Bolt CEO on How PMs Turn AI Prototypes Into Production Code Engineers Trust | Eric Simons | E311

People are not losing their jobs because AI. At least certainly to the degree that some AI leaders have said it was going to happen. What's actually going on though is it's like >> I was driving around and I saw the airport at sale by your company that said >> Yeah, yeah. Team was like 10 or 12 people at that time and we overnight we just woke [music] up with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of paying customers. >> Eric Simons, CEO of Bolt. >> I saw a post you made 2 weeks ago that says best advice is don't die. I think that is so powerful. >> in October of '24. You know, in the first month we went from zero to 5 million of ARR. >> Back in the day the whole winning strategy was you have to be hyper hyper specific. Analytics, prototyping, road mapping. And now it's about a platform. >> There's only two ways to make money in the software business. Uh >> Hey, this is Carlos, CEO at Product School and your host on the Product Podcast. My guest today is Eric Simons, CEO of Stackblitz, the company behind Bolt. And I'm a user of the product. He skipped college, spent 7 years getting to half a million dollars in ARR, and had a board meeting scheduled to wind the company down. One month before that meeting, they launched Bolt and went from half a million dollars to 5 and 1/2 million dollars in 30 days with a team of 12. Things we'll cover: the pivot that happened 1 month before the shutdown meeting, why the cloud ID market turned out to be a mirage, his Yahoo and AOL warning for everyone building everything, why he signed the open weights letter, the billboard apologizing for the SaaS-pocalypse. Let's get into it. >> Welcome to the Product Podcast, Eric. >> Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. >> I'm excited to have you because I'm a user of your product and it's always great to kind of put a a face on the on the name and like learn more about the story behind the scenes. >> Heck yeah. Awesome. Well, yeah, excited to dig in. >> So, last time we spoke you were wearing an Iron Man hat. I know that you are big into sports, so maybe we can start there. >> Yeah, I have my Iron Man hat over here. I can put it on if you want, you know. Yeah, yeah. What's so Yeah, what do you want to know about about about sporting? >> So, I'm obsessed with sports, too, but I think you kind of take it one step up. There was a story I think that connects It's with your upbringing. I know that you are a high-school dropout and like you've been always looking for a hard path in a way. So, maybe tell us more about what is that thing that is driving you so much to not give up? >> Yeah, I think for me, yes, my parents would have shot me if I dropped out of high school. So, I did I finished high school but then I didn't instead of going to college, I started doing startups. And yeah, I think I think to me, I don't know, it's a good question. I think that I guess I tend to really look at how I want to approach life, I guess, very much like a first principles sort of way and that's like a very kind of an overused term at this point but I mean for where I grew up, the suburb of Chicago, kind of the the thing is it's certainly back in the late 2000s that you know, it's like graduate high school, you go to college, you get a job. I mean that's like that was like the path. There was no other kids that I grew up with that did not do the college thing or whatever. But I I just kind of looked, you know, at the time, you know, my co-founder and I he and I actually grew up down the street from each other. I think we met when we were like 13. We learned how to code together and so by the time we came to graduate, I was like, you know, we're going to have to pay for college out of pocket. You know, it's it was going to cost, you know, for University of Illinois at uh Champaign-Urbana, it's like $30,000 a year in state. And we're like, this doesn't make a lot of sense. I mean, we're making at that I think it was like maybe we're making 50 bucks an hour at that time at 17 or 18 writing software. And so to me it just seemed kind of obvious like why am I going to go to college to go and learn like I'm writing software. I certainly can learn but I can read textbooks, right? And that's free. It's kind of like the Goodwill Hunting thing, right? Uh >> [laughter] >> But um not not that I'm anywhere close to the IQ of that character that Matt Damon played but um but yeah, that it's to me it was just it was just going and doing what what seemed kind of obvious and then that's not kind of priced in. Like it's, you know, the whole college thing is um is the default path. Many people are questioning that um which I think is a good thing but yeah, and then you know, especially as you if you're going to do business, you know, like starting startups, it is you're you're not going to have a good time with it. You'll quit pretty early on if you don't develop a lot of grit and resilience because that's kind of the entire game. This is an endurance sport. And it is about pushing through pain, right? And and and that's like so a couple years ago I got into I started doing Iron Mans and that sort of thing and it's it's very analogous where you have to be going for very long stretches and it's not even about race day, it's about all of the training that goes into it. I mean you're you're spending 6 hours a day each day on every weekend for 6 months leading up to that thing, you know? So and then such as again such as startups where it's not about one big launch or whatever. It's it's it's about every day you're putting in the work and you know, embracing pain and and pushing through it. So that's that's to me is kind of how I view these things. >> I love that connection that you made between, you know, like sports and and business. I kind of feel the same way. I saw a a post you made a few weeks ago that says the best advice is don't die. And I I think that is so powerful because sometimes they think that the pressure is on like growing fast at all cost or or just winning the short term but in reality like staying in the game, finding ways to not die is way more powerful and compounds much more than just trying to win the sprint. >> Yeah, totally. And over the past year and a half there's been a lot of a lot of short-term in the space where there's a lot of short-term strategies being done and and every time this happens in business there's kind of these moments where you have these manias where you you can you can do very short-sighted things and maybe walk away financially up. The problem though that if from my view it's it's it's what you're talking about. It's like if you're going to build a business, why do this if you're not trying to build something that's actually durable for the long term, right? Like you you got to you got to do it like the right way, you know? Because otherwise it's pretty high risk endeavor for you and certainly for anyone else that's working for you, right? So yeah, so that to me is that you know, I think business and life it's it's you know, kind of the the Naval quote of like, you know, play long-term games with long-term people, right? Like that I think that's just, you know, it's a good quote. I believe in it. >> Let's talk about your your product and your business. I mean, even your current company is called Bolt, but it wasn't the original name, right? StackBlitz was the original name, and you actually started the company before AI was mainstream. So, tell me a little more about that major pivot that you had to do in 2014 to kind of put the take the AI tailwinds and make sure that you are in the position that you are today with the scale of like $700 million valuation. >> Yeah, I mean, so yeah, we've been around. So, we started StackBlitz, which is the underlying company behind Bolt. We had started in 2017, and the insight we had there was the browsers had become very powerful. And we realized that seemed like it was technologically possible to bring like full-stack web development to the web. So, in the same way that Figma had brought design to the web for the first time, the idea that you could come just in a browser, you don't have to download anything, you could actually be building real software, like real full-stack applications from a browser tab. That would it was possible for the first time. We wrote this really cool technology. We basically wrote an operating system that runs in web assembly in your browser. Very nerdy stuff, but like no one had ever done it before. And it took us I think like three, four years to build that technology. We launched it in 2021. This was like in the cloud IDE market, and at that time, you know, in late 2010s, early 2020s, there's all this hype around cloud IDEs, but it ended up being a mirage of a market where there's a lot of hype, but people weren't willing to spend money. Like developers were very happy with their local environments. And so, fast forward to 2024, us and all the other cloud IDE companies were on the rocks. We had, you know, had to figure out what we were going to do. And you know, for us, we had we had set the target of we got to inflect revenue. We got to prove that this is a venture scale business here, otherwise we're going to start winding this thing down by the end of the year. And and so, through 2024, we tried out a you know, a whole bunch of different ideas, you know, of different kind of product shapes that we thought um, you know, would be uh, interesting and you know, maybe customers would would like and etc. And none of them worked. And Bolt was actually the the last product idea that we tried. And we launched in October of '24. Our board meeting was 1 month later where we were going to start spinning down the company. And [snorts] uh, you know, in the first month we went from zero to 5 million of ARR. Before that, we had spent 7 years getting to 500K, 0.5 million >> [laughter] >> of ARR. And then in 30 days we went from, you know, 0.5 to 5.5 million of ARR, right? And then the month after we went from, you know, 5.5 to 20.5 or something. Yeah, so it was just like crazy, right? And uh, yeah, our team was like 10 or 12 people at that time and we overnight we just woke up with, you know, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of paying customers. So it was growing into that scale was was insane. But that's that's kind of the story of how, you know, Bolt came to be. >> Speaking of product market fit, you know, it's hard to pick an official definition, but like what you just said, when the market is pulling, that is ultimately the the best validation. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, it's I've worked on a lot of things in my career and I've never Yeah, I've I've never seen anything like what happened there. And at that time, you know, there's there's a number of companies now that have had these zero to, you know, X explosive revenue ramps, but we were the first thing that hit the market that ever seen anything like this. And uh, so it it it's in AI era there's there's now been more of these, but it was to to to be the first one was an interesting experience because we were going and talking to people uh, because like normally you have, you know, to to the playbook to grow at the team of a company to that's at 20 million of ARR. Usually you have minimum 2 years to like prepare for that. And we we that happened in 2 months for us. And so it's it was just uh, there were no playbooks. And so, you know, we ended up, you know, having to create new playbooks on how to how to deal with this sort of scale this quickly. So, it's [snorts] it was a fun and and very challenging experience, actually. >> So, moving forward, you raised over a hundred million dollars, valuation of around seven hundred million, right? So, what is the current state of the of your business? >> Yeah, I mean I I I think for us, like we're very focused on, you know, like when we first launched, we had lots of different types of customers using the product. And and and so, what we've gotten very focused on is actually how do we really help, you know, very specific types of users and workflows. And so, PMs and product folks are actually one of the key ones, right? And so, really going and and focusing on the B2B side of the business and doing a really great job of like the product development workflows that folks use on Bolt. Like, that's been been a key focal point for us. Um so, I think, you know, like our our B2B revenue year-over-year is like 10x. Um and so, it's just that's, you know, the the fastest growing segment of revenue for the company. That's that's where we've been focusing all of our time. >> So, as I think about the category that you in a way pioneered, these cloud IDs then turned into some sort of AI prototyping tools, then evolved into full-on live coding end-to-end tools. What what is the current state? Like, and what do you think this is this is going? >> Yeah. Yeah, for for live coding in general, you mean? >> Yeah, because I see that a lot of these companies, like in your category, they just allowing users to prototype something, right? That looked cute. It was more of a demo. But then you evolved into a real solution that allows deployment into production. So, it's not a toy anymore. This actually works. And so, first of all, I want to learn more about what what's going on with this. And then, like, what do you think this is going next? >> Yeah, for sure. I I think I think that a lot of to me I think a lot of the core use cases that that you're describing that we see today, I think those are going to continue to happen here. I think there there's going to be a lot more depth to the workflows on some of these things. So, for example, the idea that you want to go and like as a product like a PM or a designer, like I want to be able to go rapidly iterate on how the experience should feel. It's actually useful to do that in an environment that is detached from your production environment cuz it's way faster just, you know, iterate, get that feedback, etc. But the problem though is if you're going to do it outside of like your production code base, how do you actually marry that back into the production code base in a way that your engineering team writes signs off on? And so this stuff that we've been working on on our side of >> [snorts] >> creating a very seamless connection of like it using the exact production components, having a very seamless handoff flow to developers where it automatically pulls in your changes and can code it, etc. So, I think I think we're going to see like more depth of of integrations and workflows that like really pave out those sorts of experiences there. On the flip side too of what you're saying, like you know, we have a lot of entrepreneurs that use our product to like build their businesses. And so enabling people to Yeah, for we have lots of of entrepreneurs that are, you know, generating millions of dollars, etc. on our product. But how do you like further enable people to to do that? Like what are the types of applications that they that they are trying to make or maybe that they would want to make? And making our agent the best in the world at doing those things. And and they're those are kind of intertwined cuz, you know, what is a prototype but, you know, a proposal to to ship functionality into your real production code base? And and perhaps that production code base isn't built or perhaps it's not. But yeah, though I think though that's kind of how we're seeing things evolve. >> Yeah, and I and I see the the competitive landscape evolving that way. I I I think the analogy here is in LLMs. ChatGPT got the first-mover advantage and kind of grew within consumer, while then Anthropic grew within enterprise. And now, of course, they are converging, but you got they kind of picked lanes at the beginning. >> Yep. >> In in your world, the Vi code in world, and you see the other company like Replit, lovable, and there's always new ones popping up like mushrooms, right? Like so how do you position your product? >> It's a really good question and and this is this has been you over the past like with the past year I think it was a year ago when we when we really made the decision to really orient more towards people who were building products professionally at businesses, right? So versus there's a lot of people that are excited about AI. I think it's super cool. There's a lot of like consumers general I will I will just call them like general consumers that are very excited about AI. And maybe they've had an idea for a long time etc. And like we have a lot of people that that come to Bolt for that. But you know the way that I view it is is we want to build tools that help people that are that are professional builders of products. That's PMs, designers, engineers, etc. To really raise the ceiling of what they can do and and and remove complexity of even if instead of having to use coding agents like in the CLI or whatever. How can we help you go from A to A to Z as fast as possible? And and so that's I think that focus is actually that's where you know we when we go into you know our our conversations on the sales side obviously that you we all the other players including the Frontier Labs you know there's kind of bake-offs that happen. But this is really where the importance and just generally for startups the importance of really going deep on on a specific ICP and and workflows is really matters cuz that's that's where we win. Because we we just have a level of depth on on certain workflows and capabilities especially for product builders that the other guys don't because they're they're going very broad, right? So to your analogy of like OpenAI and Anthropic, we're taking a very Anthropic type of type approach to this where we're really trying to make certain types of users and and workflows within B2B type usage insanely great and and we're we're not we're not just spraying hundreds of millions of dollars at at everything you know on the consumer side or whatever have you. >> Yeah, I think that's an interesting dichotomy. On the one hand you want to grow the the market addressable market or the category by by expanding but at the same time you want to be remembered by something very specific that you do very very well. And I I noticed that you recently launched slides capability. Right now you can also create interactive slides. That's awesome. You're also launching templates to make it easier for people to build apps but that also creates new pockets of competition, right? Like the Canvas of the world, the Gamas of the world now they suddenly become I don't know frenemies in a way because you probably with them, right? So how you thinking about that? >> Yeah, it was funny. I was on a podcast with one of the the Gamma founders a week or two it was the week we launched slides and and he he he he was like yeah I saw you guys launched a slides thing like live on the podcast and and I kind of forgot that we had launched cuz for us it was it was just it was it's like a fun project we made where we made it for ourselves and it's not like we're not trying to get into the business of you know like that's like the big thing we do but we we ended up talking on the podcast me and him about this where kind of everyone's competing with everyone. What I said to him on that podcast which I'll repeat here is I don't think it's bad like for us like we we we I think we added some unique ideas into the mix as far as slides go and and I think that the reason we we even launched it is it's just as a product if you're you're an innovative company you're going to have ideas and you want to put them out there and if you got the cycles to do it you know it's it's fine and it's we open sourced it too it's not like it's a closed source thing but I look back at the dot com era there's a lot of this sort of thinking going on where everyone was competing with everyone on everything and everyone was trying to do everything. Where like back then it was like portals like Yahoo and AOL like your portal like oh we it's like media is coming the internet we have to have media like people need like the home page of the internet we needs to be Yahoo or AOL like we're going to do all these things. Oh yeah search which this tiny box up there but it's the portal, right? Except that no, that tiny box is it was the juggernaut. Like that was that that focal point. Like Google was like, "All this other stuff, forget it. Just the input box. How do we make that thing insanely good and the best in the world?" And that and that was that was actually it it was underneath the other guys' noses, right? But they were so unfocused that that they they completely missed it. And and that's that to me is I think the era that we're in. I just I look back historically and and and and maybe this time is different, but but to me the comps the comps don't track, right? The the comps to me go, "We're in the middle of this and so it may seem like this time's different until until it's clear that this time isn't different and certain companies break away because they actually focused, right?" >> Yep. >> Um and so that to me is kind of and that's how we view our product strategy. And it's not to say that we won't do things that we won't release things that would be competitive with Gamma or whatever, but it's like even on this project it's like I think both sides are cool. It's open source. You can use it with any agent. On the flip side, I you know, I don't know what Gamma's feature suite is. They've they've certainly got a ton of stuff that like we don't that we probably never will, right? And that's cool. Like that's why you would want to use those guys or whatever. I don't know what those things are, but like there's no that's their entire product. Surely there's there's depth, right? So >> [snorts] >> And the position I think is also very clear in each of the products, right? Like you're starting from a by coding solution for PMs and engineers where the other one started more as a solution for marketers. Eventually there's some points of conversion, but like that doesn't mean that you don't have your own identity. I've seen this movie play out even in the product tech category. It didn't even exist. Like there were I don't know, Optimizely was doing AB testing for marketers and then you had like I don't know, designers using Photoshop and suddenly you start seeing tools that are being created that specifically for PMs. And back in the day the whole winning strategy was you have to be hyper hyper specific. Like analytics, prototyping, road mapping. And now it's about a platform. Instead of portal, now the game is the all-in-one platform. Everybody's overlapping at the same time they're also integrating because they're assuming that a lot of these enterprises are probably using different point solutions and the winner in a way needs to allow the data to flow. >> Yeah, it reminds me this the quote from the old Netscape CEO. His name His name slips my mind but you know he said that you know there's there's only two ways to make money in the software business bundling and unbundling, right? And so it's these things go in phases, right? Where you know they they will bundling will happen and then then you know unbundling. These streaming services are an excellent example of this, right? Where Netflix you know really rose to to prominence by by bundling, right? It was like, "Okay, I don't have to buy all these subscriptions." And now >> [laughter] >> Now now there is a whole bunch of streaming services and so that everything's getting unbundled and you know so it's I think these things kind of go in phases and typically the unbundling become it becomes clear that the unbundling is is where the where the value's going to be once once there is there's too much bundling going on, >> [laughter] >> right? Like that's that's kind of the issue. >> [snorts] >> And and that's that's kind of I think we're I think we're approaching that in the market if not already. I think in some senses we're already there on certain parts of these things but but yeah. >> Another thing you mentioned briefly is open source and I think that is a big deal here. You recently signed the open weights letter created by Microsoft and you connect with so many different models. I want to hear more about your take. >> Yeah. I think so Zapits is a company we've been like deeply deeply invested in open source software you know for since we were founded. And that's not not even just lip service. I mean we've put substantial amounts of of money even [snorts] when we were not profitable behind open source and backed like you know there's a a project called Beat which is pretty much how the everyone does web development these days. I mean we were the earliest backer of that. We hired people on our team to just work on that thing full-time in open source. So like it it it there This is um you know, there's there's there there as far as uh you know, our roots to this stuff. >> [snorts] >> And you look at like the open weights models, it's key that these things remain available and usable um to to all companies and all people around the world. And and and there's kind of a number of reasons for this, right? But again, I look I looked at past parallels maybe similarly match the situation and I think back to the '90s with um Windows versus Linux. And if the amount of innovation that has come By the way, Windows is fine. I mean, Windows is used everywhere, right? I mean, it's Windows is is doing great, right? And then and they've added a lot of value to this world. Boy, Linux is has been a a workhorse, right? For for how how the like the hyperscalers that we have, like our ability to spin up micro VMs, blah blah blah, everything, right? And and back then these same things were being said where hey, Linux maybe should be outlawed, like the crazy stuff in retrospect, crazy stuff. But And and it reminds me a lot of now. And and I so I think that if you if you want to fast forward 10, 20 years and kind of look back, like where is the bulk of the world's innovation, what's it being powered by? I would I would be surprised if if open weight models were not a a key pillar of that story. And I think just geopolitically, I think it's a a very bad idea for us to, you know, if we were to try and buy which it does not appear we are doing this at this point. But if western countries were to try and bifurcate the the open source models coming from non-western states, right? The availability then within western states, and and forcing use of frontier labs, um that that's not that tends to not be a good recipe for how at a national level, how countries get to actually play to win, right? Um and you see a lot of great companies in the states that are that are doing really incredible things with these open models. And that's it's exciting to me because there's some companies I've I've talked to recently that are doing really great research on how [snorts] to like, you know, how to optimize open source models to run at a fraction of the cost. You know, like 90% like you imagine running Kimmy K3 at 1/10 the current price, right? And it's it's possible to do. It's a possible problem. If if not 90% 80% like you know, off of what the list price is. But that's because they have access to the weights. You know, like if you don't have access to open model weights that that people can use, no innovation happens and that's, you know, if those guys crack that nut, I mean that's going to be transformative, right? For the level of ubiquitous access to these models and and then the and the degree to which people can affordably use these things, right? So anyway, so I look at to me it's it's it's unfathomable that we would that we would cut off that sort of innovation, right? But that's what would happen if if open weight models were not permitted to be to be used. >> The way I think about this is that it's much riskier to not participate in the open source game than participating in it. And I think about your product as an application layer on top of a ton of models, right? And I kind of trust you to in some cases make the right decision to pick the models that are optimizing for my use case as well as for my price sensitivity. >> Yep, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, and and and and I think price is a really important thing where you know, the open weights models are allowing us to give more value to our customers at a lower price, right? And so it's so it's just you're hurting you're hurting customers. You're hurting the people that are trying to use AI if these sorts of models can't be used, right? And of course the ability for us to actually, you know, use our own data to better tune the open weights models out there so that it better fits the workloads that our customers are doing. Obviously Cursor has been the phenomenal example of this with their composer models. But that's that moves the needle. That like moves the needle to get way better experience at a at a fraction of the price. >> So how are you thinking about pricing for your own product? >> Good question. I mean, you know, I I think for us we want to get really aggressive on the pricing. Again, I think that the the big sea change happening here is the open source models are really catching up with the labs and there's there's a very tiny, I wouldn't even call it last mile at this point, but it's like there's some there's a there's a last bit of distance to really kind of marry these things where we can provide the same level of experience, right? But you know, this we're in in in a couple some number of weeks from now, we're going to be rolling out some stuff that will could be our first foray into this where, you know, we we can we can go and offer stuff at price points >> that just I would not have been possible before while providing a great experience. But that that to us is we're we're all in giving our users the the most bang for buck. I mean, that's kind of from the get-go for us. That's always how we've approached this is like when we figure out ways where we can reduce costs, right? Which is always a top concern for us. Not just for us as a business, but it's actually really more like, "Hey, how can we actually make this a better economical decision for the folks using the product?" Like we we are always trying to figure out how we can make this better and more affordable. >> Speaking of pricing and being aggressive, the other day I was driving around and I saw a billboard by >> [laughter] >> by your company that said, "Buy SaaS or let me find Sorry, SaaS." >> Yeah, yeah. >> So, what do you hear your take on this SaaS apocalypse, right? And how these previous pricing models are probably not going to cut it and what you are thinking about it to make sure that you end up on the winning side. >> Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, so we're doing this whole campaign on the Yes, we have all these billboards like New York and and San Francisco that say, "Sorry, SaaS." Like we're apologizing for the SaaS apocalypse. But yeah, so I I think you know, I think the per-seat model thing, I think that's that's the biggest risk point, I would say, for SaaS businesses, right? Is with agents as agents become more capable, more powerful, you may just you may not need as many seats for certain types of products. Not because like they're those people won't be at the company, but it's you're going to have agents that are going and doing things and it makes a lot more sense to charge based on usage and access and and that sort of thing. So, that and that just across the industry that it was when we launched Bolt actually it was I'm very proud of our team. We got a lot of things right that ended up being how the industry now works. Where when we launched Bolt uh to that time every all these AI tools they all had been doing the for you know, for whatever reason people were charging like Netflix does where it's like, "Hey, one price all you can eat uh except in the case of these AI things if you eat too much you we're going to you know, kind of throttle you and make you come back later." But it's like 20 bucks a month. That was kind of like Co-pilot was doing that. I think Cursor was doing that. Like all the everyone was doing this, right? And when we launched Bolt the demand was so nuts in the first 24 or 48 hours people ripped through with our subscription was like 9 bucks at that time. People ripped through that in not even a day. And they were like, "I want to give you more money." And so what we ended up doing was within 72 hours of of that we shipped usage-based pricing where you could actually choose, you know, you could like upgrade to the amount of usage that that you wanted. And [snorts] I think it was within a few weeks of that Barclays yeah they're they're like a investor banking sort of you know, outfit or whatever mega. They they wrote a report that they sent to you know, their their whole client base or whatever that said, "This we think that this model that this this random company StackBlitz Bolt like at the time they think this model is actually going to end up being how how this stuff gets priced." And that is exactly what has happened, right? Where all these AI products everyone's charging based on usage. Um you can choose how much you know, for like in the case of like Claude they have like the $20 plan $100 plan $200 plan. I mean that that's that is what we pioneered, right? That's right. So, I look at things like that. I think that's just going to continue, right? Where it's okay, how do you actually you know, how do you charge based on the value being provided versus just oh, hey, you have 10,000 people at your company and if you want them to be able to log in and use this they're going to have to pay. It's like how How value are all those people getting out of this, right? Like is it is the value actually there cuz if it's not, then what's probably going to happen is people are going to be using their agents, they're going to go and, you know, hit your APIs, blah blah blah, and then there's going to be three people your company that actually need to use your product and 2,000 that are getting this, you know, through an agent via hitting the API. You know what I mean? So it's like that's you you have to kind of go, okay, how do we actually uh price the value. So to me it's actually kind of a a healthy, how do I put this? Um it's very it's a it's a you know, to be in the in the incumbent position, of course, is uncomfortable but like such is the nature of free markets. The the reason that those margins are under pressure is is it's not because this stuff is bad, blah blah blah. Like and what we're seeing is people are not losing their jobs because AI and and and to at least certainly to the degree that some AI leaders have said it was going to happen. What's actually going on though is it's like it's bringing to question like what is the value of that of all these seats that you're forcing people to buy, right? And in a lot of cases, it was really more of, well, we have to do it. Not because we're getting this much value. So that So that just kind of comes back to you, okay, well, then you need to go innovate, right? So that's that's kind of that's that's my view on on the SaaS side of things. >> And we are seeing this across the board, right? Back in the day, I think B2B SaaS was mostly a captive audience cuz first of all, the person who's buying the thing is not using the thing. That is a already a a yellow flag but also like usage was only being measured at the maybe a week before renewals. Well, like all these customer success managers, we had to prove, hey, someone in the company did something very good, hence we deserve 12 more months of grace, right? And now you're kind of on the hook and you are sharing risk and reward but ultimately, uh the the access to value and the access to usage is right there for everybody. >> Exactly. Yep. And so I think to me it's again, it's I think it's just a it's a good unfattening of margins where value was not tremendously present. Cuz then you see other there are SaaS companies that are crushing it, right? Like Shopify is crushing it, you know? The and I so I think earlier in the year there, there, you know, there was an over rotation on all of SaaS and all of that and blah blah and and what's what's what's what's really going on is I mean I think that there was pending question of okay, well, what of these things are any of them do they the fitness function them or or any of them going to is it clear any of them are going to be able to thread the needle here and and and now we're seeing the first crops of these where it's like yeah, these guys these guys are doing great and and so I think those are the gold standards of of what the other SaaS companies have to look up to and go okay, this is this is how we have to approach the problem and similar sea change that happened during the dot com era, right? Where, you know, the traditional media print companies, etc. Like they these sorts of questions, right? Some some thread the needle really well, some did not, but it's again such as life in business how good are you at embracing pain quickly and and and and and embracing it and then pushing through it and figuring out what what needs to be done, right? >> That's a beautiful way to wrap up this this conversation. Thank you so much for your time, Eric. It's been a pleasure to learn from you. >> Yeah, thank you for having me. It's been a blast.