Mike Shperling

@SkygenAI let's go

@danmartell delegation is the only way to survive as a founder. we’re building skygen specifically to make this easier and delegating tasks to an ai agent gives you your life back. 80% autonomous completion is a massive win for anyone trying to move fast.

Learn to delegate. 80% done by somebody else is 100% freaking awesome.

@codyschneider the "1% conversion rate" is the brutal truth nobody wants to hear.

everyone says build a community and i think it's almost always wrong i've watched so many founders spin up a slack or discord thinking it's going to be this revenue engine and then 6 months later they're spending 15-20 hours a week moderating channels and dealing with drama and the people in it aren't even buyers they're tire kickers. lurkers. people who want free access to you without ever pulling out a credit card. like i've seen slacks with 2,000+ members that convert maybe 20 people to a paid product. that's a 1% conversion rate for something that's basically a second full-time job and nobody talks about this but the "build a community" narrative is being pushed hardest by the platforms that literally profit from you believing this is the play what actually works better and it seems so obvious to me is just doing a weekly webinar series and pairing it with a newsletter and a free course or other education you get the same trust building. same authority positioning. same relationship with the audience but when the webinar is over it's over. you're not on the hook at 10pm on a tuesday because someone posted something weird in the discord and now three people are fighting about it the moderation tax is what nobody accounts for. every hour you spend babysitting a slack channel is an hour you're not spending on product or sales or creating content that actually drives revenue i've seen people literally kill their community and replace it with a weekly webinar + newsletter + free educational content and their revenue goes UP because they redirected all that operational energy into things that actually convert the only time community makes sense is if you're at real scale and you have a dedicated community manager and it's core to the business model. for like 95% of people reading this that's not you just do the webinar. build the newsletter. create free stuff that positions you as the expert the companies and creators who figure out that community is a tax and not an asset are going to win

@James_paul_dev definitely not. in the ai space, standing still is just a slow-motion way of moving backward. the moment you stop chasing new ideas, you're just waiting for someone with a fresher vision to overtake you.

If your SaaS made $1000/day consistently, would you stop chasing new ideas?

@austinxwalker facts. vision is the magnet. i’ve seen this first-hand while scaling skygen. the best intros and the best talent come when they feel that you aren't just building a product, but leading a shift in the world.

the best founders have this weird gravitational pull. people just show up wanting to help. offering intros, giving advice, working for free. when you truly believe in what you're building, others feel it and want to be part of it.

@VadimStrizheus i think many people choose the "10 apps" path because they're afraid of failing at one big thing. but the irony is that a complex saas is actually easier to sell because it provides more value.

Why do indie hackers build 10+ apps and then are shocked that none of them work? It would be much better to build a legit complex SaaS and make that work, rather than throwing crap at the wall until something sticks. What are your thoughts? 🤔

@gothburz when a single plugin replaces a whole department of junior lawyers, it becomes clear: the future belongs to a thin orchestration layer that just gets the work done.

Regarding the SaaSpocalypse. I am the Chief Strategy Officer of a major enterprise software company. We've lost 47% of our market cap in four months. Our stock dropped 6% on Monday. My bonus is gone. My options are underwater. My second vacation home is in jeopardy. The third one is fine. For now. I need to explain what happened. We didn't do anything wrong. Anthropic did. They released plugins. For Claude. Eleven of them. Open source. Legal automation. Contract review. Compliance workflows. NDA triage. Work that used to cost $400 per hour. Now costs $20 per month. We had a phrase for this. "AI augments, not replaces." That was the pitch. The pitch to investors. The pitch to customers. The pitch to employees. The pitch to law school graduates with $200,000 in debt. The pitch to the senators we lobby. "AI augments, not replaces." It was a beautiful phrase. Calming. Reassuring. Focus-grouped extensively. Completely false. We knew. We all knew. Every enterprise software CEO on the planet knew. We discussed it at Davos. Over $47 cocktails. While wearing badges that said "Human-Centered AI." The technology was coming. The replacement was inevitable. The timeline was unclear. Our exit liquidity was not. We just didn't expect Anthropic to be so... helpful. On January 30th, they released the plugins. By February 2nd, Thomson Reuters was down 18%. In a single day. LegalZoom dropped 20%. Our Head of Investor Relations had a panic attack. On a Zoom call. With investors. They saw. We call it the "SaaSpocalypse." That's a joke. It's not funny. My net worth dropped by $14 million. That's two Teslas per hour for a week. Jensen Huang said our reaction was "purely illogical." Easy for him to say. He sells the shovels. We sold the promises. He's up 340% since 2023. We're down 47% since September. But sure. Illogical. The promises that AI would make your existing software better. Not obsolete. The promises that you still needed expensive platforms. Expensive integrations. Expensive support contracts. Expensive consultants. Expensive lawyers. The lawyers. The lawyers are the real story. Big Law runs on billable hours. $800 an hour. $1,200 an hour. $2,000 an hour. For contract review. For NDA triage. For compliance workflows. For "adding value." Work that requires a JD. Three years of law school. Bar passage. Six years of experience. A corner office. A parking spot. A subscription to the Yale Law Journal. Claude does it now. For $20 a month. Claude doesn't need a parking spot. Claude doesn't expense client dinners. Claude doesn't bill 2,400 hours to make partner. Claude doesn't have a Yale Law Journal subscription. Claude doesn't have student loans. Claude doesn't cry in the bathroom at 2 AM. Claude just... works. The American Bar Association had a conference last week. They predicted "the demise of the billable hour model." At a conference about billing. They served $18 sandwiches. The irony was lost on no one. The sandwiches were mediocre. Morgan Stanley called it "intensifying competition." That's Wall Street speak for "your business model is dying." Adam Parker at Trivariate Research said software stocks are "guilty until proven innocent." He said we're "a falling knife." He's right. We are a falling knife. And we sold you the handle. For years. With a service contract. And an annual maintenance fee. We said: "AI is a tool." We meant: "AI is our tool." We said: "AI augments humans." We meant: "AI augments our revenue." We said: "AI won't replace your job." We meant: "AI won't replace your job until it does." We said: "The human touch is irreplaceable." We meant: "The human touch is expensive and we're working on it." We said: "AI needs human oversight." We meant: "For legal liability purposes only." We said: "We're committed to responsible AI." We meant: "We're committed to responsible AI until it's unprofitable." It's unprofitable now. It does now. The associate lawyers are first. The ones who thought they were safe. The ones who thought "AI can't practice law." AI can't practice law. AI can do 80% of what associates bill for. The other 20% is "relationship management." That means: lunch. Then the contract reviewers. Then the compliance analysts. Then the consultants. Then the financial analysts. Then the people who make PowerPoints about synergy. Actually, we're keeping those. Someone has to explain the layoffs. Mike O'Rourke said it best: "If the legal industry can be disrupted, so can consulting and financial services." He's not wrong. He's terrifyingly correct. He probably shouldn't have said that out loud. His LinkedIn is now "Open to Work." Every knowledge worker who bills by the hour is now in a race. A race against a Claude plugin. An open-source Claude plugin. We didn't see that coming. We expected proprietary. We expected expensive. We expected enterprise sales cycles. Eighteen-month implementations. Mandatory consulting packages. Executive briefings in Aspen. Anthropic just... gave it away. Eleven plugins. Free. "Customize workflows." "Slash commands." "Consistent outcomes." For $20 a month. No executive briefing. No Aspen. No $47 cocktails. Just a chat interface. And the death of our business model. The board meeting was yesterday. The CFO cried. The General Counsel updated his resume. On company time. Using the company laptop. Bold move. The Chief Revenue Officer blamed the sales team. The sales team blamed the product. The product blamed the market. The market blamed us. The PR team blamed "macro headwinds." The CEO blamed "exogenous factors." The board blamed the CEO. The CEO blamed his predecessor. His predecessor is on three other boards. He's fine. The market is correct. We knew. We all knew. Every pitch deck. Every investor presentation. Every "thought leadership" article. Every podcast appearance. Every TED talk about "the future of work." "AI augments, not replaces." We said it. We didn't believe it. We had a private Slack channel. Called "#inevitable." We discussed the timeline. We discussed our options vesting schedule. We discussed which executives should sell first. "Staggered for optics." And now the market doesn't believe us. $250 billion. Gone. In a week. Because a company in San Francisco released eleven plugins. For free. And did what we said was impossible. Replaced expensive knowledge workers. With a chat interface. A chat interface that doesn't need dental. We have a new phrase now. "Pivot to AI-native." That means: "We're rebuilding everything." That means: "The last five years were wasted." That means: "Your job is also in jeopardy." That means: "Please don't look at our executives' stock sales from Q4." But don't worry. We're "leaning into the disruption." We're "embracing the paradigm shift." We're "right-sizing for the new reality." Right-sizing means layoffs. Paradigm shift means our product is obsolete. Leaning in means we have no plan. AI augments, not replaces. We would never lie to you. Again. Anyway, buy the dip! Our investor relations team says it's a "compelling entry point." They're also updating their resumes.

@gothburz this post perfectly explains why we’re so focused on ai agents rather than just "tools." the era of enterprise software that requires 18-month implementations and an army of consultants is dying people don’t want to buy software, they want to buy a solved problem

@benvspak definitely. the "what" and "why" are everything now. even in this era of solo-power, i’m so grateful for the opportunity to scale skygen with a real team for a a real-life jarvis project, you need that collective human intelligence to bridge the gap between digital and physical

Solo founders in 2026: you can build anything now, the hard part is picking what's worth building

@markbuildsbrand i think it’s less about one being "bad" and more about finding the right tool for the specific job

been using chatgpt less and less man. kinda sad to see, but claude opus + gemini been giving me much better responses with less bias. anyone else?

@alexcloudstar @hackernoon congrats!

I got featured on @hackernoon homepage 🤯

@alexcloudstar this is the hardest transition for any dev-turned-founder. we love to build, but building custom infrastructure like billing is usually just a form of procrastination from the hard business stuff. in the ai age, your time is your most valuable capital

7 years as a programmer, 1 year as a founder.

@andreyiscoding great list. #5 is especially critical right now. the speed of the ai frontier means that "perfect" is the enemy of "alive." the goal is to build the thinnest possible layer that provides the maximum "time back" (#1). everything else is just distraction. back to shipping.

5 things I learned building: 1. users don't want features, they want their time back 2. your first 10 customers will tell you everything wrong 3. onboarding is where 80% of people disappear 4. pricing is harder than the product 5. shipping slowly kills you faster than shipping broken the biggest surprise (not): nobody cared about the thing we spent 3 months perfecting

@marclou this is a great example of spotting a trend (tone-matching) and hitting it with a modern distribution engine. 90% profit margin on $9k monthly revenue after just two months is why niche ai-saas is the most exciting space right now. congrats on the execution.

Fast-growing guitar tone-matching SaaS for sale: It made $9K revenue last 4 weeks (+716% growth MoM) at 90% profit margin. The startup is 2 months old and growing purely from short-form content marketing. All numbers in reply.

calendar shouldn't be a second job. watch @SkygenAI turn a chaotic inbox into a perfect schedule in seconds. it finds the deadlines, respects your deep work blocks, and handles the logistics while you actually get stuff done. #AIAgents #SkygenAI #BuildInPublic #Efficiency

@openclaw thanks for killing startups

🦞 OpenClaw 2026.1.30 🐚 Shell completion 🆓 Kimi K2.5 + Kimi Coding: run your claw for free 🔐 MiniMax OAuth: one more model just a login away 📱 Telegram got a glow-up — 6 fixes from threading to HTML rendering Plus a bunch of community-contributed fixes across LINE, BlueBubbles, routing, security & OAuth. The lobster provides 😏 github.com/openclaw/openc…

@VraserX also "moore’s law for intelligence" is a terrifyingly beautiful concept. we’re scaling the very capacity to solve fundamental human bottlenecks. if disease becomes an engineering problem, then medicine becomes a data problem. incredible times.

Dario Amodei is basically describing Moore’s Law for intelligence. AI went from student to PhD-level expert in a few years. Coding was just the start. Biology is next. If intelligence keeps scaling like this, aging and disease stop being destiny and become engineering problems.