Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast
00:33:59 · S1, Shawn Wang
[00:33:59] S1: Oh, yeah. [00:34:00] S0: Right? So the moment I have access to your software, I can clone it. So good luck. And so I think that is the the reality. I would say that if you're a SaaS owner, nobody knows that the right answer. Mhmm. I think that you basically end up having to pivot to being an agent builder. So you have to become, like... The US equivalent is, like, Harvey or Open Evidence or... Yeah. Yeah. You own a vertical and you're the top agent in that vertical. Or you own some specialized data and you're basically a data vendor. Anything in between, someone else is gonna just code their own thing. [00:34:34] S1: Yeah. Probably can I follow a question? Because you already answer my first question. Yes. You already give some advice to those those [00:34:42] S0: I'm more interested... Like, so I'm not I'm not so sympathetic to the the the SaaS owners. SaaS owners, they they're big big boys, they can figure it out. Actually, I'm more I'm more keen on advising the business owners. [00:34:51] S1: Oh, business owners?
00:34:51 · S1, Shawn Wang
[00:34:51] S1: Oh, business owners? [00:34:52] S0: Yeah. I I run a small business. I'm an SMB. Yeah. There's a million people like me. They're all trying to just I make an honest living, I pay employees, I pay my taxes, and it's a good life. It can be better if you vibe Yes. With your own Yes. Right. And like my customers are happy, my employees are happy, I'm happy, it's a cool story to tell. Yeah. And, you know, SMBs, I think, is a golden age for us. If you do anything in the real world that are... You're just trying to do your job, and there's a lot of shitty software between you and your your your intended outcome, you can suddenly shorten [00:35:27] S1: your Buy cloud and tinker it out. [00:35:30] S0: Yeah. I mean, like, you know, dollars 40,000 worth of cloud is a lot of cloud. Yeah. It's a lot of cloud. I can spend 10,000 and, like, have a lot of money to, like, do whatever I want. Yes. So I think that's why I I call this as a business owner problem, not a developer problem. A developer problem will say, like, oh, $200 is a lot. You know? Like like, I'm a business owner. I understand the productivity benefits of having 10 of my employees work together well. Like, 10 of my employees, I'm paying 1,500,000 for them. Right? Like, if if they work together 10% better, there's a 150 k. The... Potentially, it's not it's not 10% better. It's like five times better. That's like 7,500,000. Great. And that is all the agent work that is being done on my behalf that people used to say like, well, okay, I'll come back next week with a proposal. No, I want it this afternoon.
00:35:30 · Shawn Wang, S1
[00:35:30] S0: Yeah. I mean, like, you know, dollars 40,000 worth of cloud is a lot of cloud. Yeah. It's a lot of cloud. I can spend 10,000 and, like, have a lot of money to, like, do whatever I want. Yes. So I think that's why I I call this as a business owner problem, not a developer problem. A developer problem will say, like, oh, $200 is a lot. You know? Like like, I'm a business owner. I understand the productivity benefits of having 10 of my employees work together well. Like, 10 of my employees, I'm paying 1,500,000 for them. Right? Like, if if they work together 10% better, there's a 150 k. The... Potentially, it's not it's not 10% better. It's like five times better. That's like 7,500,000. Great. And that is all the agent work that is being done on my behalf that people used to say like, well, okay, I'll come back next week with a proposal. No, I want it this afternoon. [00:36:25] S1: Yeah. My thought is that once you created so many softwares yourself, would that... The maintenance, the work will be something, you know, difficult [00:36:34] S0: or Yeah. It's it's real. Right? It's not zero. [00:36:36] S1: You should have to use it. [00:36:37] S0: It's not zero, but we have coding agents. [00:36:40] S1: Oh, yes. Maintain that. It's self self maintaining.
00:36:40 · S1, Shawn Wang
[00:36:40] S1: Oh, yes. Maintain that. It's self self maintaining. [00:36:42] S0: Yeah. And a lot of it is... And this is why I would say, like, mid tier SaaS. You are not Salesforce. You are not Google. You are not AWS. You're not this like mission critical 99.999 uptime thing. Right? You are just like a database where people type in their thing and they get that something out. Yes. So, yeah. Okay. It goes down for a day, like whatever. And you can fix it in a day. Right. Right. And there's a lot of coding agents where, like, I I think I I would argue, I would take that downtime for... In exchange for, like, I can customize. Yes. I can customize anything. It's amazing, you know? And and so my team is so much more productive. You know, I actually put this in the episode in Kill My Sass. One of the favorite features, let's say I have... So for example, for AIE code, my my next conference next month, I have 1,000 submissions and I have 25 seats. Okay? I have to go to 1,000 people to get 25. And in the current SaaS that we use for that piece of software, we have to click one by one by one by one by one. Every screen click click click click click click. And so in the kill my SaaS competition, one of our contestants just changed everything so that you can sort of reorder in one table. This view doesn't exist in that Sass. Okay. To... In order to get this view, we have to request for [00:37:56] S1: six months. But And they just clone it, [00:37:58] S0: they just You just request whatever you want. Yeah. And like, yeah, now I can do it, and I can see everything in one go.
00:37:58 · Shawn Wang, S1
[00:37:58] S0: they just You just request whatever you want. Yeah. And like, yeah, now I can do it, and I can see everything in one go. [00:38:03] S1: Yeah. Okay. [00:38:05] S0: That's so quick. So I I am... For listening... You know, if you're thinking that this is a stupid example, it is. I'm simplifying for audio. [00:38:15] S1: I mean, I I find out that the top one winner is someone who can manage all the split players, lineups, and that... That's a pretty [00:38:22] S0: useful tool. It's good UX. They are testing it from the point of point of view of humans. And I think that there is a lot of difference between the average submission and the top submission. Yeah. So that is true that today, in 2026, if you're a business owner and you decide to hire the youngest kid with, like... You know, that looks vaguely technical to, hey. If I quote this SaaS for me, please, maybe they're not gonna do so well because they don't have any training, but just give it one year. Watch a lot of AIE videos. [00:38:51] S1: And then you'll pick on it. There's a skill level. Right? [00:38:54] S0: Like, a lot of it is slob, and you don't want to use slob. Right? Your your employees deserve better. You deserve better. And actually sometimes buying from tried and tested SaaS is going to be better. It is going to be better. But for us, we want to be AI forward as a company. We will be more cutting edge.
00:38:54 · Shawn Wang, S1
[00:38:54] S0: Like, a lot of it is slob, and you don't want to use slob. Right? Your your employees deserve better. You deserve better. And actually sometimes buying from tried and tested SaaS is going to be better. It is going to be better. But for us, we want to be AI forward as a company. We will be more cutting edge. [00:39:12] S1: Yeah. And one last thing to follow-up here because I... You just said in the podcast that you have AI judge, and actually judges... The judge of the AI was quite different from the the winners that you picked by your team. [00:39:26] S0: Wow. You really listened to the podcast. [00:39:27] S1: Oh, yeah. Because I'm interested about the whole process. [00:39:30] S0: So Yeah. Yeah. [00:39:30] S1: I just wonder why. [00:39:31] S0: Oh, yeah. So that was, partially on purpose and partially not the goal of the judge. The judge was purely, did you submit a valid submission? Right? Did you qualify? [00:39:43] S1: Uh-huh. [00:39:44] S0: But the judge was not aimed for, is this the best among the whole cohort? [00:39:48] S1: Oh, okay. [00:39:48] S0: Right? Then, obviously, there's a difference. Okay. [00:39:50] S1: So so it's not for your your purpose or your team's, like, conference purpose to pick which is more useful rather than just [00:39:58] S0: Because we didn't know what we wanted. So I cannot make an AI judge for for things that I don't know what I want. Okay. But once I see 70 different examples [00:40:06] S1: And then you're gonna Obviously, want That is the one. Okay. Yeah.