New tools, old rules

Like most people I have been trying to make sense of AI.

News about AI dominates my LinkedIn feed and the front page of hacker news. Conversations in the line at Chipotle near our SF office are about AI. The billboards, bus stops, meetups, and stickers on the lampposts are about AI. AI is the main topic in our internal meetings, on customer calls, with investors, and in my group chats.

SaaS is dead. AGI is coming in the next few years. We’ll all be out of a job. Have you heard? It’s all agentic now. You need to be AI Native. I fear I’m falling behind, but as a tech founder, I must be ahead of the curve. Our team expects me to have the answers to our strategy. And so I dive into the AI tools and the AI news and the AI articles and the AI products and the AI conversations. I have been vibe coding, reading benchmarks, listening to podcasts, watching videos, talking to investors, talking to founders.

I’m spinning inside the AI hype machine tumble dryer.

We have a new policy where we offer a four week sabbatical after four years of service. I took the opportunity to have a much-needed break in Europe and spend time with my fianceé. We went to Amsterdam, Berlin, Turkey, Kefalonia in Greece, and Paris.

Over the years I’ve found that being truly present and not dwelling on the past or being anxious about the future is the most important skill you need to develop as a human. I think as you get older, there are more regrets and mistakes from the past to dwell on, and because you’re less naïve, you have more reasons to be anxious about the future. For these reasons alone, I find it very hard to be truly present in a moment, and being constantly connected with a phone in my pocket makes it even harder.

On this trip I did manage to disconnect. I did all the usual things like uninstalling Slack and turning off email notifications. I took a film camera with me so I wouldn’t reach for my phone as much. I also painstakingly unfollowed everybody on LinkedIn (there is no bulk unfollow) to make my feed an unappealing wasteland of ads and suggested posts.

Floating in the sea off Olympos in Turkey, I was amazed by the thought that many thousands of people had been swimming in that same spot for at least 2,500 years. Visible from the water are the ruins of an ancient Lycian League city which has been dated to the 4th century BC. I started to notice all the simple things that humans have been doing for a long time, like cooking sea bream on an open fire, shopping at the bazaar, taking photos on a film camera, and laughing with friends over drinks.

On this trip we visited a number of historical sites including the Berlin Wall, the Sunken City of Kekova, the Picasso Museum, the Basilica Cistern, the Istanbul Archaeological Museum, the Galerie de Paléontologie et d’Anatomie comparée.

Humans have been doing things for a long time, and we will continue to do them for a long time. Even though we now have new tools like induction cooktops, Amazon and Shopify, phone cameras, and social media, fundamentally, things are still the same. We still cook, we still shop, we still take photos, we still hang out with friends.

I came back to work and I realized that no, SaaS is not dead. Organizations still need purpose-built software with purpose-designed interfaces. No, AGI is not here, and even if it were, I’m not convinced it would be as revolutionary as the hype predicts. And, while our engineering team uses AI to write AI features for our AI product, they all still have a job in doing so, and our experience with agentic coding guarantees that for some time.

The challenges in building a software business in 2025 are no different to before. It moves a bit faster now, but building a legitimate business requires solid execution on fundamentals like brand, marketing, sales, pricing, customer service, onboarding, infrastructure, compliance, team, hiring, culture, leadership, and so much more.

New tools can help us do all of this, but the old rules still apply.