I asked 45 practical software founders how they’re thinking about AI. Not one of them is panicked and stuck.
These bootstrapped SaaS founders see it as a huge opportunity for their businesses, with the usual pile of challenges and risks.
These are the founders I work with every month in my Practical Founders Peer Groups.
We talk about AI changes, and they share their wins, challenges, and fears every month.
And they are moving forward faster now with practical AI, after a lot of learning and continual experimenting:
- Coding, testing, and shipping products faster to deliver more value to their clients.
- Doing much more with less inside their businesses, in every function. They can see growth accelerating and hiring slowing, and most are already doing it.
- They are vibe coding prototypes to be crystal clear with customers and engineers what is going to be built. This is huge, especially since customers and engineers were never really clear about it.
- They are learning deep topics faster, including how to us AI. They are spending less on lawyers, consultants, M&A advisors, books, and expensive experts. They can learn complex topics faster, with deep context about their situations.
- And the agents are coming–inside their businesses and in their products.
None of this is easy, simple, or fast. It’s messy and takes a lot of trial and error.
And there aren’t standard AI playbooks for their products in their markets.
They have to figure out their own custom executions–that can change next quarter.
But when they find manageable leverage with AI, they can decide and act quickly, unlike most big companies.
They don’t have to ask investors for permission — or be pushed to do stupid things.
AI poses real risks for many established software companies. Especially the big, overpriced, overfunded, overvalued, and overstaffed software companies where the founder has left the building.
These practical founders also have a healthy dose of realism, concern, and skepticism about the media headlines and the pace of change in AI.
This could go either way, so why not make it go well for you and your business? Why not choose “Let’s use this to our advantage!?”
Experienced software founders are more optimistic than most people–and more realistic at the same time.
It’s an interesting paradox that works for these founders right now, in early 2026.
