David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) on the ‘Post-SaaS era' | E1856

(0:00) DHH joins Jason
(2:29) David discusses his new SaaS alternative, once.com, which charges a one-time fee rather than a recurring subscription
(10:44) Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at vanta.com/twist
(11:50) David's philosophy on copyrighting
(20:17) Embroker - Use code TWIST to get an extra 10% off insurance at Embroker.com/twist
(21:31) The evolving landscape of remote work
(31:46) Equinix - Join the Equinix Startup Program for up to $100K in credits and much more at deploy.equinix.com/startups
(32:53) The state of fundraising and DHH recounts Basecamp's internal culture struggles
(49:03) Should AI progress should be accelerated or slowed down?
(1:08:08) How willful exposure to hardship can build grit and resilience
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Check out Once: once.com
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Thanks to our partners:
(10:44) Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at vanta.com/twist
(20:17) Embroker - Use code TWIST to get an extra 10% off insurance at Embroker.com/twist
(31:46) Equinix - Join the Equinix Startup Program for up to $100K in credits and much more at deploy.equinix.com/startups
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[@boonkiathan]

a renaissance from the olde days we bought the boxed software for hundreds of dollars, for some disks/CDs and a printed manual --- and a oversized box to display on the shelf

[@mkazantsev]

Wow, what a guest and what an execution of this interview Jason. Wonderful content.

[@genericdeveloper3966]

I appreciate DHH's passion for what he does. I think he has more great work ahead of him.

[@I_Lemaire]

This was amazing. Thank you, Jason, DHH and TWiSt.

[@pegasuspig9821]

10/10. Thank you both for your candor!

[@18VibesCo]

Yo guys absolutely love what you do here. I worked for a POS SASS company for 4 years... Made a little dough and bought a small farm way up North by Canada. Took a year off to learn new country boy things. Now I'm getting back into the Dev and needed some fresh vibes. Y'all provide!

[@startups]

Thank you and good luck!

[@adambentley]

That's awesome. Love your music!

[@SajadJalilian]

It was such a pleasure an such a great episode. Thank you guys for creating this.

[@ivorpaul8987]

I am impressed by how DHH steers clear of bashing the alternative views. He admits that there is value in the other ideas and then frames his perspective and explains why that is valuable.

[@amani_art]

Always love hearing David speak.

[@nyahhbinghi]

DHH is the man

[@hydropro4209]

David just spraying knowledge! What a great discussion! Thank you both for this.

[@maryamrashidi2329]

Super interesting conversation. Thank you!

[@startups]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@rv8804]

So excited to hear this. As a rails developer and big fan of DHH. He has such great insights❤

[@boonkiathan]

I concur with DHH that LLM has similarity to our minds and the way we hallucinate, and similarities to the kindred way they respond to us and impressive in that it can collate and present information at ungodly speed but Jason is also right that we must be mindful what is under the hood (at least today) that it is a word-to-word predictor, it is a compressed mapped-index of known articles and data, it has no volition but to process your inputs held against the system conditions into a line of conversation.

[@NinjaBranDizzzle]

Amen 🙏

[@JCMShadow1994]

This was an amazing episode. DHH is valuable to listen to. Thank you

[@raybarrera9002]

Great convo, and great perspective from DHH. That said, can't say I relate to considering going on a ski trip as "adversity".

[@rayhanmuktader1064]

Yeah, as DHH said, every generation of old men has to say how tough they had it, I guess that applies to going skiing and hiking for some people.

[@Gigawattt]

Hey Jason, you can export all your slack users and history using its API and import it all into a self-hosted open source MatterMost server! 😊

[@skreutzer]

Point being, it has been a mistake to trap data into Slack, Basecamp, in the first place, where making some self-hosted server package is just a standard developer's weekend exercise, and had been even back in 2004. Maybe is great and important that there's now the GNU AGPL to also close the SaaS loophole.

[@H4KnSL4K]

I was going to mention this as well, but found your comment first. Yes, mattermost is a perfectly good open-source alternative to Slack, that you can host yourself. Of course, there are open source IRC servers .. but an easier web front-end seems to be needed for non-IRC-familiar people..

[@jksmithiii]

This is Nick Carr's "The Big Switch" in reverse. This is de-centralization, which means companies can still can have their own balance sheet. As opposed to the MSFT/AMZN way, which is "You'll own nothing and be happy." I love it.

[@BrianTakita]

Thank you. I wish the JS ecosystem had someone like DHH over the past decade. I miss his leadership since I moved on from Rails to do isomorphic apps. I love the energy of this conversation. I feel a renaissance in the independent startup ecosystem coming.

[@brianm0440]

I love this interview. Such a great perspective.

[@trasiulis]

Very good podcast, no BS perspective 👍

[@KC53557]

Don’t forget Oracle, IBM, Sap etc pre SaaS made fortunes on on premise software ongoing support streams. All saas did is convert high profit margin support contracts to a saas model.

[@kolomiytsevs]

Rocket Chat is a great opensource self host Slack alternative

[@paulsalele3844]

Great interview!!

[@williamseipp9691]

"The future is already here, it's just not widely distributed" is so true.

[@shenqiangshou]

Before slack, we used IRC in a world long long ago, far far away, for free.

[@adventurelens001]

Great point about what if your top 30% leaves when return to office is implemented.

[@smulktis]

Happy longtime customer and really enjoying this talk. Also an avid ChatGPT user/subscriber, and I do wonder if Mark Fisher was right in Capitalist Realism and I wonder if AI is capable of propelling us over this hump with truly novel and brilliant visions and ideas... or will it produce mostly small incremental iterations on training data. "Real Art" as we've collectively identified it tends to either be totally ineffable or at least stand-out as extreme examples of the clever interweaving of disparate ideas, often merging distant abstract ideas, mediums, and subject matter in ways that compel us to place enormous value on these instances of "originality". It's almost as if artistic value increases in an inversely correlated way to the popularity or predictability of the art's cultural references.

[@chenlim2165]

LOL, pay once until the next security patch. There's a reason even MSFT doesn't sell packaged apps anymore.

[@hellojeezai]

It was a delicious conversation. Accelerate!

[@asultansdemise]

Great convo

[@avayu2289]

Big fan of Ruby on Rails!

[@shawnjharris]

"My son has a gang...DALLE helped him make t-shirts..." lol. Great podcast!

[@Hwkman4]

Don't know how I found this but Hell Yeah!

[@ashh3051]

What's the business model in terms of providing long term support for the software? Will there be ongoing bug fixes and security updates?

[@boonkiathan]

I actually look forward to Once, although I was underwhelmed by Hey Mail (sorry DHH) looking forward in how the paradigm will shift i suspect - decentralized logic and data, using encryption to protect corp. data on-device - peer-to-peer (for most), light server/proxy to negotiate, - CRDTs - novel version control - allow customers to have escrow/custodianship of the source code [at per-customer level] - multiple device support sounds like a huge revolution

[@bossgd100]

​@boonkiathan you dont answer the question

[@seanlawton7681]

There is none, it's a flawed idea and it hasn't been thought through. He needs to make money off his once domain lmao

[@JonathanTheZombie]

44:28 “It wasn’t just a road to nowhere, it was a road to hell.” As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Or another way: the ends justify the means.

[@ai_marketing_secret]

Noone likes to install software and manage servers, come on.

[@stoianandreimircea1509]

Now...I really connected to this talk...all the way up untill 1:08:56 that they have the audacity to say that there is no more trauma and that your arm could be blown off by a mortar. Well talk to people fleeing jones of conflict. Please make sure you look around when you are making this type of statements. There are right now people that are in that exact situation.

[@brandonshapiro3194]

Holy crap I’ve never been in a channel with so many ads.

[@charlotteong5952]

Definitely can relate. When we grew, we had the same challenges too. I was very naive. Maybe still am 😅 Now, we just do more with less with lots of tech and AI. P/s Once resonates with us. Lots of subscriptions are so painfully a waste of hard earned $

[@Jeff_Putz]

Post SaaS? This will be news to SaaS companies. The model works fine, but there's a spectrum of value versus cost versus effort to create a product that is really just now settling. Small businesses especially have no desire to own software.

[@leeow3n]

Been remote since 2007 with a few short years in between. The office is a joke.

[@ControlProblem]

SAAS is good for customers because they pay for what they use. It's good for vendors because their revenue becomes more predictable. I am very skeptical of "post-SAAS".

[@kokoinmars]

I wonder if Jcal will still call the style transfer art generation "democratisation", even after the openai lawsuit?

[@TomekSw]

"Man invents fictional scenario and then gets angry about it." 😊

[@matten_zero]

42:00 they are affectionately known as "The Cathedral"

[@TheBlackManMythLegend]

Remote work is fine but if it’s an excuse to exploit people . While the work is just as hard and require sacrifices ( sedentary lifestyle ) , training all the time ( to be better communicator to be better this or that ) and you can’t even get a living wage compared to all the hours you put in . I will start to say to young people to do something else . And myself too. What’s the point? If only the ceo can afford to have a house and a family, is that a viable future for the world. I understand that in capitalism self interest is the driving force. Well self interest of the next generations should be to do something else. Because be a real IT SWE with deep knowledge requires a lot of time. If you can’t even be paid for that. What’s the point if you can’t even have a life after work… nah people will either start slacking or put less intensity. I really believe in “you get out what you put in”

[@PixelStud]

What’s problematic with AI is the name itself. Implies intelligence when it’s a work in progress. As a UX designer who is excited by the ability to eliminate redundant workflows for users with “AI” and its associated tech (nlp, ocr etc) I fear the point when we begin marketing AI as doing or providing something that may not be accurate. It’s not the tech itself but the way we respond to it. And as we have seen with social media not all users play with their toys in the same way and their are consequences to our society. Let’s not stop having these conversations as the technology evolves and is adopted! 🎉

[@anatoly.ivanov]

Interesting conversation, but the form reminds me of American TV - a lengthy “sponsored by / ad” every 10 minutes. Why not make it every 5 minutes? 3 minutes? Mid-sentence, even? Like David says, Tiktok time spans. 🤦🏻‍♂

[@michaelmoorley]

Great interview. If I may though, I found myself wanting to hear the end of David's sentences and his points but Jason would interrupt mid sentence. It disrupted the points trying to be made at times and I feel that it may be good to allow the person being interviewed to finish their sentence/thoughts. Not only good for us listening but would give Jason more context then interrupting midway through the sentence.

[@lawrencesmith9059]

The problem with SAAS is that it gets real expensive. The VCs all want to make a pile. There needs and will be lots of competition in the software space.

[@adilsoncabral547]

First 30 minutes were ok, the rest felt like a rant. Good stuff

[@andrewkenny2857]

I love how Jason’s personal example of childhood adversity is going skiing 🤢 - or rather 💩 Enjoyed the tech parts of the discussion but the segment on moral character I could do without

[@tamaraheater9695]

Thank God someone is coming to their senses.

[@LeePenkman]

He is right I have to basically not raise money until much better times. It's nice to focus on product instead of investors I feel like since co s coming out of this time will be very strong and profitable because of the harsh journey

[@nikhilmhatre9327]

We finally have someone matching or even exceeding Jason's energy :)

[@tofuman9526]

Wow. This got me thinking… what ONCE business model can bite off of?…

[@genovo]

What to do about piracy? SaaS prevents that.

[@TheAceInfinity]

Agree with all the SaaS out there today that really shouldn't be. It's a business incentive, not a customer benefit.

[@0-Will-0]

Will future versions / upgrades of a "once" product be free too? That would be nice.

[@Bryanerayner]

Doesn't make sense. Resharper is a great version of a once product

[@nicolailinhares]

Isn’t this exactly what Mattermost is?

[@ragequilt_]

DHH is always refreshing to watch. But I find Jason Calcanis just insincere. Insincere about his understanding of technology, the markets and the whole ecosystem.

[@JR-gy1lh]

Agree this dude is awesome.

[@GrahamQuigley]

How do you experience him as being insincere?

[@ragequilt_]

@@GrahamQuigley In this interview specifically his introduction of DHH itself shows he's done just some cursory reading. How can one not be certain that DHH is the creator of the Rails framework especially when he's the only guest. It's 101. Calcanis comes across as a bold font reader. I've followed his work since the Mahalo days and most recently his sycophancy with Musk's Twitter. I know it comes across harsh but that's how he comes across to me.

[@ryanslab302]

This was more This Week in Sociology.

[@matten_zero]

31:41 thats me. But Im realizing most of these businesses also dont need to either. They just want the cushy-ness of working on a startup.

[@roddypine6077]

DESKTOP is back!!!!

[@zeromick1]

Jason - it's call E/ACC and no-one runs it.

[@THEROOT1111]

I don't always agree with DHH, in fact sometimes i think he's drunk, but he do get a lot of things right. Which as it all seems it goes to his favor in total.

[@brandonna606]

DHH! Lets Goo

[@augmentos]

It's 1996

[@arunabhbarua1924]

Jury is very much out on Twitter. It's a big assumption that the changes are sustainable. Social media is less about technical features and more about moderation and community features in the age of polarisation. You could argue with the rebranding, change in focus and ethos, twitter is already dead, gone the way of blockbuster, blackberry and Nokia. Not a shining example of cutting excess fat and thriving.

[@Finite8614]

love DHH!!!

[@al3rez]

he made millions off saas model after he's been paying millions to aws and slack and other saas companies he realized now i'm going to double down on pay-once model, genius.

[@bossgd100]

😂

[@jks234]

There are times in history for ideas. That’s what he talked about. SaaS was excellent in its time and perhaps now it doesn’t make as much sense for certain segments of the market.

[@apo8895]

Why does it read Post ass era on the thumbnail? 🤔

[@skreutzer]

OK, but there's this problem of a contradiction: 53:17 the facts are wrong because it's just a generator/permutator for whatever correct or junk data some people put onto the WWW. But in the subsequent exchange, it's the greatest tutor explaining Einstein and the Israel-Palestine conflict, and such an "acceleration"? Maybe this is because image variation might be more useful (artistically) than text generation (except in marketing/advertising/copywriting, generating homework, research papers, social media posts). 54:11 Human performance is very poor (think their memory or performing math), that's why a machine that would do it better, properly, be correct and not fabricate, would be far more desirable than falling for a new version of ELIZA.,

[@stevepascoe]

I miss software products

[@ReflectionOcean]

- Embrace AI to enhance productivity and individual capabilities (00:11). - Consider remote work as a cost-effective strategy for startups (00:17). - Explore non-traditional funding and growth methods in the current economic climate (00:23). - Investigate the potential of web apps and software products to reduce operational costs (04:03). - Reevaluate the necessity of large teams and excessive spending in startups (10:25). - Foster independence and resilience in personal and professional life (51:08). - Utilize AI tools like chatbots to streamline tasks and gain quick insights (57:38). - Introduce elements of physical discomfort, like cold showers, to build character and appreciation for comfort (1:13:09). - Remain open to new, challenging, and unconventional ideas to enrich personal perspectives (1:19:01).

[@jon_______]

This was fing awesome

[@MariodeFelipe]

Funny I come from the SAP world and here we go in the exact opposite direction

[@MarceloDezem]

I think DHH is right until a certain point. He misses the mark about Slack. No company wants to manage Slack internally. Yes, it costs money, but it still costs less than having to manage it internally while risking to shut down developers when things go wrong. Some SaaS will die, but most will thrive, because they bring value, they are fast to setup, and most importantly, the company doesn't have to worry about infra and having an expert-on-call to solve problems when things go wrong.

[@_caseyjames]

Agreed with a lot of this until the logo stuff came about; not sure having AI effectively plagiarize work for others benefit whilst simultaneously harming the job market is a good thing.

[@anatoly.ivanov]

But hey, Jason’s gonna enjoy a remix of a remix of a remix of Dire Straits and the n-th custom re-run of The Sopranos til his death, he’s so happy about it… He’s now A Prompt Artist with a Stratocaster blurred in the background. Everyone gets a logo and a 4-chord progression, only $19,99 a month, till GPUs last.

[@TheRonnieaj]

That part outlined everything I hate about AI. I feel like AI should be used to simplify workflows so that there’s MORE creative time to create genuine works of art, not computer generated schlock with no soul 😒

[@anatoly.ivanov]

​@@TheRonnieaj - We haven’t built AI (yet). It’s an acronym that is easier to pronounce and understand than Statistical Predictive LLM using a multi-head attention mechanism or something even longer. In other words, it's not intelligent, but indeed generative of whatever quantity of “soulless schlock” (to use your term) the engineers have stolen from the human creators (without compensating them). LLMs are probably best at one thing - as a mirror of most of the humanity. To be truly useful and interesting, everything that the current systems spew out require the “taste” and “discernment” and even “technical skill” that most of 8B on the planet do not possess, but continue to dream of. That’s what Jason says openly. He could never play like Mark Knopfler nor draw like “the illustrator we used to pay 5000 USD for a month of work” and relishes in the fact that that horrible DallE logo “is better, faster”. No, it is not better. I’d be so ashamed of such bad taste. I’d keep quiet. But hey, I _can_ and have drawn a lot of logos and create/arrange/master my own music. Just different intellectual planes, non-intersecting, except at the points of “hey, we brute-forced statistics to hallucinate some of your 'magical' stuff, you snobbish creators, here’s our revenge”. I suspect the truly thinking / creative AI will laugh at such statements. A laughter that won’t be understood.

[@xpidxb]

Seeing this for the first time and For a moment i felt like i was looking at “Christ” talking about SAAS 😀

[@tazimrahbar7882]

This time is different with AI

[@murtadha96]

TOO MANY garbage ads. Just slim it down will you?!!!!

[@Joshua-dc4un]

Of all people to listen to DHH chose Thomas sowell, 🤦🏾🤦🏾

[@carlossouza5151]

DHH is great. Feedback to Jason Calacanis: imho you should improve your listening skills and not interrupt the person being interviewed that much. It's annoying

[@vadim3]

So DHH advocates for deploying our apps on Apple laptops instead of AWS?

[@JulienReszka]

Why not?

[@PaulSebastianM]

Feels like listening to Dave Ramsay. 🤢

[@hiandrewfisher]

Once is aptly named as the future isn't capitalist.

[@kirillt9009]

OMG DHH with long hair.

[@justingirard7476]

So -- this is literally just Web3. I joined the industry 5 years ago for all of the reasons mentioned. I think it would be cool to discuss those innovations in this / future talks.

[@JOHNSMITH-ve3rq]

“Game recognise game” he says, mainly to praise himself. It’s ick.

[@remsee1608]

In crypto you have token gated access that's the future

[@Coral_dude]

He can’t get people to use rails as a viable framework due to stigma but he’s got Saas figured out, k

[@roninskylines]

he is basically saying nothing just to justify his new venture. the internet goes down frequently in the 90s and early 2000s. There were many weak links and plenty of last mile failures. Simply put, there are just some products that are so easy to run and basically is one machine operation. there is nothing disruptive by a stretch about this.

[@firstspar]

A lot smaller sized companies will come in with buy once products thst match expensive SaaS products. Tech will move from SaaS to company self hosted infrastructure again.

[@matten_zero]

Nietzsche! 51:12

[@zerodiscount8812]

What’s the business model then? Sell slack for $1000? It’s a lot of blahblah so far.

[@unitedwindows6884]

I like that model. 😂

[@zerodiscount8812]

@@unitedwindows6884 you’ll pay the same amount in service

[@ayvengoe7236]

A very one sides way to look at things, there is truth in that we need competition and so on. Whats usually happening is that a talentless guy in a top position is making money on the back of all who works for him. You describe how capitalism should work and not how its actually working in real life for allmost all of us. There are a few exceptions.

[@helengrives5447]

I disagree that capitalism works great and grows the pie. It doesn't as the outcome is inefficient in the beginning., especially funded with too much VC money. It is an contradiction in argument. If the business logic and knowledge was there in the first place, then it would be efficiently possible to be a company that has its money flows and internal structure right. But that often doesn't seems to be the case, because overpay, overspend and even weird business models that go bankrupt in 7 yrs exist, while others seem to perpetuate their existence. How wonderful the startup world is, it has its intricate blind spots, group think etc. This has nothing to do with capitalism, but all to much with being humans who love religions. Even if that has the name tech on it. If you really want to be innovative, than the hiring practices should be the first to be reviewed. I believe that a society that works for all, is better of with reviewing the disposable employee mindset. And then pride oneself, because you laid off many people as a business insight/acumen. Elon Musk didn't pay his bills. The cool thing is to do it while paying your bills! Obviously the whole debate about so called neutral unbiased funding is unrealistic. We have biases, preferences. It is also strange that when it comes to women founders that the discussion is about special treatment, especially while male founders have always have had that preferential treatment in the first place. If the idea makes sens, and is a good one, why not make a team around it? It has never been a meritocracy. Maybe that's what's wrong in VC land, the piling of money in the first place. The outsourcing. Why is it that charities are free to have any cause they want, when it comes to access of commercial money, there's suddenly a huge wall? I am not a VC, but I have had conversations with them. I always point out that if I would be in that position, the proposal should meet three criteria. I like the idea, the founder can be supported with a great team, and above it meets a non monetary intrinsic value that's on my list. I'm in a minor position with this opinion, but I believe it makes for better products, customer experiences, and societal outcomes. No group think, pure honesty. Like the billion dollar scams? Hows that for judgement of meritocracy? Someone did not do his/her due diligence. Recognized snake oil.

[@mmbyron]

It is easy for him to be "optimistic" about AI and everything else when he knows deeply that he would never suffer the consequences

[@EntropyWins]

Poor take on AI risk

[@karthikeyan817]

base camp made millions and millions of dollars with saas model with annual recurring revenu r according to zoominfo is $350 million dollars arr and now they are starting to pivot to on premsis pay once native software in vps servers this is the most hypocratie thing i have ever seen by a progarmmer programmed a language in another interview in honeypot he said that with ruby on rails you can scale from small developer it will go till IPO ( initial public offering ) and now this is the most hypocratie thing i see on the software and business worlld , 😂😂

[@unitedwindows6884]

F SaaS.

[@alainportant6412]

Fuck

[@Licardo7]

Dude lost me when he became another old dude yelling about woke culture