SAAS Operators Podcast E07: Meta is Changing the Game
In this episode of the SAAS Operators Podcast the hosts talk about the launch of Meta’s new AI App and how AI is changing the future of shopping and consumer behavior. They discuss the value of SAAS and its perception challenges, focusing on the evolution of software and customer expectations. They have a brief conversation about the impact of incumbents on Startups and end with a discussion on market saturation and product innovation where we all find out how much Jack loves butter.
Zach Quit Drinking for 100 Days—Nothing Changed
Zach kicked things off by saying he was sober for the first 100 days of the year. Not because he had a problem, just wanted to run an experiment. His birthday fell exactly 100 days from Jan 1, so he used that as a personal checkpoint: cut drinking, added some new habits, and waited to see what would change.
Nothing really did.
His big takeaway? If you weren’t drinking much to begin with, cutting it won’t do much for your clarity or output. In fact, life might feel a little flatter. He even said a small drink at night sometimes helped him get more done, took the edge off, made it easier to think.
Jeremiah and Rishabh agreed. For people going from heavy drinking to zero, the change can be huge. But if you’re starting from moderation, there’s just not much upside to subtracting a small joy.
Meta’s AI Feed Might Actually Be the Big Shift
That conversation segued into something much more interesting: Meta’s new standalone AI app.
Rishabh demoed it for us. Not a productivity tool. A feed. One designed for discovery, not execution. Think Instagram crossed with a chatbot—but instead of prompting it, it prompts you.
That’s the shift.
Jeremiah made the point that most DTC buying is discretionary. It’s not "I need this." It’s "Oh, that looks interesting." And that moment doesn’t happen through search. It happens in feeds.
Meta Has the Moat That Matters
Meta knows what you’ve bought, what you’ve liked, who you talk to, and where you go. They don’t just have data—they have context.
Zach imagined the experience of buying pants, then being shown a shirt that matches—rendered on your body. That’s not a far-future idea. That’s where this is going.
And Meta’s perfectly positioned. They already built the best discovery ad engine in history. Now they’re plugging it into an AI-native interface.
ChatGPT is great for solving problems you know you have. Meta AI is going to surface problems and solutions you weren’t even thinking about yet.
Copycats, Knockoffs, and What They Actually Do
Later in the conversation, we talked about competition. Rishabh brought up how often people copy his company’s UI pixel-for-pixel and how it never works.
I shared a DTC example from a women’s athletic brand I used to work with. They got copied, blatantly, by a massive retailer. The copied line even had a near-identical name.
At the time, it felt like theft. But the outcome? It actually helped. Their brand kept growing. The exposure didn’t hurt. And the pressure to differentiate made the company stronger.
That’s the part people miss: copycats can’t steal your moat unless your moat was shallow to begin with. Good products don’t stay good because they’re first. They stay good because they evolve under pressure.
You Can’t Fake Depth
In SaaS, this plays out constantly. Zach talked about how Foreplay got hit with a wave of knockoffs, tools that looked slicker, maybe even felt simpler. But once users scratched the surface, they saw what was missing.
Those competitors didn’t have infrastructure. Didn’t have volume. Didn’t have a data layer that could scale.
Meanwhile, Foreplay was collecting a million ads a day. It wasn’t perfect, but it was real. That’s why they’re rebuilding the database for AI and opening up the API. Zach believes that might become their biggest growth lever this year.
The Market Moves With or Without You
None of this is about sobriety. It’s about presence. Awareness. Discovery.
Meta is building for presence. A feed that knows what you want before you do. An interface that replaces “search” with “show.”
Copycats are sharpening the market. AI is changing how people shop. Feeds are replacing queries. And your moat, whether you’re in software, ecommerce, or media, has to be deeper than surface-level polish.
The world’s tilting toward ambient discovery.
If you're building, selling, or scaling, the real question is:
Are you ready to be found without being looked for?
