Detailed Notes
How do you start adapting your business to AI as productivity accelerates and entire industries shift?
In Part 2 of our interview with Hunter Jensen, CEO of Barefoot Solutions and Barefoot Labs, we dig into the next 1–3 years of AI-driven transformation.
Hunter explains the reality of rising productivity, the coming surplus of knowledge workers, the collapse of hourly billing models, and why data—not ideas—is the new competitive advantage.
If you’re a business owner, entrepreneur, developer, or leader trying to understand where AI is taking your industry, this episode is a must-watch.
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🔍 Topics Covered • Back-office AI wins and what’s coming next • How AI accelerates the actual work your company does • The rise of surplus knowledge workers • Why you must rethink hourly billing • How to redirect excess capacity into innovation • Breaking the myth of first mover advantage • Why proprietary data is the ultimate moat • How developers and students can stay relevant • Moving fast with AI product development • Real-world examples, insights, and action steps
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⏱️ Chapters
00:00 – Intro 00:40 – The realistic 1–3 year AI timeline 02:00 – Back office wins and early ROI 03:30 – When AI accelerates your core business 05:10 – Productivity surges and surplus talent 07:00 – Rethinking hourly billing models 09:20 – From services to product-building 11:00 – Innovating instead of cutting staff 13:40 – Advice for young developers 16:10 – Finding innovation opportunities 18:30 – Why first mover advantage is dead 20:40 – The new competitive moat: data 23:00 – Using decades of company data 24:30 – AI-created opportunities across industries 26:10 – Hunter’s direct contact info 27:00 – Closing thoughts
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⭐ About Hunter Jensen https://www.linkedin.com/in/hunterjensen/ Founder & CEO of Barefoot Solutions and Barefoot Labs, specializing in secure internal AI systems, data-driven automation, and business model transformation.
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📢 Connect With Us
Website: https://Develpreneur.com Podcast: Building Better Developers Hosted by Rob Broadhead & Michael Meloche
Transcript Text
Well, hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season of building better foundations but we are building better developers as well. We are also developer. We are so many things to so many people. I am one person though. I am Rob Broadhead one of the founders of developer. Also the founder of R&B consulting where we are a technology firm that allows you helps you assess your technology and build a roadmap for success. Good thing bad thing. Good thing is uh my schedule is getting just full. I got so much stuff going on, so many things out there with like been networking and we're doing interviews and being a guest on stuff. Uh check out rb-sns.com.php and you can see all the different places the other podcasts that I have been on. Uh along with this, there's some great conversations out there. Lots of them are AI related. Very much like the guy we're going to talk to in another minute here was we're getting into part two of our interview with Hunter Jensen. Uh, bad thing is is my schedule is stinking full. It is hard to like breathe basically these days. But I'm gonna take a breath now while Michael introduces himself. Hey everyone, my name is Michael Malash. I'm one of the co-founders of developer, building better developers. I'm also the founder of Envision QA where we help businesses build reliable software through custom development and expert testing. Uh, good thing bad thing. Uh, bad thing it's kind of slashgood thing been extremely busy lately. Uh, good thing I've actually started dusting off my test generation tool again and getting that kind of modernized and maybe even dabbling with a little AI. >> That's that's always a good thing. It's amazing how much it's bonus uh tip out there is that if you've got an old application, run it through AI. It is amazing how quickly you can get things like updated and dusted off and make it look all modern and stuff like that. Don't let your head explode while you do so though. Uh we will dive right in because this has been first part one was great. Hopefully you caught it. If not, pause, go listen to the prior episode. And now we're going to step into part two of our discussion with Hunter Jensen. So where do you see um in the next I don't know the next five years maybe? Because I know it's like you get beyond that and it's going to get who knows where things are going to be. who if we went back five years with any of these like projections or be like oh I would have I don't think too many people would say yeah this is where we're going to be um what do you see like the biggest or maybe the biggest three depending on how it work you look at it but like benefits of AI to business how it may a changing business I think may be a little bit of a stretch but like where businesses are going to really find their most value in it I guess is you know keep it a little more realistic. >> Yeah. So, I'm going to shorten that timeline. 5 years gets science fiction for me. Um, and so, but like in the next 1, two, 3 years, let's say. Um, okay. So, what are we seeing right now? Right now, we're seeing um a lot of like what I would call kind of value in kind of back office stuff. the kinds of things that every company at once you get to a certain size does you know your your HR your accounting your uh research your what have you um we're already seeing a return on investment in those types of things right but what comes next is the thing that you actually do right like what what you do as a company like if you're a cyber security company, you know, your ability to create an HR bot that can answer, you know, whether or not Sally's dental coverage includes Invisalign, like you could do that today, but where it's still kind of very new is using it to using AI to actually help you perform cyber security services. You know what I mean? >> And so that comes next. That's the year two, year three part where the actual thing that you do will be uh greatly accelerated and and and so but you know so get out to 3 years and here's what I see. I see a massive increase in the productivity of your team. They can do 5x what they used to be able to do with the same amount of time. And that leads to a surplus and of of of work hours. I've already I'm already seeing this. It like it it's software development. It happened to software development first because everybody building LLMs are software developers and they're like, "Oh, it should write code. Isn't that neat?" But we can write the same amount of code in a fraction of the time with the same amount of people. Now, what am I going to do with all these developers if I don't have client work? If I don't have code that needs to be written, right, I have a surplus. And you know, that's going to happen to a lot of other industries and it's rolling out depending on what industry you are. But if you have a bunch of, you know, junior analysts, let's say, you know, it's going to happen to th them as well. You're going to have more analysts than you need. Think about I mean professional services is actually I think you know like law as an example it's gonna it's happening like next year you know I'm already seeing you know clients of law firms apply pressure saying hey I know that this doesn't take you as long as it used to and I want to see that reflected in my billing right but what does that mean for the attorneys do they have enough clients where they can stay busy even though they can do things in half the time or a quarter of the time and all the rest of it so as a business if you're trying to think out. You need to think what am I going to do with the surplus of knowledge workers uh when the tools kind of catch up to my industry? And my answer to that is not layoffs. Layoffs are not a growth strategy. You have a good team. You worked really hard to find good people. Um and the answer is actually you have to innovate. You have to innovate. You have to skate to where the puck is going, right? The old Gretzky uh saying like um and if you don't, you're you're going to be in trouble because like the status quo like I ran I I Barefoot Solutions, custom software development company, right? Run it for 20 years. My business model has been basically the same. I sell, you know, design and software engineering services. as I build by the hour. That doesn't work anymore. That model, it's not it's not going to make it uh much longer. And so what do I do? I have to innovate. So what did I do? I said, we're shifting to becoming a product company, right? We're building Compass and we're going to take that surplus coders and have them build this product so that we can go to market with it. And so after 20 years of having the same business model, sure the technology changed, right? It was web and then mobile and then IoT and then blockchain and then machine learning and all that, but the model the business model stayed the same. That's how drastic of a change this is is that I had to completely rethink the business model. And I think, you know, to go back to the attorneys, they need to completely rethink their business model. If you're providing professional services and you build by the hour, you like this train is coming for you, right? And you need to innovate. You need to maybe change how you bill, right? Value based pricing versus hourly pricing. Like there are solutions here, but you cannot uh maintain what has worked for you for a very long time. What has worked for attorneys for like you know millenn? Yeah, I think this may be the thing that finally kills the you know the old way back now I guess 56 years old the mythical man month uh kind of approach of like which is software development is is just full of it where it's like you know it's always so about hours that you know x number of lines of code that being generated per hour and all that kind of stuff is that it really is I think going to break it because uh same thing sitting in a in an industry in a in a you know where you're serviceoriented like this but it's based really on hours to generate an application or to generate code. The the pricing models are out, you know, are completely out the window at this point because like what you what you did 6 months ago that took you eight hours and you know, okay, this is what it's going to take me to do this. the estimates are now going to be completely, you know, trash basically because you're going to have to reset it and figure out, okay, what does it what does it take for me to actually build this now with this influx of tools and especially since it feels like u a moving target because we're getting better and better versions of this very quickly. Yeah, that what we could do. I'm seeing even six months ago there's an improvement in productivity, you know, today versus in such a short period of time. So, um, is there a and since you're in the middle of it, what are your thoughts on like how do you what are if you're in that industry where you're service and you're needing to go from hourbased to product based. Do you have any recommendations for somebody out there that's sort of struggling with that? >> Yeah, I mean it's a hard thing. You know, I make it I'm saying, oh, innovate, you know, how do you do that? Right. Um but there are some there are some options out there. Um one is like can you become just a factory? Is there enough demand out there for you to just crank out whatever it is whatever product or service that you have? Right? like you know the printing press gets invented and so let's start printing millions and millions of books right there was a market for that and so there are some companies where that strategy will work like let's just scale with this technology but there are a lot of companies that don't have the market for that I can't just go out and get 100x more software development clients that's not like realistic. And so, you know, that's when I started thinking, okay, well, maybe we need to kind of build a product that services some of the needs that this new technology is bringing about, right? But, you know, across a lot of different industries, there's opportunities. I mean, you know, I was talking to a guy that runs an investment bank, right? uh you know they create these like 50 60page deal memos and now they can do them you know in a tenth of the time uh that it used to take and you know they can't become a factory there's only so many you know acquisition deals that they can they can get um but can they build the tools and sell those tools like can you take a pick picks and shovels approach to this right that that they built internally that make it only take 10% of the time to build this stuff out like can you do that? That might be an option as well, right? But you really need to be rethink you know what your industry is going to look like in the next 3 years and try to find a path to not only not just you know surviving but actually like massive disruption is a massive opportunity. If you can find the right position, you can be scared or you can be entrepreneurial about it, right? Find the opportunity and go after that. Um, but again, what you can't do is have a wait and see approach the time. It's already happening. Software development is like the canary in the coal mine. It's coming for other industries, too. Uh, we were just the first. So with that, um, for those of us, you know, entrepreneurs, developers that are out there that are not necessarily have our own businesses or starting our own business, what are some of the things that you would recommend that we start doing now to prepare ourselves for this? Because I see kind of a two things happening in the industry. one um kind of the newer midlevel developers are out there. They're using AI but they're losing like the critical thinking skills. And so as I'm trying to grow my business, trying to find the right people that can manage both of these and kind of scale, it's getting harder because they can only use one tool or the other. They're not uh we're going to lose that skill set. Um, and then the other thing is, you know, as I'm looking to innovate and kind of grow like uh different directions, what are some like tips or techniques or things I can look at to kind of give me some ideas and suggestions to grow to find this innovation? >> Yeah. Um, so for the for the younger folks, um, I can't I mean, I've talked to a good number of of folks coming out of school with a computer science degree right now, and I'm sorry. I'm sorry about the timing. When you started that program and decided to spend that money, it was one of the safest things you could have possibly done. the the prospects for you know recent computer science graduates were incredible and then four years later and it's a totally different ballgame and so you know what I suggest is that you really need to focus on your your literacy like as a company your AI literacy is what I mean as a company what do I need I need folks that can come in and use their critical thinking skills to evaluate all this new technology and to teach the old farts how to use it, right? You know the So, so again, be entrepreneurial. Where's your value? The value of a very junior software developer, it's not there's not a lot. It's not a lot there right now. on and I again it's really bad timing for these young folks but where can you be valuable is come in and say well I've been using these tools for years I'm an expert at them I can teach you and the rest of our team how to do it I can be part of the you know the tip of the sword in you know implementing new technology like I I know a lot of companies right now that did their like summer interns that's all they did they just came in their big summer internship ship project was figure out how to deploy AI at this organization, right? Um and so to the second part of that question which was well okay as a business owner or you know or or even just someone starting out like how do I find the innovation like where where do I look and this to me has not changed as an entrepreneur where do you look for opportunity you talk you talk to people you learn about their problems and you think about whether or not you can solve them. Where did I come up with Compass, my innovation? I was having a beer with a buddy. He's a patent attorney. He said, "Man, I wish I could use Chat GPT for my job, but I can't." And I said, "Why?" and he said, "Well, you know, I've got very confidential technology designs sitting on my desk that I can't even with a protective license, there's no way they would allow me to to use something like that." I said, "Oh, well, that's interesting. How, you know, how much time do you think it could save you?" Uh, about eight hours a week, probably right now. Eight hours a week. How many attorneys are your firm? 800. What's the average billable rate? $500 an hour. Okay. So, if we were able to save eight hours a week for 800 attorneys at an average billable rate of $500 an hour, we're talking about over hund00 million in annual net like value creation there. That's incredible. Let's build that. Right? And so that's what I did. I I heard a problem and I I saw it. I converted it into an opportunity and we went we went and we built Compass and that law firm is our was our first customer. Um and and so you know it it really is a fundamental thing of of and it's it should be innate if you're an entrepreneur is just looking for opportunities looking for problems and opportunities. uh you know they say it's always better to be a a pain pill than a vitamin right look for problems that you think this new technology can solve uh and go after them and go quick because the old SAS playbook like the lean startup all that doesn't work anymore that's broken too and the reason is that that model used to be you go out you raise a million dollars you put your head down you spend9 to 12 months building your product and you're in stealth mode and then you come out and tada here's our product and nobody has anything like this and you have a competitive advantage that we call the first mover advantage right doesn't take a million dollars anymore and it doesn't take 9 to 12 months anymore it only takes a few months so that you know is not going to work moving forward and the VCs already know that and you can see that by the the shift in strategy and who and what they're investing in right now and So, you know, you need to take a different approach to find a problem and quickly develop a solution and bring it to market. >> Nice. All right. So, back to the kind of the students ideas because I I I kind of want to piggyback on what you just wrapped up there. So those of us or those coming out of school with the some idea of how to use AI using APIs and things of that nature, what would be a kind of a stepping stone like how would you encourage them to start getting or using AI for products to actually start building solutions with AI besides just the usual um you know chat you know the uh chat bots. Yeah, I mean so you can communicate with these large language models via API. Uh you just need to get the right licenses and and the right models and all the rest of it. Um, and what I would encourage as a stepping stone is build build a proof of concept of something of some problem that you've been able to identify. Um, and the best way to learn is especially for engineers is by doing in my opinion. Um, and so build something, anything, you know, find someone at some company and say, "What would it be helpful if you if you had a piece of software? What like what what what would it do? How can I make your day easier?" They say, "Oh, well, if if I had something that could do this, that would be really helpful for me." Build it. Build that. And and and you're going to learn so much. And that might not be the groundbreaking thing that you build a whole company around or what have you, but you're going to learn how it all works in the real world. And you're going to have a really great proof of concept that you can show people. Say, "Look what I can do. Wouldn't it be helpful to have somebody like me on your team? What could I do for you? Because I know how to do this." Right? You don't need a big engineering team of people writing code all day anymore for most not everything but for a lot of things like what what could I build for you? I think that would be a nice way to kind of you know demonstrate value to organizations. If your job if your goal is to get a job then then that that's a path to doing that. uh or if you want to evaluate a particular product to start a business around it, you you don't need a ton of money and a ton of engineers anymore. You used to, but you don't. Go build your proof of concept. Figure it out. There's a there's a vibe code stack out there that can I mean what it can accomplish is just absolutely incredible. So, do you see this um because you mentioned a little bit does do you see this really I guess for lack of a better term breaking the first mover advantage that we've seen in the past because it seems like this is going to be um on steroids what we saw in the past where there would be you know you'd get a knockoff that would be turned on turned around in you know hours after sometimes you know Microsoft spend millions of dollars on Microsoft Word or billions whatever it was and then you'd have a knockoff you know word with a Q at the end or something like that that was turned around very quickly. You think that's going to do you see that being something that we're going to have to as from a business or an entrepreneurial point of view really change how we think of getting a product out to market? >> I'll give you an example. I call this the weekend problem. Uh this was 2023 diffusion models just just come out like that were any good. Um, and I needed a new headsh shot for my LinkedIn cuz I didn't have my beard in my headshot and people weren't recognizing me because I have my beard now. So, what I used to do is I would hire a headshot photographer. I'd go to their studio, I'd put my suit on, I'd pay 200 bucks and it'd be like the most painful hour of my life. And then I'd get my head shot and I'd put one on LinkedIn. That's what I would have done five years ago. And I've done that, right? And I said, "I wonder what AI can do." And I found this website called instahadshots.com. And I took a bunch of selfies with my iPhone. I was just in a t-shirt. I didn't have any fancy clothes on. And I uploaded them into this site. I paid $20. And I got an excellent LinkedIn headsh shot that looked exactly like me. Um, according to my wife, like she was like, "This is you. I I don't see how this is not you. Um, and I thought my entrepreneurial brain thought, what a neat business, but then I thought, well, I could build that like over the weekend. And then I realized, oh, anybody could build that over the weekend, >> right? Mhm. >> Fast forward one month, there's 50 of these and half of them are free because first mover doesn't matter anymore. That's amazing technology 3 years ago. Amazing. If you build something that could do that prior to generative AI, you've got a multi multi-million dollar business on your hands. Now you have a weekend project on your hands. First mover advantage is no more. instead. Now, what is an advantage? Proprietary data. If you can get your hands on data that other people can't, you have a competitive mode. If I was starting a brand new startup tomorrow, what would I do? I would look for businesses that have been around for 50, 60, 70 years that aren't doing anything with their data and identify big opportunities of things that we could do with that data. How could we train these new this new form of you know machine learning models, these large language models with this incredibly rich historical data set to do something novel that you can only do if you have that data set? That is the new advantage that I think startups should be focused on is data. Which is funny because this goes back to if he'd asked you know five years ago what is probably going to be the most valuable thing five years from now. I have a feeling data would have been right up there when you know big data has just become more and more valuable. Uh I've I've had customers that are in data sensitive areas like finance and healthcare where that that stuff is gold and it's and companies are starting to figure it out and I think now this may be where some of the tools are like well I've got all this data what can how do I work with it? I'm wondering if this isn't going to be sort of like that next step that says hey now you can build tools super fast to be able to work with that with that data. So now you can actually all that stuff you've been storing, you can actually do something with it instead of just store it, >> right? It was like the general consensus of we're not quite sure what we're going to do with it, but make sure that you keep it. >> Yeah. >> Now we know what like we we have tools to know what to do with it, >> right? And and so I do think that's the next wave here of applications is, you know, being able to interact with your data that you've been collecting for many many years. That's what my product does, right? That's part of it. Uh and so that is that is where I see us kind of were already there. Uh like to me, first mover is dead. It's no longer an advantage. Full stop. >> Yeah. I think you've got like a very minimal window to do anything for a while here with some of these things. I mean, you may have a a really genius idea, but that's only going to last for, like you said, in some cases a weekend or two before somebody else has knocked it out and then they're doing it. They're just under and cutting you because they didn't spend any time. But on the upside, if you didn't really spend any time building it out either, then you can you could keep the price really low and the value proposition changes immensely for your, you know, for your customers that are out there. >> Yep. That's exactly right. >> Well, I want to uh we're running this this again. I I told you in the pre the pre-show there, the pregame that AI would get us going pretty darn quick and that's just sort of uh where it is. There's so many uh it really is it's a fun time. I enjoy all these conversations because there's just so much going on out there. There's so many opportunities and a lot of these things allow you to sort of jump on them sooner rather than later. I don't know how many I've built. I bet I've built a dozen apps in the last two or three weeks just because like, oh, this will help me out. This will help me out. So, pain points are starting to disappear quickly and it's it really frees you up for for the next uh innovative step. Uh but that being said, uh you know, with with your your thoughts and how you guys are doing things, I'm sure our audience be interested and particularly if they've got, you know, questions or they've got somebody like, "Hey, this sounds like the perfect product for me." What's the best way for them to get a hold of you? Yeah. Um, so as a as a thank you uh to you Rob and Michael uh for having me on the show, I I want the listeners to know you can get a hold of me at hunterbearfootlabs.ai AI and if you say in the opening line, I heard you on building better developers, I promise that I will respond to you. I will respond and we can you don't have to be a potential customer. If you just have something you want to talk about, we can talk about it. Uh if you don't say that, I very may easily may not respond to your email because I get a lot of emails. But um you know, mention that you heard me on on build better developers. hit me up at hunterbearfootlabs.ai. Uh, also just check out our website, barefootlabs.ai. I'm also very active on LinkedIn and so you can connect with me there. Uh, but the best way to do it is to send me an email and mention this podcast. >> Excellent. So, we will Yeah, we will have links uh in the show notes for all of that. Um, appreciate your time because it is a a busy time and now more than ever, you know, you probably could have created three applications in the time we've been talking. could have solved some could have solved some of the world's problems. So, uh we we appreciate more than ever the time given to this and for those of you out there that are listening to it. That being said, it is time for us to wrap this one up and our conversations. Uh and we will come back. We have more episodes uh right around the corner. Uh not AI generated. Uh these are we are all real people with real guests and all that kind of good stuff. But we will be back. Uh next episode we will continue with some uh some interviews. Although we do have a little bit of we've got holiday breaks coming up as well with some of our return to some classic episode styles. That being said, go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. Uh, one last thing, hunters, we usually do uh in the the video portion of it is we have like a little bonus thing. So, um I'll just sort of with sort of like a parting shot or something like that. What would be um or keep it simple like what would be one recommendation you would have to someone that's listened to this episode and is like okay I want to I want to do AI I want to do AI better uh what would be a good recommendation from you to to take that first step >> I have two >> what >> um one you know a question I get is how do I how do I stay up to date with what's going on there's a newsletter It's called the rundown AI. It's very good. I read it every morning. Um that will help you understand the landscape. Two, there's a tool. It's called N8N. Learn it. It is uh an automation tool that allows you to create kind of workflows and automations uh that's very low code. That's incredible. It's so powerful. There's so much you can do with it. Um, you know, if you're looking for like a gig on Upwork, be an NAND expert. You could probably pick up some contracts that way. >> I have definitely seen a lot of that. There's been a a rise of NAND stuff there in particular as well. like AI in general is now I bet I I would love to see the numbers across the board, but I bet there's it's got to be 70 80% of the the postings in the last six months have AI somewhere in there and NAN is probably not far behind it. Probably a large large portion of those as well. So uh definitely I second that that uh both of those those recommendations. Well, we will let you get back to your day. Uh thanks so much. Like I said, we'll have links in the show notes. We will also uh send you links to the part one and part two when they become available. Feel free to share them out wherever you would like. And um yeah, other than that, thanks so much, Hunter. And we'll, you know, if you have anything, if there's anything I can do to help you, let me know. Um and we will keep in touch as we get these things released. >> Beautiful. Thank you, guys. Really appreciate this. >> All right. Take care. Bye.
Transcript Segments
Well, hello and welcome back. We are
continuing our season of building better
foundations but we are building better
developers as well. We are also
developer. We are so many things to so
many people. I am one person though. I
am Rob Broadhead one of the founders of
developer. Also the founder of R&B
consulting where we are a technology
firm that allows you helps you assess
your technology and build a roadmap for
success. Good thing bad thing. Good
thing is uh my schedule is getting just
full. I got so much stuff going on, so
many things out there with like been
networking and we're doing interviews
and being a guest on stuff. Uh check out
rb-sns.com.php
and you can see all the different places
the other podcasts that I have been on.
Uh along with this, there's some great
conversations out there. Lots of them
are AI related. Very much like the guy
we're going to talk to in another minute
here was we're getting into part two of
our interview with Hunter Jensen. Uh,
bad thing is is my schedule is stinking
full. It is hard to like breathe
basically these days. But I'm gonna take
a breath now while Michael introduces
himself. Hey everyone, my name is
Michael Malash. I'm one of the
co-founders of developer, building
better developers. I'm also the founder
of Envision QA where we help businesses
build reliable software through custom
development and expert testing. Uh, good
thing bad thing. Uh, bad thing it's kind
of slashgood thing been extremely busy
lately. Uh, good thing I've actually
started dusting off my test generation
tool again and getting that kind of
modernized and maybe even dabbling with
a little AI.
>> That's that's always a good thing. It's
amazing how much it's bonus uh tip out
there is that if you've got an old
application, run it through AI. It is
amazing how quickly you can get things
like updated and dusted off and make it
look all modern and stuff like that.
Don't let your head explode while you do
so though. Uh we will dive right in
because this has been first part one was
great. Hopefully you caught it. If not,
pause, go listen to the prior episode.
And now we're going to step into part
two of our discussion with Hunter
Jensen.
So where do you see um in the next I
don't know the next five years maybe?
Because I know it's like you get beyond
that and it's going to get who knows
where things are going to be. who if we
went back five years with any of these
like projections or be like oh I would
have I don't think too many people would
say yeah this is where we're going to be
um what do you see like the biggest or
maybe the biggest three depending on how
it work you look at it but like benefits
of AI to business how it may a changing
business I think may be a little bit of
a stretch but like where businesses are
going to really find their most value in
it I guess is you know keep it a little
more realistic.
>> Yeah. So, I'm going to shorten that
timeline. 5 years gets science fiction
for me. Um, and so, but like in the next
1, two, 3 years, let's say. Um, okay.
So, what are we seeing right now? Right
now, we're seeing um
a lot of like what I would call kind of
value in kind of back office stuff. the
kinds of things that every company at
once you get to a certain size does
you know your your HR your accounting
your uh research your what have you um
we're already seeing a return on
investment in those types of things
right but what comes next is the thing
that you actually do right like what
what you do as a company like if you're
a cyber security company, you know, your
ability to create an HR bot that can
answer, you know, whether or not Sally's
dental coverage includes Invisalign,
like you could do that today, but where
it's still kind of very new is using it
to using AI to actually help you
perform cyber security services. You
know what I mean?
>> And so that comes next. That's the year
two, year three part where the actual
thing that you do will be uh greatly
accelerated and and and so but you know
so get out to 3 years and here's what I
see. I see a massive increase in the
productivity of your team. They can do
5x what they used to be able to do with
the same amount of time.
And that leads to a surplus
and of of of work hours. I've already
I'm already seeing this. It like it it's
software development. It happened to
software development first because
everybody building LLMs are software
developers and they're like, "Oh, it
should write code. Isn't that neat?" But
we can write the same amount of code in
a fraction of the time with the same
amount of people. Now, what am I going
to do with all these developers if I
don't have client work? If I don't have
code that needs to be written, right, I
have a surplus.
And
you know, that's going to happen to a
lot of other industries and it's rolling
out depending on what industry you are.
But if you have a bunch of, you know,
junior analysts, let's say, you know,
it's going to happen to th them as well.
You're going to have more analysts than
you need. Think about I mean
professional services is actually I
think you know like law as an example
it's gonna it's happening like next year
you know I'm already seeing you know
clients of law firms apply pressure
saying hey I know that this doesn't take
you as long as it used to and I want to
see that reflected in my billing right
but what does that mean for the
attorneys do they have enough clients
where they can stay busy even though
they can do things in half the time or a
quarter of the time and all the rest of
it so as a business if you're trying to
think out. You need to think what am I
going to do with the surplus of
knowledge workers
uh when the tools kind of catch up to my
industry? And my answer to that is not
layoffs. Layoffs are not a growth
strategy. You have a good team. You
worked really hard to find good people.
Um
and the answer is actually you have to
innovate. You have to innovate. You have
to skate to where the puck is going,
right? The old Gretzky uh saying like um
and if you don't, you're you're going to
be in trouble because like the status
quo like I ran I I Barefoot Solutions,
custom software development company,
right? Run it for 20 years. My business
model has been basically the same. I
sell, you know, design and software
engineering services. as I build by the
hour.
That doesn't work anymore. That model,
it's not it's not going to make it uh
much longer. And so what do I do? I have
to innovate. So what did I do? I said,
we're shifting to becoming a product
company, right? We're building Compass
and we're going to take that surplus
coders and have them build this product
so that we can go to market with it. And
so after 20 years of having the same
business model, sure the technology
changed, right? It was web and then
mobile and then IoT and then blockchain
and then machine learning and all that,
but the model the business model stayed
the same. That's how drastic of a change
this is is that I had to completely
rethink the business model. And I think,
you know, to go back to the attorneys,
they need to completely rethink their
business model. If you're providing
professional services and you build by
the hour, you like this train is coming
for you, right? And you need to
innovate. You need to maybe change how
you bill, right? Value based pricing
versus hourly pricing. Like there are
solutions here, but you cannot
uh maintain what has worked for you for
a very long time. What has worked for
attorneys for like you know millenn?
Yeah, I think this may be the thing that
finally kills the you know the old way
back now I guess 56 years old the
mythical man month uh kind of approach
of like which is software development is
is just full of it where it's like you
know it's always so about hours that you
know x number of lines of code that
being generated per hour and all that
kind of stuff is that it really is I
think going to break it because uh same
thing sitting in a in an industry in a
in a you know where you're
serviceoriented like this but it's based
really on hours to generate an
application or to generate code. The the
pricing models are out, you know, are
completely out the window at this point
because like what you what you did 6
months ago that took you eight hours and
you know, okay, this is what it's going
to take me to do this. the estimates are
now going to be completely, you know,
trash basically because you're going to
have to reset it and figure out, okay,
what does it what does it take for me to
actually build this now with this influx
of tools and especially since it feels
like u a moving target because we're
getting better and better versions of
this very quickly. Yeah, that what we
could do. I'm seeing even six months ago
there's an improvement in productivity,
you know, today versus in such a short
period of time. So,
um, is there a and since you're in the
middle of it, what are your thoughts on
like how do you what are if you're in
that industry where you're service and
you're needing to go from hourbased to
product based. Do you have any
recommendations for somebody out there
that's sort of struggling with that?
>> Yeah, I mean it's a hard thing. You
know, I make it I'm saying, oh,
innovate,
you know, how do you do that? Right. Um
but there are some there are some
options out there. Um one is like can
you become just a factory? Is there
enough demand out there for you to just
crank out whatever it is whatever
product or service that you have? Right?
like you know the printing press gets
invented
and so let's start printing millions and
millions of books right there was a
market for that and so there are some
companies where that strategy will work
like let's just scale with this
technology but there are a lot of
companies that don't have the market for
that I can't just go out and get 100x
more software development clients that's
not like realistic. And so, you know,
that's when I started thinking, okay,
well, maybe we need to kind of build a
product that services some of the needs
that this new technology is bringing
about, right? But, you know, across a
lot of different industries, there's
opportunities. I mean, you know, I was
talking to a guy that runs an investment
bank, right?
uh you know they create these like 50
60page deal memos and now they can do
them you know in a tenth of the time uh
that it used to take and you know they
can't become a factory there's only so
many you know acquisition deals that
they can they can get um but can they
build the tools and sell those tools
like can you take a pick picks and
shovels approach to this right that that
they built internally that make it only
take 10% of the time to build this stuff
out like can you do that? That might be
an option as well, right? But you really
need to be rethink you know what your
industry is going to look like in the
next 3 years and try to find a path to
not only not just you know surviving but
actually like massive disruption is a
massive opportunity. If you can find the
right position, you can be scared or you
can be entrepreneurial about it, right?
Find the opportunity and go after that.
Um, but again, what you can't do is have
a wait and see approach the time. It's
already happening. Software development
is like the canary in the coal mine.
It's coming for other industries, too.
Uh, we were just the first.
So with that, um,
for those of us, you know,
entrepreneurs, developers that are out
there that are not necessarily have our
own businesses or starting our own
business,
what are some of the things that you
would recommend that we start doing now
to prepare ourselves for this? Because I
see kind of a two things happening in
the industry. one um kind of the newer
midlevel developers are out there.
They're using AI but they're losing like
the critical thinking skills. And so as
I'm trying to grow my business, trying
to find the right people that can manage
both of these and kind of scale, it's
getting harder because they can only use
one tool or the other. They're not uh
we're going to lose that skill set. Um,
and then the other thing is, you know,
as I'm looking to innovate and kind of
grow like uh different directions, what
are some like tips or techniques or
things I can look at to kind of give me
some ideas and suggestions to grow to
find this innovation?
>> Yeah. Um, so for the for the younger
folks,
um, I can't I mean, I've talked to a
good number of of folks coming out of
school with a computer science degree
right now, and I'm sorry. I'm sorry
about the timing. When you started that
program and decided to spend that money,
it was one of the safest things you
could have possibly done. the the
prospects for you know recent computer
science graduates were incredible and
then four years later and it's a totally
different ballgame and so you know what
I suggest
is that you really need to focus on your
your literacy
like as a company your AI literacy is
what I mean as a company what do I need
I need folks that can come in and use
their critical thinking skills to
evaluate all this new technology and to
teach the old farts how to use it,
right? You know the So, so again, be
entrepreneurial.
Where's your value? The value of a very
junior
software developer,
it's not there's not a lot. It's not a
lot there right now. on and I again it's
really bad timing for these young folks
but where can you be valuable is come in
and say well I've been using these tools
for years I'm an expert at them I can
teach you and the rest of our team how
to do it I can be part of the you know
the tip of the sword in you know
implementing new technology like I I
know a lot of companies right now that
did their like summer interns that's all
they did they just came in their big
summer internship ship project was
figure out how to deploy AI at this
organization, right? Um and so to the
second part of that question which was
well okay as a business owner or you
know or or even just someone starting
out like how do I find
the innovation like where where do I
look and this to me has not changed as
an entrepreneur where do you look for
opportunity
you talk you talk to people you learn
about their problems
and you think about whether or not you
can solve them.
Where did I come up with Compass, my
innovation?
I was having a beer with a buddy. He's a
patent attorney.
He said, "Man, I wish I could use Chat
GPT for my job, but I can't."
And I said, "Why?" and he said, "Well,
you know, I've got very confidential
technology designs sitting on my desk
that I can't even with a protective
license, there's no way they would allow
me to to use something like that." I
said, "Oh, well, that's interesting.
How, you know, how much time do you
think it could save you?"
Uh, about eight hours a week, probably
right now. Eight hours a week. How many
attorneys are your firm? 800. What's the
average billable rate? $500 an hour.
Okay. So, if we were able to save eight
hours a week for 800 attorneys at an
average billable rate of $500 an hour,
we're talking about over hund00 million
in annual net like value creation there.
That's incredible. Let's build that.
Right? And so that's what I did. I I
heard a problem and I I saw it. I
converted it into an opportunity and we
went we went and we built Compass and
that law firm is our was our first
customer. Um and and so you know it it
really is a fundamental thing of of and
it's it should be innate if you're an
entrepreneur is just looking for
opportunities
looking for problems and opportunities.
uh you know they say it's always better
to be a a pain pill than a vitamin right
look for problems that you think this
new technology can solve uh and go after
them and go quick because the old SAS
playbook like the lean startup all that
doesn't work anymore that's broken too
and the reason is that that model used
to be you go out you raise a million
dollars you put your head down you
spend9 to 12 months building your
product and you're in stealth mode and
then you come out and tada here's our
product and nobody has anything like
this and you have a competitive
advantage that we call the first mover
advantage right doesn't take a million
dollars anymore and it doesn't take 9 to
12 months anymore it only takes a few
months so that you know is not going to
work moving forward and the VCs already
know that and you can see that by the
the shift in strategy and who and what
they're investing in right now and So,
you know, you need to take a different
approach to find a problem and quickly
develop a solution and bring it to
market.
>> Nice. All right. So, back to the kind of
the students ideas because I I I kind of
want to piggyback on what you just
wrapped up there. So
those of us or those coming out of
school with the some idea of how to use
AI using APIs and things of that nature,
what would be a kind of a stepping stone
like how would you encourage them to
start getting or using AI for products
to actually start building solutions
with AI besides just the usual um you
know chat you know the uh chat bots.
Yeah, I mean
so you can communicate with these large
language models via API.
Uh you just need to get the right
licenses and and the right models and
all the rest of it.
Um, and what I would encourage as a
stepping stone
is
build build a proof of concept of
something of some problem that you've
been able to identify. Um, and the best
way to learn is especially for engineers
is by doing in my opinion. Um, and so
build something, anything, you know,
find someone at some company and say,
"What would it be helpful if you if you
had a piece of software? What like what
what what would it do? How can I make
your day easier?" They say, "Oh, well,
if if I had something that could do
this, that would be really helpful for
me." Build it. Build that. And and and
you're going to learn so much. And that
might not be the groundbreaking thing
that you build a whole company around or
what have you, but you're going to learn
how it all works in the real world. And
you're going to have a really great
proof of concept that you can show
people. Say, "Look what I can do.
Wouldn't it be helpful to have somebody
like me on your team? What could I do
for you? Because I know how to do this."
Right? You don't need a big engineering
team of people writing code all day
anymore for most not everything but for
a lot of things like what what could I
build for you? I think that would be a
nice way to kind of you know demonstrate
value to organizations. If your job if
your goal is to get a job then then that
that's a path to doing that. uh or if
you want to evaluate a particular
product to start a business around it,
you you don't need a ton of money and a
ton of engineers anymore. You used to,
but you don't. Go build your proof of
concept. Figure it out. There's a
there's a vibe code stack out there that
can I mean what it can accomplish is
just absolutely incredible.
So, do you see this um because you
mentioned a little bit does do you see
this really I guess for lack of a better
term breaking the first mover advantage
that we've seen in the past because it
seems like this is going to be um on
steroids what we saw in the past where
there would be you know you'd get a
knockoff that would be turned on turned
around in you know hours after sometimes
you know Microsoft spend millions of
dollars on Microsoft Word or billions
whatever it was and then you'd have a
knockoff you know word with a Q at the
end or something like that that was
turned around very quickly. You think
that's going to do you see that being
something that we're going to have to as
from a business or an entrepreneurial
point of view really change how we think
of getting a product out to market?
>> I'll give you an example.
I call this the weekend problem. Uh this
was 2023
diffusion models just just come out like
that were any good. Um,
and I needed a new headsh shot for my
LinkedIn cuz I didn't have my beard in
my headshot and people weren't
recognizing me because I have my beard
now. So, what I used to do is I would
hire a headshot photographer. I'd go to
their studio, I'd put my suit on, I'd
pay 200 bucks and it'd be like the most
painful hour of my life. And then I'd
get my head shot and I'd put one on
LinkedIn. That's what I would have done
five years ago. And I've done that,
right?
And I said, "I wonder what AI can do."
And I found this website
called instahadshots.com.
And I took a bunch of selfies with my
iPhone. I was just in a t-shirt. I
didn't have any fancy clothes on. And I
uploaded them into this site. I paid
$20. And I got an excellent LinkedIn
headsh shot that looked exactly like me.
Um, according to my wife, like she was
like, "This is you. I I don't see how
this is not you. Um, and I thought my
entrepreneurial brain thought, what a
neat business,
but then I thought,
well, I could build that like over the
weekend.
And then I realized, oh, anybody could
build that over the weekend,
>> right? Mhm.
>> Fast forward one month, there's 50 of
these and half of them are free because
first mover doesn't matter anymore.
That's amazing technology 3 years ago.
Amazing. If you build something that
could do that prior to generative AI,
you've got a multi multi-million dollar
business on your hands. Now you have a
weekend project on your hands. First
mover advantage is no more. instead.
Now, what is an advantage?
Proprietary data.
If you can get your hands on data that
other people can't, you have a
competitive mode. If I was starting a
brand new startup tomorrow, what would I
do? I would look for businesses that
have been around for 50, 60, 70 years
that aren't doing anything with their
data and identify
big opportunities of things that we
could do with that data.
How could we train these new this new
form of you know machine learning
models, these large language models with
this incredibly rich historical data set
to do something novel that you can only
do if you have that data set?
That is the new advantage that I think
startups should be focused on is data.
Which is funny because this goes back to
if he'd asked you know five years ago
what is probably going to be the most
valuable thing five years from now. I
have a feeling data would have been
right up there when you know big data
has just become more and more valuable.
Uh I've I've had customers that are in
data sensitive areas like finance and
healthcare where that that stuff is gold
and it's and companies are starting to
figure it out and I think now this may
be where some of the tools are like well
I've got all this data what can how do I
work with it? I'm wondering if this
isn't going to be sort of like that next
step that says hey now you can build
tools super fast to be able to work with
that with that data. So now you can
actually all that stuff you've been
storing, you can actually do something
with it instead of just store it,
>> right? It was like the general consensus
of we're not quite sure what we're going
to do with it, but make sure that you
keep it.
>> Yeah.
>> Now we know what like we we have tools
to know what to do with it,
>> right? And and so I do think that's the
next wave here of applications is, you
know, being able to interact with your
data that you've been collecting for
many many years. That's what my product
does, right? That's part of it. Uh and
so that is that is where I see us kind
of were already there. Uh like to me,
first mover is dead. It's no longer an
advantage. Full stop.
>> Yeah. I think you've got like a very
minimal window to do anything for a
while here with some of these things. I
mean, you may have a a really genius
idea, but that's only going to last for,
like you said, in some cases a weekend
or two before somebody else has knocked
it out and then they're doing it.
They're just under and cutting you
because they didn't spend any time. But
on the upside, if you didn't really
spend any time building it out either,
then you can you could keep the price
really low and the value proposition
changes immensely for your, you know,
for your customers that are out there.
>> Yep. That's exactly right.
>> Well, I want to uh we're running this
this again. I I told you in the pre the
pre-show there, the pregame that AI
would get us going pretty darn quick and
that's just sort of uh where it is.
There's so many uh it really is it's a
fun time. I enjoy all these
conversations because there's just so
much going on out there. There's so many
opportunities and a lot of these things
allow you to sort of jump on them sooner
rather than later. I don't know how many
I've built. I bet I've built a dozen
apps in the last two or three weeks just
because like, oh, this will help me out.
This will help me out. So, pain points
are starting to disappear quickly and
it's it really frees you up for for the
next uh innovative step. Uh but that
being said, uh you know, with with your
your thoughts and how you guys are doing
things, I'm sure our audience be
interested and particularly if they've
got, you know, questions or they've got
somebody like, "Hey, this sounds like
the perfect product for me." What's the
best way for them to get a hold of you?
Yeah. Um,
so as a as a thank you uh to you Rob and
Michael uh for having me on the show, I
I want the listeners to know you can get
a hold of me at hunterbearfootlabs.ai
AI and if you say in the opening line, I
heard you on building better developers,
I promise that I will respond to you.
I will respond and we can you don't have
to be a potential customer. If you just
have something you want to talk about,
we can talk about it. Uh if you don't
say that, I very may easily may not
respond to your email because I get a
lot of emails. But um you know, mention
that you heard me on on build better
developers. hit me up at
hunterbearfootlabs.ai.
Uh, also just check out our website,
barefootlabs.ai.
I'm also very active on LinkedIn and so
you can connect with me there. Uh, but
the best way to do it is to send me an
email and mention this podcast.
>> Excellent. So, we will Yeah, we will
have links uh in the show notes for all
of that. Um, appreciate your time
because it is a a busy time and now more
than ever, you know, you probably could
have created three applications in the
time we've been talking. could have
solved some could have solved some of
the world's problems. So, uh we we
appreciate more than ever the time given
to this and for those of you out there
that are listening to it. That being
said, it is time for us to wrap this one
up and our conversations. Uh and we will
come back. We have more episodes uh
right around the corner. Uh not AI
generated. Uh these are we are all real
people with real guests and all that
kind of good stuff. But we will be back.
Uh next episode we will continue with
some uh some interviews. Although we do
have a little bit of we've got holiday
breaks coming up as well with some of
our return to some classic episode
styles. That being said, go out there
and have yourself a great day, a great
week, and we will talk to you next time.
Uh, one last thing, hunters, we usually
do uh in the the video portion of it is
we have like a little bonus thing. So,
um I'll just sort of with sort of like a
parting shot or something like that.
What would be um or keep it simple like
what would be one recommendation you
would have to someone that's listened to
this episode and is like okay I want to
I want to do AI I want to do AI better
uh what would be a good recommendation
from you to to take that first step
>> I have two
>> what
>> um one you know a question I get is how
do I how do I stay up to date with
what's going on there's a newsletter
It's called the rundown AI. It's very
good. I read it every morning. Um that
will help you understand the landscape.
Two, there's a tool. It's called N8N.
Learn it.
It is uh an automation tool that allows
you to create kind of workflows and
automations
uh that's very low code. That's
incredible. It's so powerful. There's so
much you can do with it. Um, you know,
if you're looking for like a gig on
Upwork, be an NAND expert. You could
probably pick up some contracts that
way.
>> I have definitely seen a lot of that.
There's been a a rise of NAND stuff
there in particular as well. like AI in
general is now I bet I I would love to
see the numbers across the board, but I
bet there's it's got to be 70 80% of the
the postings in the last six months have
AI somewhere in there and NAN is
probably not far behind it. Probably a
large large portion of those as well. So
uh definitely I second that that uh both
of those those recommendations. Well, we
will let you get back to your day. Uh
thanks so much. Like I said, we'll have
links in the show notes. We will also uh
send you links to the part one and part
two when they become available. Feel
free to share them out wherever you
would like. And um yeah, other than
that, thanks so much, Hunter. And we'll,
you know, if you have anything, if
there's anything I can do to help you,
let me know. Um and we will keep in
touch as we get these things released.
>> Beautiful. Thank you, guys. Really
appreciate this.
>> All right. Take care. Bye.