What do active and practical growth equity firms think is the minimum required playbook for AI-forward software development in mid-2026? Not hype, not naive, not behind the times.
Just the practical stuff that works across their portfolios (and future investments) that drives real leverage — growth, profit, and returns.
Nick Olsen is the Head of AI Innovation at Mainsail Partners, where he works hands-on with 25 scaling vertical SaaS companies in the firm’s portfolio, helping them adopt AI across engineering and product.
Before joining Mainsail, Nick spent 20 years helping build ResMan from a 3-person startup into a scaled software company serving the multifamily property management market.
Today, Nick leads a team of engineers who embed directly inside portfolio companies to build AI systems alongside their teams.
They don’t just advise from the sidelines—they commit code, ship features, and help technical leaders redesign how modern software organizations operate.
On the Practical Founders podcast this week, Nick laid out the new baseline requirements for practical SaaS engineering and product teams that he sees as the minimum expectations for a serious vertical SaaS company right now.
The winners won’t just write code faster. They’ll build better products, make better decisions, and deliver dramatically more customer value with AI-native teams.
“We are well past any point of skepticism or any engineer that says, Hey, this AI thing isn’t gonna be here forever, or this isn’t my thing. Engineers should no longer start in the traditional code editor, the IDE. Engineering has moved to a much more agentic approach, where you’re starting in the terminal or some sort of Claude Code or Codex app.
“How we’re building software has completely and radically shifted. Companies are starting to move past treating AI as a tool. They’re starting to treat AI as the way that they actually operate. It’s not a tool like Excel is used for a financial analysis, but that’s actually where I start.
“We’re trying to help people transition to treat AI as an actual teammate and actually affect change within their organization. And that’s from the product and management side as well as to the engineering side.“
Beyond the hype, Nick shared some very practical baselines for serious software product and engineering teams in mid-2026.
– Product, design, and engineering are moving closer together as AI removes slow handoffs and bottlenecks.
– Shipping 3x more features doesn’t matter if customers don’t want them. Outcome beats output.
– AI makes building cheaper and faster. Strategic product judgment becomes more valuable, not less.
– Customers may increasingly stop logging into SaaS apps and interact through agents instead.
Check out this detailed interview with Nick Olsen on the Practical Founders Podcast.
