# Jason Cohen - Hidden Multipliers  ## Episode metadata - Episode title: Jason Cohen - Hidden Multipliers - Show: Ditching Hourly - Owner / Host: Jonathan Stark - Guests: [Jason Cohen](https://share.snipd.com/person/9be5a751-caff-43ed-98ad-cb0fa62b9281) - Episode publish date: 2026-08-21 - Episode AI description: Jason Cohen, founder of WP Engine and SmartBear and author of Hidden Multipliers, shares concise frameworks for business focus and AI use. He talks about using AI as a facilitator, picking your ideal customers, differentiating services through model and messaging, and why writing sharpens strategy. Short, practical conversations on market definition, pricing, and building a unique, opinionated brand. - Mentioned books: [Hidden Multipliers](https://share.snipd.com/book/ff856dba-e78b-4fdf-a65b-633c3ba1033b) by [Jason Cohen](https://share.snipd.com/person/9be5a751-caff-43ed-98ad-cb0fa62b9281), [Crossing the Chasm](https://share.snipd.com/book/4ba2fac2-3d5d-4176-872c-e0a1acbfcd6f) by [Geoffrey Moore](https://share.snipd.com/person/70ac3ca1-c328-4e78-bf5d-cc9e5e3d0ec1) - Duration: 01:10:06 - Episode URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/episode/f72b53e6-abbb-49bf-9553-bb393d8fc489) - Show URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/show/d5740ce0-1ff2-493f-9f8b-752a7656b383) - Export date: 2026-09-08T19:51:10 ## Snips ### [Use AI Skills To Facilitate Decisions](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a6e5ced8-730d-42a0-82a4-0c13a5fcfbe6) 🎧 02:41 - 04:08 (01:27) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/777a0834-d2b1-4e3e-9b68-61e53b3afeb5" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Use AI skills as facilitators, not answer machines, to hold you accountable through structured workflows. - Jason built prompt-driven skills for pricing, positioning and customer interviews that guide decisions without replacing human judgment. #### 💬 Quote > If i instructed the ai well enough it could facilitate me finding answers better for myself because it could hold me sort of accountable to not give wishy-washy answers it could walk me through some sort of workflow. > — Jason Cohen Jason Cohen on designing AI skills as facilitators #### 📚 Transcript **Jason Cohen:** Yeah. So I'm actually not a big AI maximalist whatever um and so i don't think for ai should tell you what to do or solve problems in your business so what i found is that i could if i instructed the ai well enough it could facilitate me finding answers better for myself because it could hold me sort of accountable to not give wishy-washy answers it could walk me through some sort of workflow maybe it could do a little bit of light research like well you said there's no competitors but here's 10 you know that sort of thing and so of course the best facilitator is a human being of course but when you're a solo uh founder who who exactly is going to do that facilitation for you for whether it's a strategic decision or product decision or analyzing something or someone being a devil's advocate perhaps in some form. And so if the answer is nobody, then perhaps skills crafted specifically to be facilitators, not answer givers, could that be better than nothing, even if it's not as good as a human? So that was my goal for every one of those skills, actually, is to hold you sort of accountable, as it were, and not give you answers. So some of those things are how should I price things? How should I position my product? How do I interview customers, like in a structured way to learn stuff? How do I decide who my ideal customer is exactly? These are the kinds of things that are skills there. And again, I wrote about up in the book, but you don't have to buy the book to go enjoy that. --- ### [Find Your Best Customers By Ranking Profitability](https://share.snipd.com/snip/65c55e2b-02ce-4881-84fb-5a885c6d67f4) 🎧 04:57 - 06:46 (01:48) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/acd91532-e03d-49ef-bcc6-e132e3bfef2a" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Identify your best three to five customers and find patterns that distinguish them from your worst customers. - Jason used a WP Engine 'profit whale' analysis ranking customers by individual profitability to spot traits worth doubling down on. #### 💬 Quote > We did, we ranked all the customers by their individual profitability. This is when we had 7,000 customers. > — Jason Cohen Jason Cohen on WP Engine profit whale analysis #### 📚 Transcript **Jason Cohen:** So for example, if I already have a business, then I ask things like, well, who's your best customers? Like, just think of your best three to five customers. And you can try to define that and have numbers. And that's fine if you want to. In fact, I did this process at WP Engine called a profit whale, where we did, we ranked all the customers by their individual profitability. This is when we had 7,000 customers. And just for perspective, now we have 200,000 customers. But anyway, at 7,000, we ranked them and it was really clear like, there's these groups uh that are more profitable why is that of course is a good question ones that are very unprofitable also why is that and then what should we do about that and so um uh so you can you can be sort of uh objective and systematic about it but i find if you just say wait just think of like if i say who's your best couple of customers? Somebody already comes to mind. Good enough. What about them makes them a great customer? Do they love you and they never call? They don't need features or the features they ask for are features you want to do anyway, so it's a perfect fit. Do they tell other people about you? Have they brought in other customers? Do they just pay a lot, but they don't want a lot and that's why they're profitable? And, you know, maybe in the top, even just three and five customers, there's probably not going to something that's 100% true of them across all of them, but like, is there some kind of trend or pattern about that, about them, which are different from the people on the other end of the spectrum? Because if you just ask, what is similar about my best customers, you'll find things that are also similar to your not good customers because they're just what your customers are like and what your market is like. So it has to be what's similar among them and dissimilar to people who are on the other end of the spectrum. And again, this isn't an exact science. You see what I mean? If you can find some of these things, then those are some facets in a gem, a gemstone you can imagine cutting to say, ah, this is my ideal customer. --- ### [Build Strategy That Leans Into Who You Are](https://share.snipd.com/snip/798505a4-b765-493f-8d25-35f48b3eb09d) 🎧 07:02 - 10:22 (03:19) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/08a4264c-f635-43cf-b6b5-765e8dec28e7" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Build strategy in the shape of who you are by leaning into your strengths and letting perceived weaknesses be irrelevant for the right customers. - Jason uses the Etsy pouch example to show handmade flaws become strengths for buyers who value craft and are willing to pay more. #### 💬 Quote > What kind of strategy or product or market could I build and serve where the strengths I already have are what's needed to win and the weaknesses I have are irrelevant. > — Jason Cohen Jason Cohen on crafting strategy around personal strengths #### 📚 Transcript **Jason Cohen:** And have a lot of thoughts about what makes a good market also. But I actually think it's better to start with yourself and start with what are my strengths and weaknesses? What are my capabilities and assets? What do I have already? What do I love and what gives me energy, even if I have to learn it? But I love doing that so I can do it all day. And even during the hard times, I can push through it and so on. What are those things and what I want is a company especially if a solar founder but even even at WP Engine it was like this for me um what what kind of strategy or product or market could I build and serve where the strengths I already have are what's needed to win and the weaknesses I have are irrelevant, or at least not deal breakers. Sometimes weaknesses can be by the right, your things you see as weaknesses, and maybe they are in certain contexts, your perfect customer, your perfect market actually sees them as strengths. That's when you start seeing like, wow, that's the strategy I should adopt. I'll give you an example because that's so that's so generic and doesn't sound right, right? Let's say I, I buy, so I love things like pouches and slings and backpacks and stuff like that. It's just like a personal thing I like. So I like to buy pouches and I buy, sometimes I buy stuff from people on Etsy and I'll get a pouch from someone on Etsy and oh look, the seam is kind of weird and there's a thread coming off here and et cetera, right? It's not perfect because it was handmade. Now you could say that's a weakness. Here's a product that has some quality issues, one might say, in the sewing department. So it's a weakness. But is it, I bought a handmade product from somebody. Of course it has a thread coming out. I would expect that. It just shows, it demonstrates that I bought a handmade product. So I like that. It's not a weakness. It's an indication of the thing I wanted, which is that it's handmade. Also, it's kind of too expensive, right? Like you say, well, here's this little pouch with a simple zipper and it costs, you know, $30 in shipping and handling. So is that a weakness that it's like more expensive than you'd expect for what you get? No, because again, I'm supporting some craftsperson, some artist. That's what I wanted to do. So that high price is not a weakness. In fact, it's part of what I wanted all along, which is to support somebody else. So there's a very specific thing that happens every single day, right? On Etsy, where things that in other contexts would be weaknesses are in fact either strengths, or at least they're not weaknesses or they're indications of kind of what I wanted. So this is what I mean when I say like, okay, a product that leans into your strengths, like maybe someone who likes to sell, right? Or likes haberdashery, then that would lean into that. But the weaknesses aren't considered that if you're selling to the right person. So if I'm starting from nothing, then I want to start from myself and ask, well, what am I? Who am I? What are these strengths and weaknesses and stuff? Or at least I should say the contexts in which these natural things of mine are strengths and the context in which they are weaknesses. So I can decide about a product market strategy, cetera, where to win in that way actually leans into who I am. I'll be more naturally a winner. Even if there's competitors who compete the same way as I do, I'll actually naturally be better than them because it fits me. So I'll either be better than them or it'll cost them 10 times as much or take up 10 times because it's not natural for them or something. I'll have advantages, in other words, even though I'm by myself. So it's a natural way to get an advantage. --- ### [Define Markets By Who Trusts Each Other](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c82db114-4646-4c0d-8176-335852aedb99) 🎧 14:48 - 17:26 (02:38) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/a55dc0a0-b992-45d9-b66a-dceaba62876f" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Define a market as people who buy a certain solution for a problem and would view another customer's success as evidence it works for them. - Jason cites Crossing the Chasm: markets cluster by buyers who 'speak to each other', not just by problem label. #### 💬 Quote > A market as a group of people who buy a certain solution for a certain problem and [...] they speak to each other. > — Jason Cohen Jason Cohen on Jeffrey Moore's market definition #### 📚 Transcript **Jason Cohen:** So there's a book Crossing the Chasm, which was a bestseller. I think most people who talk about the chasm have read a blog post about it and think they know what's in the book and often get it wrong. Book is pretty good. It's like 30 or 40 years old. And I read it just a few years, reread it just a few years ago, and it was amazingly still relevant um so I recommend that as an interesting way to see things to answer questions like what is a market because in there Jeffrey Moore um defines a market as a group of people who buy a certain solution for a certain problem and um think with the way he says it is they speak to each other, but meaning if one of them said it worked for them, the next one would actually take that as evidence that it would work for them too. And this is a critical difference that helps sort of put the barriers up of what it is. So in other words, if a freelancer says this was great for doing my bookkeeping, Google will not then think, good, we should use that for our bookkeeping too because they need different things, right? And vice versa. And so they're not in the same market even though they both need bookkeeping. So the fact that it's bookkeeping, that's describing what it does or maybe the problem itself, something like that, the utility of it. That's not the only part of the market. But people tend to say things like big company, small company, and that's not true in my experience. In the case of bookkeeping, it is, but not because Google, not just because of the number of employees, but because Google actually needs something different. So for example, at WP Engine, we are the largest managed WordPress hosting provider, which means we host websites built in WordPress and we have 200,000 customers, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now, we have lots of customers who are individual people, whether it's for a business or personal. We also have small business, medium-sized business and enterprises like Google, but they don't use it for the same thing. Google doesn't use us for Google.com, obviously, But midsize companies do use us for their homepage. So the product is this Manage WordPress. It's making your WordPress website fast, scalable, secure, and have great service. And there are people who need that. Google needs it for different things than a midsize company needs it for. So if you were just to say Google's big, midsize is mid, and therefore Google isn't in the market and the person is, you'd be wrong. The market is people who need their WordPress site to be fast, scalable, secure, have good service, and they're willing to pay more than usual for that to have that be the best for people that have that mentality. And then there's all these different reasons why someone might have that mentality. And that is the market. --- ### [Differentiate Competitors From Alternatives](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6ee5a78f-9fd5-4af1-b186-e39f70d14659) 🎧 17:37 - 18:38 (01:01) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/7f21e9c5-a7ad-440b-aef6-2b8d77030fd7" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Distinguish competitors from alternatives: competitors solve the same problem in the same way; alternatives solve the problem differently. - Example: Shopify is an alternative to managed WordPress hosting for e-commerce customers, not a direct competitor. #### 💬 Quote > You could say, well, WordPress, what we do, we make sure you have a good website. Okay. But Shopify makes sure you have a good e-commerce website. Is Shopify a direct competitor with us? Well, no. > — Jason Cohen Jason Cohen on WP Engine versus Shopify as an alternative #### 📚 Transcript **Jason Cohen:** Those are competitors. But then you have what's called alternatives. And often those are the more interesting ones. Sometimes it's even the bigger part of the market is the alternatives. Alternatives means the problem is still solved or addressed, but not in the way that you and your competitors solve it. For example, you could say, well, WordPress, what we do, we make sure you have a good website. Okay. But Shopify makes sure you have a good e-commerce website. Is Shopify a direct competitor with us? Well, no, Shopify is not on WordPress. We are. So they're not a managed WordPress provider, but they all are an alternative for someone that wants e-commerce because they could use WordPress and they could use Shopify. And P.S. in the real world, there's about half and half how many sites use Shopify, how many is WordPress. So that's a very, very real example of an alternative to solving that problem. So are they in the same market? Well, if you define the market as WordPress providers, no. And if you define the market as people have websites, e-commerce websites, then yes. --- ### [Pick Healthy Growing Markets To Reduce Risk](https://share.snipd.com/snip/43bc9186-84f1-4638-af46-027d82229954) 🎧 18:45 - 21:33 (02:47) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/a74ad48c-6aa5-4091-8365-464fe98dce63" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - A 'good' market reduces downstream risks by having growing budgets and demand, even if crowded. - Jason argues crowded but healthy markets (e.g., ice cream at the beach) are preferable to shrinking markets with no demand. #### 💬 Quote > A crowded but healthy market is still probably better because you can find a niche rather than a small shrinking market. > — Jason Cohen Jason Cohen on market health versus crowding #### 📚 Transcript **Jason Cohen:** So said all that, of course, it's people who want to buy your stuff. And like, we're sort of drawing a circle around. What do we mean by that precisely? When I think of like, what is a good or bad market? What I'm thinking is everything in business is hard. And almost all of it is like working against you and high risk. You know, can you make the product or can you deliver the service? Can you find people to buy it? If you ran an ad, would they click it? If they went to the homepage, would they go to the pricing page? Is the pricing okay? What about the competitors? But AI is coming to change it. But some countries are doing better than others. I mean, oh my God, right? Like there's so, that's not even all the things coming for you. Most of the answers to these things aren't good also you don't have enough money also you have no brand to rely on also you know it's just so bad everywhere so to me it's like all right this is pretty rough no wonder most companies fail like there's just too many ways to fail right so man we need to we need to carve off some of this stuff so that some of this stuff isn't so damn risky or some of it has some at least has a decent answer from day one because we got enough to contend with so part of that could be what i said earlier like can we lean into your strengths and stuff because like if if you also have to do something that you're not good at oh my god you've just thrown another risk on the pile really you know don't do that right okay so maybe we've de-risked you a little so when i think of a good market quote unquote i'm thinking what is it about the market that's like taking some of this risk off the table so for example what are people buying more and more of and we all know the answer right now is ai stuff but there's other answers too okay so being in there already at least you know people are buying where there's there's other markets where that's not true budgets are shrinking people aren't doing it so you could go there um and hey maybe you'll have less competition because it's a bad market that's shrinking and so with less competition that may not be the worst idea um so for example you might be a consultant writing code in a language that's on the downturn because all the kids all the new kids won't write code in that language and you will and so you can get work so this there's a good reason to do that so if there's no absolutes here but okay you're working into a hard market and so that's a risk so there better be other good news to offset that risk but in general a market where there's already budget people are already paying and that's growing over time and everybody knows that that's that's good now yes there'll be a lot of competition, but as I like to say, it's easy. Even if you're at the beach and there's an ice cream stand, if you open another ice cream stand, that's probably still a good business, even though there's another ice cream stand. Whereas if you open an ice cream stand where people don't want ice cream, then that's not necessarily a good idea. So a probably, you know, a crowded but healthy market is still probably better because you can find a niche or just, just find anything rather than a small shrinking market. --- ### [Use Opinionated Content To Differentiate Consulting](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ea187468-e63c-44e6-bf3e-fa9e5197f35f) 🎧 28:00 - 29:03 (01:03) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/07ab01b6-fb90-4adf-bfd4-9a541cb354bc" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Differentiate consulting by publishing opinionated content that reveals your worldview, style, and depth. - Jason says writing, videos or a book act as sales tools that attract clients who want your approach, not generic 'proprietary' blurbs. #### 💬 Quote > Content marketing that shows who you are what your style is what your attitude is what your philosophy is, shows off that you have depth. > — Jason Cohen Jason Cohen on content as differentiation for consultants #### 📚 Transcript **Jason Cohen:** Yeah. So with consulting, it's extra hard to be differentiated because at least in products, you can just have a feature or two that maybe somebody doesn't have. And that might be minor, but OK. Maybe the design is, you know, the product's designed somehow. Like there's even the visual design. Some people will like it. In other words, there's some little places where you get a differentiation where consultants don't have that. Right. There's no little place to hang that. There's no UI, no features. however differentiation doesn't just come from things like features it can come from all all manner of things um and maybe consultants just have to do that so i think the most most is probably the wrong word a common way is to have some kind of content marketing that shows who you are what your style is what your attitude is what your philosophy is, shows off that you have depth and what specific things you may specialize in or have special opinions about. Now you could say, is that differentiated because someone else has content? Yeah, but they're not saying the same things you're saying. They don't have the same style you have. Their writing style is different. The kinds of things they want to key off of and obsess about is different. --- ### [Make Your Pricing And Process A Filter](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8ff1f8d1-824f-4878-9199-bfd90899da79) 🎧 30:57 - 31:59 (01:02) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/163a6af9-f7a9-486b-b920-eafc8927fb83" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Use your business model and pricing to signal fit and attract the right clients. - Example: a Laravel firm that refuses meetings and sells by subscription attracts heads-down buyers and builds a waiting list. #### 💬 Quote > Swipe your credit card and we start working on the issues that you put in our tracker, period. No phone calls ever. No meetings of any kind. > — Jonathan Stark Jonathan Stark describing a meeting-free Laravel firm's model #### 📚 Transcript **Jonathan Stark:** So instead of it being hourly or instead of it being project-based, it's just like, look, swipe your credit card and we start working on the issues that you put in our tracker, period. The end of the month, you're going to be glad with how much stuff got done. No phone calls ever. No meetings of any kind. And that's just the deal. And like, that's the way we want to work. We just want to be heads down, do the work. And they're like oversubscribed. Like they have a waiting list. It's massively different in terms of the amount, the level of convenience for the buyer. Some people probably be, I know this for a fact, people are, certain people are completely turned off by the idea of not being able to have meetings, jump on the phone. Can we just have a quick call? So, but they don't care. They're like, that's, that's, you're just, that's fine. I can introduce you to someone who's happy to jump on a phone call with you, but we don't do that. Yeah, **Jason Cohen:** that's a example of pricing or the business model, you might say, in general. Absolutely can be a differentiator, no doubt about it. And of course, like you said, there's some clients who will never do that because I want to call. Okay, then they're not a client. --- ### [Say No Publicly To Convert Better Clients](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5fbf2df9-48f5-4110-8415-cb727792acb3) 🎧 34:00 - 36:06 (02:06) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/59a55ba3-9f32-480f-a122-d2403f49864f" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Publicly close doors by being specific about who you serve; that specificity repels some but attracts many more ideal customers. - Jason stresses asymmetric benefit: clarity converts the bullseye and many near-bullseye clients who accept tradeoffs. #### 💬 Quote > You're worried that if you speak to that ideal customer, you're going to turn off literally everyone else... But what actually happens is... because you were specific and you communicate that, you will win those ideal customers. > — Jason Cohen Jason Cohen on the power of narrowing your message #### 📚 Transcript **Jonathan Stark:** talk to who who it's it's the kind of thing that like once you get it it's so obvious but before you get it it feels like you're cutting your own throat yes because all you can do is **Jason Cohen:** think about um the people that you're turning away yeah and you're not imagining the fact that how many people are already hitting your home page and leaving because you're not saying anything and how many of those could have said whoa this is a breath of breath of fresh air and how many conversions you could have gotten on that. And they're not thinking about that. They're only thinking about who's going to turn away. But what I find is two things. One is the amount, while some people get turned away, the amount that other people enjoy it is not equal. It's way more. In other words, it's 10x better for someone to go, oh my gosh, of course I'm in Portugal and I want to hire someone who speaks Portuguese. That's awesome. That's like 10x more than the person who's like, oh, I don't understand this. I'm leaving. So it's an asymmetric benefit. And the other thing is, setting language aside, because that might be a complete barrier. Another thing is you'll have maybe five or 10 of these facets of these special things that you are. And the ideal customer that we could define would be the one who every one of your facets, they're like, perfect, that's what I want. And whatever else your weaknesses and other crap, they're like, no, screw that. I don't even want that. That would be your ideal, right? And you're worried that if you speak to that ideal customer, you're going to turn off literally everyone else and that's almost everyone. But what actually happens is this, because you had this ideal customer in mind that you're speaking to, you're clear and differentiated. Because of that, you will win those ideal customers. First of all, that's good because before they didn't understand that and they left and now they won't leave. But also there's so many people, a few rungs out of the bullseye. Okay. They're not perfect. They wish you had one other employee, but you don't, but you know what? Everything else is so good. I'll do it anyway. Right. Right. So there's this, and that there's like 10 or even a hundred times more people like that than there are in this perfect bullseye center. --- ### [Hidden Multipliers Targeted At $2M Bootstrapped SaaS](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6e0c636c-9130-4347-b745-f021c46f1227) 🎧 39:11 - 39:57 (00:45) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/57f0a65d-19e8-45bd-9dd1-9f46730314b4" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - The book's ideal reader is a bootstrapped SaaS at about $2M ARR with slowed growth looking for pragmatic ways to restart momentum. - Jason designed chapters on customer analysis, cancellations, and strategy to target that ICP while still helping adjacent audiences. #### 💬 Quote > The ideal customer profile that I had in mind writing the book was a bootstrapped SaaS software company at 2 million in revenue where growth has slowed. > — Jason Cohen Jason Cohen describing the book's ideal customer profile #### 📚 Transcript **Jason Cohen:** The ideal customer profile that I had in mind writing the book was a bootstrapped SaaS software company at 2 million in revenue where growth has slowed and they're going, damn it, what do I do to restart growth? Because I obviously have a product that works and customers that generally like it. What the hell? I have 10 things that I could do. I don't know which ones to do. And also the right answer may not even be on that list. What the heck do I do? That is my ICP. So what does that mean? It means, okay, so if I'm at 1 million, is it still relevant? Yeah, obviously. Right. That's obviously close enough of the bullseye that it's relevant. What if I raised money and I'm at 2 million ARR? Yeah, of course it's still useful, right? Because if growth slowed, growth slowed, who cares if you're raising money or not? Like you need to get at, you need to do something about this. --- ### [Systems Of Record Are Safer From AI Disruption](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4f9615d9-37a9-4b14-8357-547e7e8ad9a7) 🎧 42:00 - 44:46 (02:46) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/02ae20f0-4f61-4089-821e-af36fde11a25" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - AI will disrupt some product categories but protects systems of record because data must live in a definitive place. - Jason: accounting, CRM, version control remain systems of record where AI augments but doesn't replace the core platform. #### 💬 Quote > Systems of record are often what a saas product is... Has AI disrupted GitHub? Nope, because the code has to go somewhere. > — Jason Cohen Jason Cohen on AI's limits for systems of record #### 📚 Transcript **Jason Cohen:** so so first of all you always have to check the source and you I know theoretically we evaluate the message and not the speaker. And we should. On the other hand, when the speaker has a motive to make a certain case, then that doesn't mean we throw out what they say. It just means we have to remember that they have a reason to make that case. And so maybe that's putting the on the scale a little bit. So yeah, like just like you're saying how many sass products have you canceled because now you do it yourself with ai and even someone who's deeply into ai is like maybe one like maybe i switched from some note-taking thing to obsidian because it's easier for ai and like that's it um or like maybe you stopped using notion but that's because notion sucks now like the quality, it's not because AI, like in fact, Notion should be a perfect platform for AI. It's got all the right kind of markup and it has fancy stuff and you can kind of mesh the human with the AI. It's actually perfect for AI, but it doesn't work well anymore because they forgot to keep working on the product and that's why. So yeah, like in fact, even public SaaS companies, of course that's not who's listening here but if we're just talking about sort of the wider what's wider satinette google is talking about you know the other big sass companies right not not little companies um the all their metrics are good like their valuations are down because wall street's not valuing them as high because of this rhetoric and other reasons but like hubspot stock went down yeah but they grew profit and revenue at over two billion dollars a year and they're still growing 30 percent like it's insane like their metrics are amazingly good so there's nothing wrong with sass **Jonathan Stark:** like **Jason Cohen:** even at that scale there's nothing wrong with it so i do think you can you have to start analyzing like well what is the stuff that ai is disrupting or could disrupt um systems of record are often what a sas product is in other words my accounting is in a sas product my my finances are in a sas product my sales data is in a crm my support team is using a product My version control is in GitHub. Has AI disrupted GitHub? Nope, because the code has to go somewhere. It doesn't make sense for LLMs to disrupt where the code goes. So the systems of record, which is generally what that means, where do I put the official data? Not only is AI not disrupting it, you don't want LLMs to just guess around the data that needs to be crisp. You want you want them to use access it, maybe read and write it and all this kind of stuff. But don't want them. You know, it is not the system of record. So anything that's a system of record is safe. Now, I say safe. You can't look out 10 years and tell me anything or even two years, I think. So all this conversation is about what's going on in sort of the immediate future. No one knows what's coming. --- ### [AI Makes Experts More Productive Not Redundant](https://share.snipd.com/snip/732b6e22-1713-48b1-89d2-852c6da73fb8) 🎧 49:55 - 51:16 (01:21) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/8b735877-5752-47a7-bba3-31628d966ecc" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - AI amplifies experts rather than fully replacing them because LLMs still produce mistakes and need expert judgment. - Jason: experts fix, direct, or re-prompt LLM outputs; non-experts may not spot errors and will produce poor product-level results. #### 💬 Quote > When it's wrong you fix it either you fix it or you make it fix it whatever because you know that it's wrong... if you're not that person... you don't even know. > — Jason Cohen Jason Cohen on why expertise remains essential with LLMs #### 📚 Transcript **Jason Cohen:** why it doesn't work. Because LLMs don't work that well yet. And so what happens is it has these strokes of genius where you're like, I can't believe that happened. And you're right. And it's like incredibly dumb the next second now what do you do with that well if you're an expert if you're a great writer great coder great designer then what you do with that is when the llms have helped you're like yes i saved time or i'm just going to tell it to do this a little differently that a little differently okay great um and when it's wrong you fix it either you fix it or you make it fix it whatever because you know that it's wrong or at least not what you want let's say in case of design wrong is maybe the wrong word but okay it's not what you wanted so it's a it's a tool and and you use it right that's why it works for you but if you're not that person and so you don't have those skills you don't have that judgment you don't have that ability then when it does it not right, you don't even know. And then you proceed. And you get something that's like incredible compared to what you could have gotten five years ago, no doubt about that. But that's not good enough for things like a product that actually works and people like. And as a consultant, that's bad output, right? It's not good output. So because LLMs are miraculous and also not very good, that's why that works. --- ### [Jason Writes To Think And For Personal Craft](https://share.snipd.com/snip/90cc8230-b26e-4fc9-9387-88dd20125289) 🎧 01:01:03 - 01:03:35 (02:31) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/b1c0a50c-ccc9-450c-b9c4-e40d0eb577f1" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Jason writes to think and often drafts pieces he never publishes to clarify his own thinking. - He wrote Hidden Multipliers for himself too, spending over a year crafting what he considers his best work regardless of scale. #### 💬 Quote > I had to take my best ideas and new ideas I hadn't written about before and write them up in this way... I wanted to make my best work that I've ever made, regardless of whether anyone read it. > — Jason Cohen Jason Cohen on why he wrote Hidden Multipliers #### 📚 Transcript **Jason Cohen:** Of course, I writing but way before wp engine anyway so no um it's a combination of a of a truly um internal drive and a sort of ego egotistical external validation drive so i really do write to think and to figure out things and i like trying to figure out really great ways of explaining something or working through something. And it helps me learn it and helps me understand it and figure out what I think about things. I have a huge pile of drafts of stuff that just aren't good enough because I realize I'm not, I'm not so clear on this. I don't know what I think about this yet. Or I wrote it out and like now i'm not even sure i agree with myself um yeah or um but on the other hand there's things where like we tried this thing at wp engine it was okay then we iterated on it and after 10 teams try this workflow we've got a workflow that works pretty well for us now i'm going to publish that and that's pretty darn good and i like that i have like a record of that or something you know that um that doesn't mean it'll automatically work for other people by the way in, I'm a big proponent of the idea that frameworks often don't work for another group, even if they work super well for one group, I think it's cultural and how they work and attitudes and stuff like that. We're just not fitting the work style, that sort of thing. So even though something might be perfect at WPN, like objectively the perfect, the most perfect way, you know, even if we agree, that might only work for like 15% of other companies, you And I don't even know if I know when would it work or not, because I don't have, you know, I don't know. I didn't try it a hundred times and try to find out. So I just think that's how frameworks are. So that's okay. You know, you just, you try them on like clothes and see if you can find one that, because a lot of frameworks are just are fine, you know, but you try on which one's going to work for you, I think, including my own, I would say that. Anyway, so, but you're saying about writing. So, so the writing is my way of doing a lot of that. And I have written things I've never published. And that kind of goes to show that I'm writing it for me because I write things that I don't use for other, you know, I don't know, to get attention or something. Or like this book I just wrote, the reason I say I'm not here to sell it, like, of course I want people to buy it and read it, duh. But I knew that if 10 people read it only, I was going to write this book anyway because I had to do it. I had to take my best ideas and new ideas I hadn't written about before and write them up in this way. I just had to. It took over a year and I poured so much energy into it. I read the article, audio book myself with a producer and all this kind of stuff. --- Created with [Snipd](https://www.snipd.com) | Highlight & Take Notes from Podcasts