KP Unpacked

Vibe Code or Die Trying

• KP Reddy

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Welcome to KP Unpacked , the #1 podcast in AEC.
In this episode, KP Reddy and Jeff Echols unpack a movement that's flipping tech, venture, and entrepreneurship on its head: vibe coding.

What started as a LinkedIn post sparked one of the most active polls in Catalyst history, and it turns out, 73% of this high-performing AEC community is already doing it.

They dive into:

  • Why vibe coding is displacing CRMs (and entire startups)
  • How a skeptical sales exec built a GC-specific CRM in 20 hours
  • What this shift means for tools, venture capital, and the next era of startups
  • Why early adopters will always win, even if it's messy

Plus, KP shares his private equity wine-country story, a bold new startup funding model (no VC required), and how the team might be accidentally launching a hackathon.

📚 Mentioned in this episode:

Sounds like you? Join the waitlist at https://kpreddy.co/

Check out one of our Catalyst conversation starters, AEC Needs More High-Agency Thinkers

Hope to see you there!

Speaker 1:

welcome back to kp unpacked. My name is jeff eckles. I'm the executive director of catalyst here at kp ready co. And, as always for kp unpacked, this version of the podcast, I am joined by kp that seems like a surprise, yeah you know, I think what I should do is I should go to my favorite LLM and say, if I were going to host this podcast, who would show up?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, Maybe maybe it would say KP. That's a little bit of an inside joke. Before we got started, we were talking about a post. Maybe we'll we'll touch on that probably as we go along. We got started we were talking about a post. Maybe we'll touch on that probably as we go along. But this is my opportunity.

Speaker 2:

KP and I record.

Speaker 1:

Every week, we unpack one of his LinkedIn posts, and with the expansion of places where we post, and now the launch of Catalyst, which is our online network, we're starting to pull in other posts in different places. But this is my opportunity every week to say to KP hey, what were you thinking when you posted that on LinkedIn or wherever it is? That's obviously a little bit of tongue in cheek, but what inspired that post? Where were you? What conference, who are you talking to? That made you think, think about that, and why did you post it? And so to me, this is a lot of fun. It's, um the uh, the time where I get to pick KP's brain about what's what's going on around the innovation for the built environment world.

Speaker 2:

You know, jeff? Uh, I just had a divergent thought, right Like if you. That surprises me if you follow me on LinkedIn, why would I try? Cause it's a little bit of effort to get into catalyst, right, it's not, it's free. I won't charge anything. You know they have to apply and there's some scrutiny there, um and then they have to talk to me, talk to you, I mean that's like hazard pay to talk to you and then they get in, right.

Speaker 2:

So it's like what's? I was thinking about this, like what's the difference? Right, with the extra amount of effort, why am I going to join catalyst versus I'll just follow kp on linkedin? And I was thinking about it. One I the reason we. You know people ask like why do you guys go to all this trouble to curate the community? And it's like, well, that's the point, right, that's the point. Yeah, it's to keep out the trolls. It's to keep out the salespeople and the random people that are just self-promoters about something that no one cares about. You know, like Autodesk sales reps. You know we try to keep those guys out. You know, like Autodesk sales reps.

Speaker 1:

You know we try to keep those guys. I see on my calendar that I have a call scheduled with an Autodesk sales rep later today.

Speaker 2:

Hey, ian, be sure to hit up Autodesk for a sponsorship. I make it very difficult to sell sponsors when I give all the big companies a hard time, like kp, they're not going to sponsor anything you're involved with um this episode brought to you brought to you by not autodesk by bentley yeah, exactly, um, but you know, I think I think that's the difference.

Speaker 2:

One is like I don't really comment when people, you know, when I get these like posts, they get, you know, 200 and something reactions and all these comments, if you notice, I don't really comment on them and I think what I do is I end up taking what I posted plus all the commentary and I kind of reframe it and then I post it in the catalyst, right, and then I actually engage. Then I'm like people say, hey, what's this about? I'm like, oh, here's what it's about, right, and I think the podcast is another form of some of those things of extending the conversation. And I think in Catalyst I'm just able to make it much more when I have time, personalized and relevant to the questions that people are asking. And if you notice, like LinkedIn, I never comment, I never respond to comments. It's just too much.

Speaker 1:

Some people are just a bunch of weirdos. Well, so, so those of you that listened to that closely just figured out that my job is to be the gatekeeper and keep the weirdos out. Um, so, I'm going to add that to my LinkedIn profile I keep the weirdos out, but, um, yeah, and the thing about catalyst, too, is, you're, you're exactly right, it's, you know, the what we're working on is building this community to be as large as we can, certainly, but it's a large number of quote, unquote the right people, right, right, and so you know, as, as I'm interviewing all these folks and and KP, kp is being serious, right, you sit down with me for about 20 minutes or so and I tell you about Catalyst, ask you why you're interested in Catalyst and go through that process and one of the things that I think about this community as it is already, and we're already getting a high level of engagement we're going to talk about a poll here in just a minute and, you know, just looking at the percentage of people in the community versus the percentage of people that voted on the poll, as we're recording of this, it's a huge number, it's a huge percentage and I, you know, to me it's really wonderful that, as I look out across the people that I'm talking to and I've done, I don't know, upwards of 80 or so, 75, 80 interviews by now but it's the it's the designers, it's the constructors, it's the developers, it's the owners and operators, it's the funders, it's the founders. There are no silos and they're all focused on innovation for the built environment. That's the way we've been saying it, you know, for for all all time here.

Speaker 1:

But it's the people that are looking at um, aec, cre, built environment, however you, whatever label you want to put at it and saying how can we do this better? How should we do this differently than we do today? How should we do this differently than this? Is the way we've always done it. And that to me, and what you're saying, bringing a different level of engagement. You yourself, kp, the person bringing a different level of engagement to Catalyst. You know that's a good argument too, right, because we throw topics out there and we can have a startup founder and a funder and an engineer and a construction manager and you know whoever joining in the conversation and get all these diverse points of view on any topic that's thrown out there.

Speaker 2:

So but I also think you know and we can refer to the the survey we did. So I basically put a survey out there saying hey, who's out there? Vibe coding Right? And I was like 73, 73% said I am like yes, I am yes.

Speaker 1:

I am right.

Speaker 2:

If we take that same survey and we put it out to AIA, asce and SNPA all the various, I think we would have had 73%. What is vibe coding?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

We do have a biased audience right. We have people that are either at the top of their game doing things, talking about things whether it's ai or vibe coding or whatever or they're at least trying right, and then the other, I think the second category was I'm not, I'd like to learn. It was like the revenue. I think there was like three percent, like no, never, it was. Either I am 73% or the rest were like hey, help me, I want to know how to right, I don't know that if you pulled any subset of AGC or whatever, I don't think I think you'd get a lot of like what is vibe coding?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So understanding that that and I've, I've got the, I've got the poll in front of me and you hit the number right on the head. No, what's vibe coding was was one of the choices, and right now that's at 3%, so that's a really small number. But and also we know that in instances like that, there are plenty of people that are not going to admit that. So, in in a sentence or two, what is vibe coding for those that either identify self-identified or refuse to identify, that they don't know what is?

Speaker 2:

It's. It's kind of funny, right. So vibe coding it's. I forgot who coined it. Someone coined it because people coined things.

Speaker 2:

But, um, I think I think vibe coding is just this idea, right. It's this idea that you don't have to be a programmer, Right, and you can just sit in front of you know, our team uses Cursor Replit I would say Lovable is a good starting point. It's a great starting point. In fact, Airtable now has a code development engine too, so it's becoming pretty prevalent. But the idea is, you're not a coder, You're a subject matter expert and you can prompt these systems with no coding experience required to build stuff. So it's just people building stuff.

Speaker 2:

And so I think what's really cool, Dave on our teamoston. Dave told me the other day, like um, he, he's doing screenshots of products and then feeding that. He's probably gonna be mad. I'm giving away a secret. It's a secret, right. He told me to do a screenshot of an app, of a product he likes, and does screenshots of the product. He puts it into chat g and says create a prompt to create this software. Then he takes that prompt and drops it into Replit or Warp or something and it creates the software. That's pretty wild.

Speaker 2:

Like what I can go into Procore, sorry, Procore, and just screenshot all the screens. Procore, sorry, Procore, and just screenshot all the screens, drop it into ChatGPT and say, hey, create a prompt that describes this screen right, and it does that. And then you drop that and now you have Procore, You're paying $20 a month for Procore.

Speaker 1:

Sorry, ian and Dave KP just ruined another sponsorship opportunity and, by the way, that wasn't a trade secret, that was a Dave secret.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, that's incredible.

Speaker 1:

But that's where we are right. That's where we are with a lot of these tools, right. And I think that's to me and that's what I pay attention to a lot as I'm experimenting with things Like okay, how do I take this one and tie it to this one and tie it, you know, so on and so forth. How do I get it to do all these things?

Speaker 2:

Well, it's interesting. So I was at this private equity conference last week up in Napa. It was horrible, it's just horrible, like those wine and rich people was just terrible. I was out of my element.

Speaker 1:

For those of you that aren't in our slack channel.

Speaker 2:

He complained the whole time. It's like all these people were wearing collars on their shirts. I don't know what that's. I don't know what purpose that serves no, no rock t-shirts no rock t-shirts, collars like that gets in the way of your beard. Like I don't understand, uh, drinking all these wine, all this wine. They're like hey, terrible, do you taste the, the, the currents? I'm like I don't understand. Uh, drinking all these wine all this wine.

Speaker 2:

They're like, hey, terrible. Do you taste the, the, the currents? I'm like I taste grapes. That's what I taste, and this is not maker's mark. Uh, so a little different environment for me you live a sheltered life yeah, but I had this guy come up to me.

Speaker 2:

You know, it's like there's some networking and stuff and he worked for, like one of the consulting companies that implements, let's just say, one of the top three crms, maybe top two, right, the crm that we all know. Um, I'm not going to call him out because he's probably listening to this, but so I'm going to ask chat gpt yeah.

Speaker 2:

So we're sitting there and Dave Swider, who's new to our team, david's with me at this conference and he walks up on on this conversation. Um, and so I'm like, look, you know, the company you work for will not exist in three years. And he said, I mean, come on three years. I'm like, yeah, you're right, I might be wrong, it might be two years. Like I mean, I mean, I'm not, not, I'm just, I'm trying not to get into time. You know, into time, uh, horizons, it's just more like this is where it'll end up. Is it three years, two years, five years? I'm not sure, but it's there.

Speaker 2:

And he's like, why do you say that? I'm like vibe coding a CRM is just a bunch of tables, right. And in fact most salespeople use CRMs because their boss makes them, not because they sell anymore. And in fact, most people using a CRM, what's the first thing they do? They export to Excel, they export to a spreadsheet when your boss wants that pipeline report. Very few people are doing it in the software, they just export it, clean it up, send it to their boss, right? So there's. So it's a glorified spreadsheet all over more, right.

Speaker 2:

And I was like you could totally vibe code that and you could vibe code a CRM specific for you, right, you don't have to end 20 bucks a month, right, it's like it's, it's not going to cost you a whole lot, and unlimited users, right. And he's like yeah, man, like I think you're full of it, like you want to argue with me? Swider's just like laughing because he thinks it's uh, I entertain him. But, um, so I was like look, dude, don't listen to me, don't, don't buy into my narrative. Do this, go home and vibe code something. Just go get lovable. There's a bunch of them out there now. Um, just go build the serum that you wish you had as a salesperson, because he was like chief revenue officer or something like just go build the serum you wish you had, and so you know, do that. He connects to me on linkedin, which seems to be commonplace this day. Like you meet someone, then you get a linkedin commonplace this day, like you, meet someone then you get a linkedin.

Speaker 2:

Um, thought I'd never hear from him again, right? Um, he sends me a message on linkedin and I'm like, hey, can we chat? Send him my uh calendly link uh, and we, we talked to him. Like two days later he's like dude, can I show you what I built? And he shows me basically a CRM built specifically for general contractors. Turns out he'd worked in construction like just coincidentally. I had no idea.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I was going to say is that a coincidence or not?

Speaker 2:

Coincidentally, he'd worked in construction 15 years ago in the construction software business. He saw my background, I think he thought, oh, this is good. He built this thing almost done, like almost 100% complete. I was like how much time did you put into it? He's like 20 hours and he's like I think if I put another 10 hours into it I can button it up and then I can put it out in the market and start selling it. I can still keep my day job. I can keep my day job and do this. And so he was just like, absolutely he's like. You know, when you said that I'm like, oh, here's this guy, arrogant asshole just being whatever, and I you know, but I was curious enough to go do the work.

Speaker 1:

And he did.

Speaker 2:

So he's like saying, basically, in 40 hours he thinks he can displace not that there's any good construction CRMs out there, by the way, but that he can displace. That. I mean, think about that. I mean that's the world we're living in and you know I have this conversation with people all the time. When I do talks and everything else, they're like you know, I've got a 24-year-old and a 22-year old they make fun of how slow I am at typing. Like dad, like hunting pack, Like you're the worst, Like how did you not learn to type ever, Did you?

Speaker 1:

take typing class in high school.

Speaker 2:

No, I went to high school in India. So, there's a lot of stuff I missed by going to high school in India. I was born and raised here but went to high school in India, so there's a lot like that. I don't even know what a prom is about. I think it's like the weirdest thing I've ever seen, Like I don't, I don't understand it.

Speaker 1:

There were no typewriters at prom.

Speaker 2:

There were no typewriters. But, um, there's a lot of things about American high school that I don't understand, which is funny, because most people are like can you go to high school? No, I just skipped that part. But, um, I tell people when I give talks my three-year-old is not going to know what a keyboard and mouse is. There's just no way. Right, and I was joking around, somebody posted something on Twitter about their three-year-old bullying them or something like, and I was like well, with AI, my three-year-old right now just yells out into the atmosphere I want cookie, you know whatever? Right? Well, and mom and dad get it for him. Right, as he gets older, that's just going to be AI delivering whatever he wants, right, he's just going to yell into the sky I want it. I wanted the latest X-Box, and it's just going to show up, Right 3d print right there in front of them.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So my point is like this interface thing right um around, like how we are getting. What I say is we're getting closer and closer to the compute.

Speaker 1:

Yeah it and just for a frame of reference for the aias and the accs and the rest of the alphabet soup out there.

Speaker 1:

Um, in our mastermind groups, our innovation leaders mastermind groups, our construction tech leaders mastermind groups vibe coding is a regular topic of discussion. I don't know anybody I don't know of anybody in any of our mastermind groups that went to A AI national in Boston, and so I'm I'm picking on. For those of you that don't know, I'm picking on AI national because raising my hand AI member architecture is my background. I also didn't go to I did not go. This is the first time I'm and I haven't missed it in 10 years.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Maybe more.

Speaker 2:

Do you feel smarter for it?

Speaker 1:

Well, no, I hate to reveal the reason that I didn't go. I thought it was at the end of the month and I had somebody texted me like the week of and they said hey, when are you landing in Boston? I haven't even booked my flight, so, like I'm at the airport, yeah, oh so, because I always well, I won't, I won't give away my, my trade secrets. But I missed it this year. That was, that was my own thing.

Speaker 2:

Next, next year. The ai is going to remind you, by the way they will, they will, since san diego next year.

Speaker 1:

The AI is going to remind you, by the way, they will, they will. It's in San Diego next year, by the way Hard to pass that up, but none of the folks in our mastermind groups went to AI National, maybe not even ACEC. There's a lot of engineers and these are the people that are leading innovation in firms across North America. Well, we have European members in our mastermind groups now, so at least across half the globe, and they're talking about vibe coding. So this is real. So why are we talking about a survey that you post on vibe coding? Are we talking about a survey that you posted on vibe coding? It's because you posted in LinkedIn.

Speaker 1:

As we're recording this, it was a handful of days ago. It's got a lot of comments, a lot of reactions. Let me read it out and then we'll unpack it, as is our tradition. We'll talk about other things. We'll take other tangents that it's related to as well. So here's what you wrote Vibe coding is the next level of getting the SME subject matter expert even closer to the compute, which you said something very close to that just a minute ago. Is it perfect? No, however, every iteration of getting the human brain closer to the compute has been imperfect Punch cards anyone. Side note I remember when I was a kid going to my dad's office. It was International Harvester back then. I remember going to his office and going into the really cold computer room and getting punch cards. Cold computer room and getting punch cards. That's how old I am. You went on to say my mom was super unimpressed by GUI when she was a COBOL mainframe programmer. I think this is one of those Google it moments for the majority of the audience out there.

Speaker 1:

Maybe their interface, but yeah, yeah, yeah, foundationally, early adopters will be rewarded. It has always been that way. Okay, so we've talked about, we've gone round and round about this a little bit, but what else do we need to pull out of that post that we haven't touched on yet before we kind of take another team?

Speaker 2:

here. I think there's a couple things here. Right, one like most generations, right, my mom thought the mouse and clicking on things just got in the way of writing code interesting right it's like why do you need a mouse? Why do you have, like you know how to write code or you don't write code right, like it's just it was for her. This whole object oriented thing was just like unimpressive to her yeah right, and then you know, same thing.

Speaker 2:

When I remember when, uh, people started building websites, start building websites, what, 1992, 1990, something like that, sure, and everybody's like, oh, and html, that's just like nothing, I'm like, yeah, it's nothing complicated. But then all of a sudden, things like microsoft front page, google it, and actually I was telling my kids about this, about cold fusion. I used to use cold fusion, um and um. I knew the allure brothers back then. Right, it was, cold fusion was the big, if you wanted, like a gooey tool to develop a website. It was a thing and it's just so funny.

Speaker 2:

I was telling my kids about that and I was like, by the way, do you know what one of the other brothers is doing right now? And they're like, no, I'm like he just took circle public. So Jeremy just took it. He's like, oh, you should call him. And I was like we probably wouldn't If we walk by each other. We wouldn't 30 years ago. Right, yeah, but every time you add a layer of intuitiveness, the people before that really, um, kind of poo-poo it. And it was interesting, not a huge show. Disclaimer I'm not a huge joe rogan fan, I'm not like I've watched it one. Nobody has three or four hours to listen to anything. I don't know who does, but unless you're driving a truck or something, right? Who has three hours?

Speaker 1:

That may explain his target audience pretty well.

Speaker 2:

That was implied, jeff, but I do look at who his guests are and this week he had the founder of Replit on Super interesting conversation. Of course, joe Rogan doesn't know what vibe coding is, so he's explaining to him like, like here's what all this stuff means. And it was interesting what he brought up because he kind of he's a little bit younger than me, maybe a good bit younger, but he was talking about his first computer being dos space and he was like the thing about dos space computers that booted up and you ended up with a prompt, right, so you actually had to understand something about compute. You had to understand, like here's, how a computer works. He's like the problem with iPads and iPhones people aren't hacking on them, they're not developing anything for them, they just become mass user experiences. So he talks about which I agree with.

Speaker 2:

When you had to go through an effort to configure your BIOS or segment a drive like all the nonsense we used to have to do back in the day just to get the computer to work, you knew you had to know what these things were like. Oh my god, this ram is incompatible with this motherboard. Let me go back to the store. Got the wrong rant. You know that stuff made you fairly good about knowing how things work, and now we have a compute generation that does not know how things work right. So there's always going to be people that complain. These kids today, right sure so, is vibe coding perfect?

Speaker 2:

no, was early days of windows perfect? Blue screen of death anyone google it, right? So? So I think there is some imperfections and you know, and the people that get focused on these imperfections as an op, like I'm gonna wait till it's perfect, you and everyone else, you and your grandfather, right? So when I talk about early adopters, get rewarded. That is a hundred percent.

Speaker 2:

The Early adoption is not for everyone. Is there a lot of waste factor? Right, but you can never discount the learning experience of anything, right, think about it. I mean, I built so many things. Oh my God, like I used to put 14, four modems together and solder, why? I mean so much stuff that just doesn't exist. I haven't had to solder anything for two decades, right, yeah, however, did I learn something? Yeah, sure. So I think. I think this idea that early adopters like I'm going to wait until it's perfect, you just don't have a learning mindset, you have a very constricted mindset, sorry, but I do think you get rewarded, not because you're necessarily doing things better than everyone around you, but that early learning experience, until it's codified and dealing with the problems and learning working your way to work around, that is invaluable. Those are brain cells that just don't get used enough.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean you're exactly right. I mean every generation complains about the next. If you know one of the things that, when you were talking about you know not knowing how things work Great, you know. You and I grew up at a time where let's just take the example of cars, Right, I was thinking about this the other day you and I grew up at a time where let's just take the example of cars right I was.

Speaker 1:

I was thinking about this the other day. Um, my, my daughter has, and I have had in in my life several mini Coopers, but when we were growing up, you know, ours were things that you could open the hood you could look in if you had a little bit of mechanical aptitude. You know, ours were things that you could open the hood you could look in if you had a little bit of mechanical aptitude. You know pre-youtube, you could figure things out, you could get your hands in them. You could go to the store, to the auto parts store. You could buy a part, you could replace it, you could work on it. Yeah, shade tree mechanics and and all of that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

When I got my first Mini Cooper whatever year that was I opened the hood and I went nope and I closed the hood. One because if you've never met me, if you don't see me on screen, of course I'm on screen. I'm in this little box, but I'm 6'3". I have fairly large hands. There's no way I'm getting my hands down inside that engine compartment. If I were to open a Tesla or any of the EVs now, it would be completely foreign to me.

Speaker 1:

I still have an understanding of how things work. Maybe not all the inner workings of an EV or something like that. That's passed me by. Nor do I necessarily want to know how an EV works. How does that serve me? But you're right, the learning process, the understanding it doesn't mean that you know I've got this great little neighbor that he's. How old is he? He's like 12, I think he's one of these take everything apart kind of guys. Right? He's fantastic. He watches. You know you're doing something. He watches, he wants to learn. It's fantastic. It doesn't mean that he needs to go backwards and learn everything that came before this thing in order to be able to move forwards this thing in order to be able to move forwards.

Speaker 2:

No, it's funny On that same podcast, Joe Rogan and the founder of Replit both talk about cars. They're like we don't own cars that we can actually work on anymore. It doesn't mean that we're not super interested in it, and historically I wanted to learn, right that. In other words, there's this idea that we're dumbing down things and my whole thing is like you don't have to learn for necessity. Sometimes you learn because you're intellectually curious. I need to know how it works. That's a good point, Right? I need to know how it works. It's not because I'm going to do it. I don't have time. Who has time to change their oil? I don't even know what you do with used oil anymore. Back in do with used oil anymore. Back to my day, we poured it down the sewer. Apparently that's not cool anymore. We dug a hole in the backyard and poured our usually that's frowned upon it's around all these environmental laws.

Speaker 2:

You know, I said I said dig a hole and buried in my backyard.

Speaker 1:

I'm like, I'm just putting it back to where it started well, you know, at some point in the future, you, just you put a well on top of it and stake a claim yeah.

Speaker 2:

So like, even if you wanted to do these things, you can't like you, you just can't. It's not like not allowed, right, um, uh, you know, but I I do think you know their point, which I thought was interesting.

Speaker 2:

So I think, when you look at this, you know early adopters are rewarded, you know reward doesn't mean money, right, and I think it's interesting, you know, because I was telling you, you know like I wrote my book 18 months ago and I've been going back and reading it because it turns out I was right about a lot of stuff turns out like that's because you asked Chet GPT. I couldn't ask a whole lot of anything 18 months ago, but it's this whole evolution from punch cards to COBOL to GUI, and now we're in this like no code, vibe code world.

Speaker 1:

And you talk about that in your book that no code world.

Speaker 2:

And I think like people can either. It was interesting this conference. There's the head of AI for McKinsey and there was another guy there from one of the big sovereign wealth funds their head of AI and he said if your technology guy, the minute you say vibe code, if all they do is get negative about it, fire them. And everybody was like what he's like. I understand that a CIO's job is to protect and worry about cybersecurity and all that, but if the immediate reaction is negative, that person will never get there. If they're like yeah, I think it's really cool too. Let's just make sure we put some guardrails around it, right?

Speaker 2:

Let's just make sure people don't go off the ranch, right? He's like that's the right answer because adopting anything new has challenges. Anything new that's unproven will have issues. Right, and I think his point was it's about the attitude. And if the if you know when, when the it department, as many companies say you know, call them the no department, the answer is no. Can I know right when your it department is the no department? You got to gut it. You just absolutely have to gut it. I think the answer is always yes, but in life I think the answer is always yes, but in life I think the answer is always yes, but sounds great.

Speaker 2:

Yes, we should do vibe coding, but I'm going to set up a separate sandbox for you. Don't push anything out into the world without my review. Like, whatever it is right, whatever the process is and also just having the right attitude. Like his vibe coding thing's pretty interesting. I'd like to learn more about it too. Right, it's all about the attitude towards these things. It's going to make or break an organization, I think, with this stuff.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I was going to say that's exactly what we're hearing inside our mastermind groups. Right, and this is where the rubber hits the road. Right, these are the people the engineering firms and construction firms. They're ahead of innovation, they're strategizing, they're budgeting, they're looking at the tools, vet their data goes, you know, during their projects, when we're using AI. So they've got the reality of that sort of interaction and they've got the reality of, okay, how do we transform our business using these tools, maybe the existing tools, and then they're also in this. You know, back to your point, it's okay, how do we excite our people and how do we push forward? And many of them are doing what you just said. Right, it's like, okay, here's a separate sandbox, you can try this and it's got to be in this sandbox. You can't go rogue, or whatever the right term for it is. You can't just launch this and use it on your next project, on this data center with XYZ.

Speaker 2:

But here's also something when I think about everything changes, right. Everything keeps changing. Venture capital has now changed, right? There are probably I look at like 20, 25 deals a week. There used to be five that I'd be like okay, this is interesting, I want to learn more, right One. Now it's like one.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Because, quite honestly, um, the rest of them I'm like I might be able to build while I'm on the call with them Like it's just not. It's just not as interesting enough. And so I think, when you look at this whole, so so what's interesting? So, with the venture firm, you know now we're investing in things like fully autonomous EV bulldozers. Can't vibe code that, right? So? But I started this other little project, funny enough, I think. I think AI and all this stuff is like the next new wave of entrepreneurship.

Speaker 2:

So I'm kind of sponsoring two people right now that they're building stuff. They're fully employed at their job. They pitched me a couple of ideas. They're going to go vibe code them If they make enough progress. I'm basically like look, I'll put you on payroll, we'll start a company together. You don't have to worry about paying your bills right From your. You know all the stuff that keeps people from leaving it are. We're not going to raise any venture capital, right, we're not. I'm going to give them enough money to pay their bills Right, depending on where they are, and which means if we build the product up and you know and I mean you know how it is I post something on LinkedIn and people click on it, right?

Speaker 2:

So we put it in a newsletter, whatever that they could end up building. You know, call it $500,000 in recurring revenue business In the venture world, that's a who cares. So what, right? However, in this model where it's just me and them as partners and I'm down, I'm out a couple hundred grand not, you know, not millions. I can sell that $500,000 in recurring for $5 million. Right, I can get a 10x return. Not, you know, not millions. I can sell that 500,000 and recurring for $5 million.

Speaker 2:

I can get a 10 X return on it, right, and so it's. It's not going to be that everything has to be venture, venture scale. I'm sitting here saying like I can invest in five people. Let them side hustle till they need to quit, till like it turns into a full-time job. Let them side hustle till they need to quit, till like it turns into a full-time job.

Speaker 2:

I cover their salary. We have shared equity and then we sell the thing in a couple of years and it's. You know, it's a. It's not a unicorn sale, it's a bunch of $5 million exits.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

The difference is we own a lot of the five. There's not a bunch of other investors in there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so it's. It's that right. It's the size, the headcount of the business.

Speaker 2:

It keeps it small, et cetera, but it's also speed to market, right? Yeah, I mean I think I can't remember if I write about it in the book or not, but my team, we built the first version of Blue Nile, which was selling jewelry on the internet. So this is like late 90s. The thing that we took millions of dollars from millions of dollars is a $99 a month Shopify account today. Yeah, right. So if you're a small jewelry store today and you want to sell online, you go to Shopify, give them $99 a month and you're in business. You don't need venture capital for that.

Speaker 2:

Blue Nile raised venture capital to sell jewelry online in the nineties, right? Because it didn't exist. So I think what you're going to see is there's going to be lots of great business ideas to build, right? If you're an entrepreneur and you're sitting there going, I have this great app idea, and then you probably get a quote for some offshore group, a buddy or whatever and say, oh well, the buried entry is I have to go raise $100,000 to get a prototype built. Those days are over.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Just go do it yourself.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so it's full circle. Back to your new buddy from the private equity conference. Hey, you're and I'm curious, I better not say that one out loud, I was back that up half a step so he's at one of the top two or three CRMs. You tell him hey, you're going to be your, your whole. Uh, your product is going to be obsolete, essentially in originally you said three years and he's like why that's? Why, right, that's, that's what you're explaining, yeah but you know.

Speaker 2:

So here's the thing that's interesting, right, and this is why, like, if you have an idea, it doesn't have to be a unicorn idea, I don't care. You have an idea, it doesn't have to be a unicorn idea, I don't care. Hit me up, right, because I think in the AEC industry there is a hundred percent dissatisfaction in the software tools we use Other than accounting systems. People will quit on price, right, they will go. They will go to a different product on price, like because it's cheaper. You know a lot of other big enterprise companies. Um, they're like well, you know it, but you don't want a project basis. You can do whatever you want to, right, if you're, if you're a construction manager on your project, you can use whatever software you want to. No one's going to get in your way. So I think there's like some really interesting opportunities to build stuff. Like I said, not venture backable.

Speaker 2:

You know if you have something venture backable obviously hit me up. I'm interested in those too. But I'm also kind of in this, in this mindset, like I'm just gonna go sponsor five or ten people building stuff and we might turn them into nice little million dollar. God for a million dollar a year. Revenue, cash flow, positive startups how dare I Right?

Speaker 1:

I mean you say accounting, but also I mean there's some other elephants in the room that it'd be hard to pull people away from, but there are so many opportunities out there. I mean we've seen that in our incubator opportunities out there. I mean we've seen that in our incubator. You know, one of the things that surprised me was, um, you know, two little over two years ago, when you said, hey, you're going to, you're going to take over the incubator, I'm like, okay, that's cool, that's that's the way I run my graduate class and whatnot.

Speaker 1:

It surprised me that I don't know what's the actual percentage 90, 95% of the founders come from the industry and they're solving problems. I don't know why this. You know now that I'm saying it out loud. I'm not sure exactly why it surprised me, but they're solving the problems that they had in their job. They work for real estate development, they were project manager for a construction firm, you know, so on. So you know, they get passionate about the problem they had at their job and they're going to solve those problems. And there's a million of those problems out there, to your point. There's all of those opportunities out there that, all of a sudden, all of those opportunities out there that all of a sudden vibe coding. You know different, different no code ideas, platforms, as as you discuss in your book, that that can be a huge game changer. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and think about this right. Like you know, in our, just like our, mastermind groups are very confidential. You know the incubators the same way.

Speaker 2:

I mean, if I had an idea, if I was in an architecture firm and I was like, hey, I think I have a better system to manage the construction administration. Sure, join our incubator. Vibe code it Like we're going to help you with the go to market, we're going to help you with customer discovery. You know it's, it's not that you can build it, discovery. Or you know it's, it's not that you can build it, but are you building a product for you know, with the user of one, or are you building a product for that the market actually will care about? Right and um, come join our incubator and collaborate on it. I mean, I think it's a great way, like I think what I'm excited about this stuff. I've already had like three or four people text me in the last two weeks as I've been like blabbing about this stuff, and they're like man, like so I could side hustle a company. Yeah, I don't quit your day job because the problem, the only way you can quit.

Speaker 2:

Your day job is go to market, right. But if I, if we and our team, we know how to take stuff to market like we'll, we'll take it to market. You know, it's like you be the author, we'll be the publisher, right.

Speaker 1:

Well, and we'll also make sure that you do the customer discovery, because that's, you know, there's a reason that we've traditionally focused very heavily on customer discovery, because that's the key before to go to market right, and that's it's also the step. And we have this. It frustrates me, you know, every, every cohort of the incubator, there's somebody that says, oh, I've got, I've got X number of years experience. I know, I know what it is and you know my first reaction is you've got X number of years, which is about half the number of years of experience that I have. So I guess I'm really old, but then, but then it's, oh, I know well, what if? What if what you think you know is wrong, right, and it's. You know what if what you know is only the people that you've been working with for your career? What if what you know is only what your mom and your grandma and your aunt have told you, right? So the there's that piece of it that will will take you through, and then also the go-to-market piece of it and, um, I I think this discussion really does open up some really interesting doors. Um, as, as we, as we move forward, it's going to be really exciting to see, you know, the next 12 months or something like that, how all of this changes.

Speaker 1:

Um, our, our stuff, certainly, incubator, et cetera, the people that are that are getting involved there, um, but the industry, industry as a whole. You know what we ought to do. We've got coming up in um, as we're recording this, coming up in just over three weeks, I guess it is. We've got our next quarterly event, which is in San Francisco on July 29th, but then our Q4 event is in Phoenix. We should do a hackathon. Yeah, we could do so. We've got our Q4 event. Let me look at the calendar. Actually I think it's the 28th. Let me click, make a couple of clicks here. October 28th we have our Q4 event and then the 29th we have our summit, back-to-back days, both in Phoenix. We should do a hackathon one day. So we traditionally we have always done demo day to close out Summit we could do a hackathon at the quarterly event and then our demo day the version of demo day that we could do at Summit could be the demo of what came out of the hackathon.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that'd be fun. Just gave Jackie a heart attack.

Speaker 1:

We just lost half of our team. They all fell over. We're doing what.

Speaker 2:

We're doing what they say things like that's so last minute, I'm like it's October, what are you talking about? That's?

Speaker 1:

how we're going to work the rest of the day.

Speaker 2:

That's last minute. Look, I think there's a there there with this. I really do think there's a there there with this um, and I really do think, like there's um in venture right now. Um, there's there's a lot of, a lot of noise going on because even um, a lot of startups right if they haven't raised their series a and there's something that could be vibe coded and launched vcs are looking and going like, hey, you've got less than a million in revenue and I could vibe code this thing over the weekend. Like why am I going to put money into you?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah I actually asked someone on the team to go like identify startups that are competitor VCs and just go like own them and give it away for free. It's like dude like what I, like, I don't know, just feels like the right thing to do.

Speaker 1:

You're giving away all your secrets today.

Speaker 2:

You know what the funny thing about ideas and secrets thought about like nobody can execute them. People don't execute. I can give away all the secrets, Nobody does anything with it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. Okay, we've been discussing two I'm going to I'm going to call it two different posts on LinkedIn. This is what you said. Vibe coding is the next level of getting the SME closer, even closer, to the compute. Is it perfect? No, however, every iteration of getting the human brain closer to the compute has been imperfect. Punch cards anyone. My mom was super unimpressed by GUI G-U-I, if you need to Google it when she was a COBOL mainframe programmer. Cobol was offered as a class when I was in high school. Foundationally, early adopters will be rewarded. It has always been that way.

Speaker 1:

And then, over in Catalyst, you started a poll and it just says vibe coding Do you vibe code? And right now, live as we're recording this, recording this 78 of the people that responded to this poll said yes, three percent said no what's vibe coding? 15 said no, I want to, but haven't. Three percent said no, never. And zero percent said it's Sunday. Leave me alone, because they were reading your Sunday Scaries post at that time For those of you, and one of the things that we mentioned as we've been talking about this was the fact that in your latest book, creating the Intangible Enterprise, you talk about no code, no code platforms, et cetera.

Speaker 1:

So 18 months ago, as we discussed, it was about when that was published. You were writing and it was published and anybody that wants to read that can go to Amazon or wherever you buy books and you can get Creating the Intangible Enterprise by KP Ready and you can read more about it. But I think we'll look back at some point. Three months, six months, your friend, your new friend that is at the CRM platform, crm company that's going to fail At some point. We're going to look back to this episode and this discussion and go, wow, this was. It's not brand new, certainly, but we're getting close to this inflection point, I think, and that's what we're talking about here today. We'll have to revisit it here in a few months and see.

Speaker 2:

I will also say interviewing for a job and not knowing how to minimum vibe code is like interviewing for a job and not knowing how to minimum vibe code is like interviewing for a job and not knowing how to use a spreadsheet Right, I think, regardless, regardless of your whatever right Like, I think that is that's just become like the basic toolkit.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, super interesting and it'll be. You know it's. I've I've got, as we record this, we've got screens open right. I've got the the uh, uh, the survey over here, the LinkedIn posts over here, and I'm I'm watching it in real time, basically, as we're talking, and it's it's going to be interesting to see how this, this conversation, continues to uh, to shake out, so to speak. Um, if you're not already, you've heard us mentioned catalyst a few times again.

Speaker 1:

Kp, kp explained the process earlier in the uh, in the episode here you can rewind. I always picture the tapes, the eight tracks with the cassette. You can rewind and and Google it. You can rewind and and uh, listen to that. Go to uh, go to kpreadyco, and right there on the homepage is the form to fill out. It's just three forms, I believe it is, or three fields to put your name. Put yourself on the wait list. You'll eventually end up talking to me. Join Catalyst, our community where we talk about this and more. If you're not there already, follow KP on LinkedIn. You can't connect with him. He's full until LinkedIn opens up more slots, so follow him on LinkedIn. That's what we talk about every week. Go get his book at Amazon, creating the Intangible Enterprise and we'll be back again next week with a new episode. Kp thanks for this conversation today.

Speaker 2:

It's been fun Good seeing you.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and thank you all. We'll see you again next week. Thanks everybody.