s mental process.
Jason Calacanis
What I say
Why it matters: I totally agree with Frank. You should exaggerate deadlines and push people harder, even if it means taking some risks and making mistakes along the way. By doing so, teams can achieve more than they thought possible and build a culture of excellence that attracts top talent.
Between the lines: There’s one thing you need to contend with when you default to urgency. Burnout. It’s a very real thing. I’ve had it a couple of times myself in the last 5 years and it sucks. You become physically and emotionally exhaustion. Where before you’d feel joy or accomplishment, with burnout you feel fatigued and detached.
I’m not a psychologist so I’m not going to give advice on the best ways to manage burnout. The only thing I can share is this: if your spouse, family, friends or colleagues repeatedly ask you if you’re okay because you seem ‘off’, this is a pretty good sign that you’re experiencing some form of heightened stress in your life. If this sounds like you, listen to these concerns and slow down for a couple of weeks. Your health and productivity will benefit in the long run!
🛩️ Does all software need a copilot?
🥇 First place (3 min read vs 1 hour 31 mins listening)
AI is the biggest buzzword in tech, and for good reason. Unlike previous trends like web3 or virtual reality, AI is transforming the way we work. With AI, businesses can streamline their processes, automate tasks, and save valuable time and resources. David Sacks explores the exciting developments in AI and how it's revolutionizing the world of SaaS.
What they say
Enterprise trends
I'm already seeing 3 major enterprise use cases for AI.
(1) Auto summaries. Being able to summarize 1,000 articles very quickly or spit out a summary of what just happened in a meeting and break it down into a recap and action items.
(2) In-app customer service. There's no reason to contact customer support anymore because you can just ask the AI inside the app. It's like a power user who's sitting next to you.
(3) Autocomplete for everything. The AI is going to be able to do typeahead for any content type. Even to-do lists and tables. It's bonkers.
This functionality will likely be commoditized soon but it's going to be incorporated into lots of different apps and in ways that are hard to predict.
David Sacks
The future of SaaS
This AI Revolution is going to do for SaaS what mobile did for a lot of the web 1.0 companies.
A lot of these web 1.0 companies were either disrupted by mobile or they were turbocharged by mobile.
Think about Facebook. It successfully made the transition. Mobile made its business so much better because people were using it a lot more.
There are a lot of other businesses that fell by the wayside because they couldn't make the adaptation from desktop to mobile.
AI is going to be like that for SaaS. If you can incorporate AI into your SaaS product with a co-pilot, autocomplete, and other forms of value that we're just scratching the surface of, you're going to be able to deliver so much more business value.
But, if you're not able to do that and somebody else can then you're going to get disrupted.
David Sacks
What I say
Why it matters: AI is here to stay. Its application in SaaS can help customers understand and use software 10X more effectively. Auto summaries, in-app customer service, and autocomplete are just the tip of the iceberg. With time, AI will become a ubiquitous part of every customer interaction, from personalized sales and onboarding to AI proactively using software on your behalf with Tinder-like swipe for approval workstreams.
Between the lines: We’ve been on a wild ride the last 6 months:
‘Let’s build Canva but with AI-assisted image generation’ … then Canva releases its AI feature
‘Let’s build Word but with AI-assisted text generation’ … then Notion releases its AI feature
‘Let’s build Google but with an AI-assisted answer box’ … then Bing releases its AI feature
‘Let’s build PowerPoint but with AI-assisted slides’ … then Microsoft announces its AI feature
This doesn’t mean all startups will die and incumbents will survive. Not at all. Rather, it shows how commoditized AI has become in such a short space of time. Startups need to build AI-first products, but they also need to nail down distribution and solve real customer problems.
This sums up the 6 months nicely. My boring take? Only incorporate AI into your product if it solves a real customer problem.
Shoutouts
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Note, these quotes were pulled at different points of the episode. Some sentences were left out to make the narrative clearer and more concise. Podup is not associated or affiliated with any podcast (unless otherwise stated). All roundups are independently written and do not imply any sponsorship or endorsement by the podcast.