Rob Walling
Serial entrepreneur who has founded six companies over two decades, five of them bootstrapped, including Drip, which he sold.
“I have gotten some pushback from developers being like, well, now that I can build it in two days with AI, I should just build it and launch it. And it's like, no, dummy. Do you realize that you're going to build the wrong thing? … I guarantee you that your plan for your product will not survive contact with a real customer.”
Ditching Hourly · Agency Business · October 2026
Jonathan Stark asked what developers tempted to build a SaaS product with AI agents should do first. Walling, a developer himself, lays out his "2-20-200" sequence of market research, then customer conversations, then an MVP. He says AI changed the advice less than people think.
Transcript
…after I do them, but this one is so prescient and we want to like let SaaS founders know. I also gave eight moats that I believe will hold up in the age of AI for SaaS. And this is like stake in the ground type stuff. So that'll be up on my YouTube channel soon, youtube.com/slash at rob walling.
…So they're new to the whole, they're sort of experienced developers and they built stuff for clients who are probably running a SaaS, certainly worked on SaaS projects. But what should they be thinking about in terms of the steps you walk them through in the book if they were going to get started?
…from developers being like, well, now that I can build it in two days with AI, I should just build it and launch it. And it's like, no, dummy. Do you realize? Do you realize that you're going to build the wrong thing? You're going to just build something out of your head. The whole point of talking to customers is not to say, oh, will they buy it? Is there a market? Part of it is that, but also, I guarantee you that your plan for your product will not survive contact with a real customer. They're going to tell you, well, I'd use this, but not this, or I'd like it that way, but this way. Or you'll pivot to an entirely different idea altogether that is so much better. I have stories like that in the book that I, you know, I won't go into, but of folks who had one idea and were two engineers. And one guy just did cold call after cold call. And at cold call 35, he learned this idea…
Yeah. I mean, back in the day when people were, when it took 200 hours to get something good, I would always say to people, like, well, okay, let's say it's built. It's 200 hours from now and you built it. What are you going to do? 100%. You're going to have to go do the thing that I'm asking you…
Exactly.
100%.
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